**this current blog will remain as Strands corporate news blog.

We re-launched the much-loved Workout Details option for advanced workout tracking as a beta product. A little extra time for the feature development made sure everything was running smoothly.

Workout Details makes it easy to:

• Specify what type of running, cycling or other workout you’re doing
• Keep notes for every step of a workout – from warm ups to cool downs and everything in between
• Track intervals, fartleks and other advanced training techniques

Along with Workout Details, we’ve also brough back Nordic Skiing as a workout type.

Check back ofter for further development updates on other Strands Fitness features and tell us what you think – we welcome your feedback!

The Vancouver USA Marathon race mobile application is a simplified version of the Strands Fitness mobile app, a GPS tracker combined with social networking integration.  With the race app, participants and spectators can receive updates from the race director, view photos uploaded by the community, and live athlete tracking on the race day.

Benefits for the event organizers:

• Keep race participants updated with news and race information
• Provide training tips and sponsor messages
• Distribute detailed course maps with elevation profile, aid stations and entertainment on the course

Benefits for event participants and spectators:

• Receive event news directly to your phone
• Track runners in real-time on race day
• Find exclusive deals and promotion from the event sponsors
• Share and view photos by the community

Download the Vancouver USA Marathon app here.

For more information, please contact Wookie@strands.com

New and Improved Features

Goals

We’ve revamped our goals! All goals will be displayed in the the progress bar and will be automatically updated with every activity you add to your training log. To share a goal, click on the yellow ‘More’ button. Choose goal options including Simple, Weight and Activity and define how you want to track.

Progress Summary

View your activity summary for the current week! The progress tab displays active goals, recent workouts and friends’ activity. From the report tab, you’ll get your weekly summary charts, recent activity from your contacts and current active goals. From the complete summary page, you can then navigate to the pages and posts you wish to find.

• Facebook Login
• Layout theme
• Faster!
• Easier user navigation

Using Strands Fitness Beta

Remember, any posts created in the Strands Fitness Beta application will only be saved and available in Beta. When the Beta application replaces current site at fitness.strands.com, all your saved activity history from Beta will then be transferred. We suggest you try out Beta, but choose one application to add your activity. Facebook login users will not be able to access fitness.strands.com until the Beta application replaces the current site at fitness.strands.com

If you have any questions, comments and concerns, please visit our Beta FAQ or contact us at feedback@strands.com.

Thank you for your support as we create a stronger application to help achieve your fitness goals!
Strands Fitness

At the conference, Strands Personal Finance gave a preview of their new Business Intelligence (BI) application, which plugs directly into the Strands PFM platform. The BI app gathers user data and analytics from Strands PFM solution, allowing banks to visualize key metrics, personalize and customize their PFM solution and see key performance indicators.

The application was designed to help financial institutions improve adoption, ROI and profits from their PFM solution. It will be available later this year. If you are interested in more information about Strands Business Intelligence, contact our SPF team.

2010 has been both incredibly busy and great year for us here at Strands Labs. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve grown and thank you everyone for showing Strands love. We look for even greater accomplishments in 2011!

We are currently working to bring more focus towards goals. I think the new tools will aid to stay motivated and logging your workouts. Suggestions and feedbacks are always welcome- Strands.com is for YOU!

We can’t say it enough – thanks to all the fans of Strands.com!

With love, Strands.com Team

Team Strands.com/Mizuno athlete Meghan Armstrong racing Chiba tomorrow

Corvallis, OR, November 22, 2010–Team Strands.com/Mizuno athlete Meghan Armstrong returns to International Chiba Ekiden with Team USA to race the marathon relay tomorrow. The 22nd edition of the event will feature teams from Japan, Romania, Russia, China and Canada in addition to a strong USA squad.

Armstrong and fellow Chiba veteran Ed Moran (Williamsburg, Va.) will lead teammates Bobby Curtis (Ardmore, Pa.), Aaron Braun (Flagstaff, Ariz.), Kim Conley (West Sacramento, Calif.) and Stephanie Pezzullo (Charlotte, N.C.)

Team USA will look to improve on an fifth-place finish from last year, where they covered the marathon distance in a combined time of 2 hours, 9 minutes and 42 seconds.

Find Meghan’s training and wish her good luck on her Strands.com online training log.

Gear tab on Strands is now available! You can view description, ratings and overall reviews from the Strands community.

To rate a gear, click on ‘Edit Review’ button. From the modal window, you’ll be able to rate the gear and provide text description. You can add the gear to your profile simply by clicking on the ‘I own it’ button at the top of the page. You can always purchase ‘must have’ gear through ‘Buy Here’.

Drop Down Menu

The Drop Down Menu makes it easier and faster to share a post.Hover over the ‘Share Something’ menu bar’s icon and the drop down menu will appear, allowing you to go directly to the specific modal window. This functionality is also available for your inbox notifications.

At Strands, we are always looking for ways to improve. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email us feedback@strands.com

Enjoy!

Blog widgets with dynamic displays of your Strands activity are now available on the Goodies page on Strands. You can choose from three different widgets, including a stats overview, your last workout, or recent workouts.

To add a blog widget to your blog or website, visit the Goodies page and copy the code of the badge you would like to use. If you use Blogger, you can add a blog widget with two mouse-clicks. Just click the ‘Add to Blogger’ button on the Goodies page, and ‘Add Widget’ from your Blogger account.

Questions or problems? Email feedback@strands.com.

Happy Training!

Strands Team

As we strive to make Strands.com the most comprehensive online training log, the product development team continues to add new activity types for you to track online.

The latest additions include the sport families Mountain Sports, Nautical Sports and Roller Sports. Within these sport families, Strands users can now track their activity for, climbing, canoeing, kayaking, rowing, inline skating, roller hockey, and skateboarding.

You can find the new additions in the sports drop menus in the basic tab of your workout modal window.

Can’t find your sport or activity on Strands.com? Let us know what you would like added at feedback@strands.com.

What’s New in Version 3.3?
-New six icon menu screen for easy navigation
-All app settings now accessible from within app, allowing for quick configuration
-Direct access to your messages and inbox from main menu screen
-Enhanced routes function helps you find new places to train
-New interactive News/Questions/Tips section
-Re-configured Chrono with added menu for pre-workout settings
-Ability to share and exchange goals with other Strands users

Have feedback? Send an email to iphone@strands.com.

About Meggie

Meggie (Strands User: mdials) is a runner and blogger from Indianapolis. She works in digital marketing, is married (to a runner), and has two dogs. She started running 5 years ago, and has has run four marathons–finishing her fourth in a near personal best 4:41 earlier this month at the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco. Meggie runs to “feel empowered, alleviate stress, and eat dessert”. You can follow Meggie on her Strands profile as she prepares to run the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon this month in a goal time of 4 hours, 31 minutes.

I’m not sure what’s growing at a faster pace: social media or the amount of distance runners in the United States. We all know that Twitter and Facebook are nearing world domination, but given the fact that the Boston Marathon sold out in 8 hours and 3 minutes (compared to 2 months in 2009 and 6 months in 2008), I’d say it’s a close race.

Both running and social media are interests of mine. I’m not an expert in either, but I love to practice both. Therefore, it seems fitting that I stumbled upon Strands. This site serves as a user community for the active person. Runners. Hikers. Walkers. Bikers. Swimmers. Strands is perfect for people who enjoy tracking training programs, monitoring upcoming races, setting goals and talking about running with other people who are equally passionate about the sport.

So, without further ado … a review.

When you log in to Strands, you see a horizontal tab bar [share bar] that lists the site’s different features.

Home: It’s easy to compare this tab to a Twitter stream. Essentially, it pulls up the people that you follow and their latest activity (whether that’s entering a new event, a route, a comment, etc.). Home provides  a quick dashboard to check up on your network. There is also a page for questions that allows the user community to interact on hot topics, provide feedback and provide tips.

Profile: When you first click on Profile, you pull up a stream of your latest activity. Again, similar to Twitter, but you also can access other areas including Info, Calendar and Stats. Like other social tools, Strands forces you to build out your bio, which you can view and edit under Info. You include a picture, bio information, some comments about who you are and why you run. You can also share goals, images, and videos for others to peruse. When you enter a workout – including details such as mileage and pace – you can earn trophies for things like stamina and endurance. (There is also an option to link your GPS device to automatically download your workouts directly into Strands. I have yet to try it out, but sounds like a cool integration.)

The gear section under Profile is awesome. After adding personal gear to your bio, you can select it when entering your workouts (for example, the pair of shoes you wore). Experts advise you to purchase new running shoes every 500 miles, and Strands gives an easy way to track the age and wear on your shoes! Plus, as you start to link up with others on the site, you can check out what gear they prefer and get some personal recommendations for your next purchase.

When you move over to the calendar, you see a simple view of your upcoming events as well as all your training activities. Before Strands, I went old school by writing my mileage on my desk calendar at work and crossing off the runs on my marathon training Excel spreadsheet. Now, I can keep track of everything online and access it anywhere!
The stats page breaks down the activity information you have provided into a bar graph to show things like average distance and pace. You enter the details and it does the rest of the work for you.

People: Not surprisingly, this is the area where you can search for people to follow and bring into your network. Currently, the page sorts people based on those that have the most followers, new users or name. I can see how elite athletes may find it valuable to build a network of people nationally who have similar goals and race times. I also like that I can find runners who are geographically close to me. In addition, People has a cool “stats” section that rates people who have logged the most miles. One guy [Nick Arciniaga] has 4,136 miles entered. Impressive!

Groups: Here you can create groups or join them based on interest, geography, activity or event.

Events: Events shows just that – events that you can search for, create, register for, comment on, “like” or “dislike.” I made sure to RSVP for the races I am signed up for as well as create some that weren’t already in the application. I love this idea. Imagine getting geared up for a big race and being able to log in, see who else is running, look at  their goals and read their feedback about the race. Maybe you could even find some people who will hold your pace, allowing you to meet new running partners.

Unfortunately, it seems that most of the people around these parts have yet to discover Strands. I had to create most of the Midwest races I participate in, and as a result they have a following of one (me). I look forward to this application expanding as the organization grows.

Routes: In Routes, users can upload various routes that are stored and available for others to try out. For those who don’t have a GPS watch, or for those who are sick of running the same tired paths, you can spice things up by trying out a new route!

Here’s the thing: This site rocks. It combines the best of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MapMyRun and then flavors it for athletes. My favorite aspect is the tracking area for workouts, gear and events. I am disappointed that there aren’t more people from the Midwest who are signed up with Strands; I’d love to see hundreds of people signed up for the same races so we can start building relationships based on our love for running and social media. Hopefully, as the exposure for Strands grows in the Midwest, so will its membership. Until then, I’ll happily continue to use it to store my workouts and goals.

Strands Team

We’ve added new badges to our goodies section!

You can easily place the badges on your blogs, websites, and other online profiles to share your Strands training log. To add, go to the Goodies and copy the code of the badge you would like to use.

Questions or problems, please feel free to email us at feedback@strands.com or just send a tweet to @Strands.

Happy training!

To select a custom theme for your app:

1.) Go to Strands Settings, which is found under the main iPhone settings menu

2.) The first setting listed is labeled Theme (you will see that there are ten themes to choose from)

3.) Select a theme by touch

4.) Open or return to the app

Happy Training!

Strands Team

To commemorate the opening day of BAA Boston Marathon registration, the Strands team has put together 5 tips to help you prepare for Boston using your Strands training log.

1) RSVP on the Boston Marathon event page on Strands and find others who will be racing Boston. You can also share images and videos with other users on the event page.

2) Now that you’ve qualified and registered, it’s time to set a goal. To set a race goal, click on the goal button on your Strands share bar.You can set a general goal, or set a specific time or place goal. The Strands Race Predictor software will allow you to track your progress towards your goal.

3) Watch the Strands 3D Route Replay of the Boston Marathon course.

4) Ask the community a question. The Strands community includes everyone from the first-time 5k runner to the Olympian. Learn from their experience and ask a question. Just click on the ‘Share a Question’ button at from the questions tab.

5) Read training tips! Members of the community (including the Team Strands.com/Mizuno athletes) also post regular training tips. Search for tips by keyword or click ‘More Options’ to filter tips by by activity, location, and more.

Happy training! Good luck to you all as you start preparation for Boston!

Strands Team

Strands for iPhone is the first mobile app to use GPS technology to link runners and their friends and family in real-time. Using Strands for iPhone, a family member can track a loved-one on race-day from any location with a network or internet connection.

Strands.com first beta-tested it’s powerful athlete tracking tool at the 2009 ING New York City Marathon where two-time World Marathon Champion Abel Anton ran with the Strands for iPhone app along with Spanish celebrity chef Paco Roncero. Watch their real-time tracking playback from NYC below.

Since the initial beta-test of the product, Strands for iPhone has refined the tracking software and now offers many new features that set it apart from competitors:

• It’s Free! Competing apps start at $1.99 and up.
• Pep-talk messages. Friends and family can send pep-talk messages in real-time via text or text-to-audio.
• You can track multiple runners. Simultaneously track friends and family members even while running different paces simultaneously.
• Multiple tracking formats. Track directly from your phone or from your desktop using the companion web-based software on Strands.com.

Get Started Now!

1. Download Strands for iPhone FREE at the app store or iTunes.
2. Invite family and friends to download the app using the invite button on the main menu screen of the app. You can also tell them to search for ‘Strands’ at the app store to download the app.
3. Visit app settings to activate the real-time integration and audio cues for distance, time, and pace while you’re running.

**If your friend or family member doesn’t own an iPhone, they can track you on Strands.com. Invite them to set up a free profile at http://strands.com.

Enable athlete tracking for an event using Strands for iPhone

As a runner, the first thing you must do is to join the event prior to the start of the race. This should be done when you arrive at the race.

To enable tracking:

1. Once you are either at or near the race, open the Strands app and navigate to Chrono from the menu screen
2. In Chrono, press the Select Route/ Join Event Button. Press Join Event and Strands will search for nearby events in your area. Select your event.
3. Once you have selected your event you will be added to the list of participants and will have enabled tracking for that event.

Once the runner has enabled tracking using Strands for iPhone, you can track them two different ways– from your iPhone or from Strands.com.

To Track an Athlete from your iPhone:

1. Using the search function (magnifying glass button) on the menu screen of the app, search for the event in which the athlete you want to track is participating
2. Open the event on your iPhone. Scroll down and you will see a menu listing labeled attendance. Open this menu, the name of the athlete you are tracking should appear.
3. Select an athletes username. Selecting an athletes username will open their profile. During the race, a red “now training” beacon will appear, click on this beacon and alive tracking map will appear.
4. From this map, clicking on the user avatar will open a menu that gives the tracker the option to either view profile or send a pep-talk message. If you opt to send a pep-talk message, your typed message will be converted via text-to speech and the runner with hear the message while they are racing

To Track an Athlete from your Computer:

1. Open Strands.com, under Events tab, search for name of event.
2. Click on event name. Once event screen opens, on left side of page select Attendance tab.
3. You will see a list of those athletes who have joined that event. Click on the name of an athlete to open the athletes profile page. Clicking on the red flashing beacon will open an athlete tracking map. Send a pep-talk message to a runner using the dialogue box at the bottom right of the screen.

NOTE: You can track anyone, anywhere using the Strands for iPhone app. However, if you would like to view real-time tracking from Strands.com, please notify our technical team at feedback@strands.com so we can set up real-time tracking on the Strands.com event page.

• Hit the share icon (accessible in all major views within the app). This will open up ‘Share Something’ screen with several icon menus
• From ‘Share Something’ screen, select Nutrition (apple icon)
• Correspond the meal type from the five different icons

Once you select a meal type, a camera screen with several options will appear.

• Take a new picture or choose existing picture (omitting a picture will use default icon from Strands)
• Move and Scale your picture and hit choose
• In the meal information screen, add description of the meal

Once you share your meal using your iPhone, it will be uploaded and posted to Strands.com. Now go make everyone on Strands.com hungry!

Team Strands.com athletes Mike Sayenko, Justin Young and Zoila Gomez raced the Bank of America Chicago Marathon last Sunday. Sayenko and Gomez both ran personal bests, placing 10th and 13th in their respective races.

In the men’s race, Sayenko earned his first-ever top ten finish in a World Marathon Majors race, finishing 10th in 2:14:30, and topping his previous personal best by over 2 minutes in the process. Sayenko was the second American finisher to the tape behind former Team Strands.com athlete Jason Hartmann.

Veteran marathoner Zoila Gomez also ran a personal best of 2:32:53, beating her pervious mark from the 2008 Olympic Marathon Trials, where she placed 4th. The new best netted Zoila a 13th-place finish in the women’s race, and a third place finish among a deep field of American women, including Desiree Davila (4th overall) and 2008 Olympic Marathoner Magdalena Lewy-Boulet (9th).

USA 10k Championships–Boston, MA

Meghan Armstrong returned to the roads at the Tufts Health Plan 10k only one week after her 4th place finish at the USA 10-mile Championships. The Tufts 10k is also host to the USA 10k Championships. Meghan placed 14th in a time of 34:43.

Read both athletes full race recap on their Strands.com profile by clicking on the photo below.

Team Strands.com/Mizuno athletes Justin Young, Mike Sayenko, and Zoila Gomez will be racing the Bank of America Chicago Marathon on Sunday. They are among an elite field that race director Carey Pinkowski has called the strongest field in the 33-year history of the event.

Justin Young leads the group with 2:13:54 marathon personal best from the 2008 Fortis Rotterdam Marathon. Justin’s build-up for the marathon included two of his best finishes ever in USA Championships road races, finishing 3rd in the USA 10-Mile Championships in August (47:47) and 4th in the USA 20k Championships in September (59:45).

Team Strands.com/Mizuno teammate Mike Sayenko will be running his first marathon since a personal best and 8th place finish at the 2009 USA Marathon Championships where he ran 2:16:38. Sayenko spent the first half of the year on the track, culminating with an 8th place finish in the 10,000 meters at the USA Track & Field Championships in June.

Veteran marathoner Zoila Gomez brings a 2:33:53 personal best to the women’s field. Zoila has competed on two IAAF World Championships teams and was the alternate for the women’s marathon team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics after a surprise 4th place finish in the USA Olympic Trials. She returned from the trials to run the 2008 Bank of America Chicago Marathon and ran a 2:35:41.

Click on Justin, Mike, or Zoila’s image below to wish them luck on their Strands.com profile! Click the Team Strands.com logo for Chicago Marathon Runner Tracking.

Using the Gear function on Strands for iPhone is simple:

In the Chrono screen, press the Gear (shoe) button in the drop down bar before you begin your workout

Pressing the gear button will open a listing of all gear you have uploaded to Strands. Use the checkboxes to the right of each gear item to select gear then press the X button to return to the main Chrono screen. To add more gear to your list, press the add gear (plus sign) button at the top right of your gear list.

Once you complete your workout and upload it to Strands, any gear you selected for your workout will be stored and displayed on your uploaded workout post.

Mileage from the workout will be added to the selected pair of shoes so you can tell when it is time for a new pair!

Team Strands.com athletes Meghan Armstrong, Mike Reneau, Matt Hooley, Josh Moen, Meghan Arbogast, and Matt Downin all participated in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon weekend in Minneapolis last Sunday. The Twin Cities Marathon hosted the women’s USA 10-Mile Championships and the men’s USA Marathon Championships, and both masters USA Marathon Championship races. Team Strands.com athletes netted three more top-ten finishes in the championships races, continuing a string of strong performances for the team in the USA Running Circuit (USARC).

USA 10-Mile Championships–Minneapolis, MN

Team Strands.com/Mizuno athlete Meghan Armstrong placed 4th in the USA 10-Mile Championships in a new personal best of 55 minutes, 20 seconds. Her fourth place finish was also her highest placing in a USA Championships race. With her performance in the 10-mile, Meghan finished a tied for 5th place overall in the USARC standings.

USA Marathon Championships–Minneapolis, MN

In the marathon championships race, Mike Reneau ran 2:16:47 and placed sixth overall. Teammate Matt Hooley placed 20th overall, finishing in 2 hours, 23 minutes, 9 seconds. With double-points in the marathon, Reneau finished the year tied for 23rd place in the final USARC standings.

In the master’s championship race, Meghan Arbogast placed third and qualified for her 5th USA Olympic Marathon Trails in the process! Meghan ran a personal best of 2:45:46.

Twin Cities 10-Mile–Minneapolis, MN

In his build-up for a fall marathon, Matt Downin claimed the overall title in the Medtronic Twin Cities 10-Mile in 50 minutes, 43 seconds.

Charles Bowles Willamette Invitational–Salem, OR

Mike Kilburg was also active this weekend, handily winning the open division of the Charles Bowles Willamette Invitational. Kilburg ran an impressive 23:39 in the open division, beating the second place finisher to the tape by over 30 seconds.

Congratulations on all of the outstanding performances this weekend runners!

Click on the images below to read the athlete’s race recap on their Strands.com profile.

By Melissa Field

Lately I’ve been experiencing Facebook fatigue. What began as a great way to stay in touch now suddenly feels like a mundane waste of time. The status updates have become borderline irritating and my own updates pose no exception. I recently ran a program that spit out the words I use most frequently in my updates. The results:

1.Run

2.Running

3.Marathon

4.Ran

5.Colorado

I’m from Colorado, which explains the last part. But the other 4 words made me think, “Wow, I talk this much about running? How annoying! It’s a wonder I haven’t been defriended by everyone I know.” My friends don’t have to say anything. I know they find my endless updates about running tiresome, and who wouldn’t?

Other runners. That’s who. Runners love talking about negative splits, wave starts, tempo workouts, GU shots, and Garmin watches. Most runners could talk about these things all day. So when a fellow running friend suggested Strands, I decided to give it a try.

Strands was developed by computer scientist and accomplished runner, Francisco Martin. Strands is a two-fold venture. The website, www.strands.com, is a free online training log and social networking site. Like Facebook, each user has a profile. Users can log workouts, meals, routes, and gear. They can also talk to other each other, offer tips and encouragement, and share images and videos. The second part of the venture is Team Strands.com/Mizuno, an elite-level team comprised of runners from across the United States. Unlike teams centered in one specific location, such as the Mammoth Track Club, Team Strands runners live across the country and are paid to travel and place well in races. It’s easy for them to stay in touch because, well, they have their own website.

Nearly everyday on Strands, an elite runner, often a member of Team Strands, is offering advice or support to a slower runner. The training log feature makes it easy for runners to see what others are doing. If you’ve just struggled though a long run, another runner, or even a coach, might look at your training log and offer feedback on how to improve based on your previous workouts. If the road you’re running lacks a water fountain, another runner in your area might suggest a better path.

Elite runners differ from pro athletes in other sports. They are approachable and, for the most part, shockingly humble. We, the running masses, love this about them, and yet, do very little to support them. We pay to run a marathon, not to watch the best run. But if we love this sport, we should support our elites. They are the ones who will take us to new heights; they are the ones who will accomplish the dreams we have yet to envision.

In the movie Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe Jackson, a baseball player robbed of the ability to play the game he loves, delivers a poignant line. Stepping out onto a baseball field, he stares into the night sky and declares, “I would have played for food money. It was the game; the sounds, the smells.” In the end, Shoeless Joe tells us he would have played for nothing. Playing for nothing—a heartbreaking concept that, in reality, keeps the best runners from doing all they can to compete. The businesses that keep our elites running—and connected to the larger running community—are the businesses worth supporting.

So instead of wasting my time reading about what a high school friend did this weekend on Facebook, I have decided to invest my time on a site devoted to keeping me fit, well-informed, and well-connected to the sport I adore. At its best, a social networking site links us to the things we love. It’s even better if supporting that site helps to build a stronger running community—a community centered on encouraging the novice and sustaining the pro.

Melissa is a freelance writer and a runner living in Boulder, Colorado. She runs “to see the world, to stay healthy, and to feel free and at peace”. You can follow Melissa’s training as she pursues her goal of goal of qualifying for the BAA Boston Marathon by her 35th birthday at her Strands.com profile, www.strands.com/coloradomel.

You can follow the Team Strands.com/Mizuno athletes on Strands, read news and events on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Copyright August 2010
]]> http://blog.strands.com/2010/09/26/move-over-facebook-why-runners-prefer-strands/feed/ 0 http://blog.strands.com/2010/09/24/introducing-strands-3d-route-replay/ http://blog.strands.com/2010/09/24/introducing-strands-3d-route-replay/#comments Fri, 24 Sep 2010 14:25:34 +0000 reneau http://blog.strands.com/?p=2952 Introducing Strands 3D Route Replay!

Strands 3D Route Replay offers the athlete another tool to analyze training and share their experience in an unparalleled 3D format.

“In an effort to provide a better sense of a given workout or route, we have developed route visualization tools that work with sophisticated Google Earth technologies,” explains developer Justin Donaldson.

“Using these tools, Strands users are no longer restricted to just pace information, distances, and a crude map. They are sharing the actual experience of what it is like to run the route–including terrain, elevation changes, buildings and other landmarks.”

This new visualization technology works with all existing Strands compatible data formats, and will run on any OSX or Windows based browser using a small plugin.

The plugin is free, and you can install it from here: http://www.google.com/earth/explore/products/plugin.html

After you have installed the plugin, you can check out some sample routes from our users.

Coming to an event near you!

In addition to Strands users workouts, the route replay 3D system enables basic route information to be rendered as well. This gives race organizers the ability to create a course map offering race participants a ground level re-creation of the entire race, from start to finish–including critical course information such as first aid stations, water stops, terrain changes and landmarks on the course. For example, below is a 3D course representation of the famous Citgo sign marking 1 mile to go in the BAA Boston Marathon.

If you are interested in working with a Strands rep to develop a 3D Course Map for your event, please contact feedback@strands.com.

Strands for iPhone User Group on Strands

A new group has been formed on Strands.com specifically aimed at Strands for iPhone users. This group will serve as a page to centralize iPhone workouts and provide Strands Team with valuable feedback regarding the app.

You can access and join the Strands for iPhone Users here. Although it is not possible to join the group directly using Strands for iPhone, once you have joined the group at Strands.com you will be able to access the group using the app.

Date and Time Issues with iOS 4.1

If you recently updated your iPhone to Apple iOS 4.1 you may have noticed that dates and times for shared posts (including workouts) using Strands for iPhone have been incorrect. We are well aware of this issue, unfortunately we had no way of knowing this would happen after Apple upgraded their operating system for the iPhone last Friday.

The good news is that we have already fixed the problem and an updated version of Strands for iPhone (v 3.2.1) is now available at Appstore/iTunes, so make sure you get the update if you have not done so already!

For future reference, you can always manually change the date and time after you share a workout or post by clicking on the pencil icon in the bar directly below the notes section in a post.

Happy Training!

Strands Team

The enhanced route search function on Strands.com, allows you to search the database of routes uploaded by the Strands community. Using both a grid or map view, you can search for routes by location, route type, distance, proximity and popularity.

To get started, simply click on the Routes tab. Here you will find a grid view of routes in your area. If you would like to search for routes in a new location, type a city or zip code in the text field, or click “More Options” to search using the advanced search functions.

Another method to search for routes is with the map view. Select the map view tab and a map will display running hot-spots listed by the number of routes posted in the area. Double-click or use your mouse’s scroll wheel to zoom in on the map for a display of each routes starting point. If you mouse over the starting point, it will display a snapshot of the route on the map.

If you have any questions about searching for running routes, please contact feedback@strands.com, or visit our FAQ at www.strands.com/FAQ.

Happy training!

Strands Team

Calendar View

The calendar view in your strands profile is the best place to add, browse and edit all of your activity on Strands.com.

Add New Activity
Adding new activity to your calendar is easy. Click on the day and a pop-up window will appear where you can share a note or a workout post using the parser language. You can also share activity with details by clicking on one of the activity buttons.

Browse Calendar
Activity is color coded for easy browsing. You can also scroll over the activity for a post preview, or if you would like to filter the activity in your calendar, select the activity or date in the drop-down menu. Remember, the calendar is interactive. When you have located a post, simply click on it once to link to the original post.

Edit Calendar
To edit old activity, simply double-click the post. If you have added it to the wrong date, you can drag and drop to the correct date.

To make the calendar view your default profile view, visit your account preferences, select the “View” tab, and mark the Calendar checkbox.

If you have any questions about the Calendar View on Strands, please visit our FAQ or send an email to feedback@strands.com.

New for 3.2:

• Routes function – Find and select a nearby route using either Chrono or Geo
• New, reconfigured Chrono screen – makes recording and uploading workouts easy
• Invisibility button in Chrono – allows you to work out anonymously but still record and upload the workout in full detail
• New privacy button – allows you to easily choose who you want to share workouts with
• New sharing options for Strands and social networks – allows you to easily choose where you want to share workouts

Chrono – Finding and Joining a Route

Using Strands for iPhone App version 3.2 you can find and select nearby routes to use for your workout. There are two ways to do this– through Chrono and through Geo. For this week, we will focus on finding and joint a route using Chrono.

To find and join a route using Chrono, you can follow these easy steps:

1) Press the Join Event/Select Route button in the Chrono screen prior to the start of your workout

2) Press the Join Event/Select Route button. You will be prompted to either “Select Nearby Route” or “Join Event”. Pressing Select Nearby Route will bring up a listing of local routes. Select a route using checkboxes to the right of each route.

3) Once a route is selected and you return to the main Chrono screen from the route menu (using the X button), you will now notice that the name of the route appears on the Chrono screen. When you enable Chrono map view using the button on the bottom right of the Chrono screen, the route is loaded onto the map.

4.) Once you have completed the route and uploaded your workout to Strands.com using the save button, your username and time for the route will be added to the list of people who have used that route under the route posting on strands.com

Stay tuned for blog post two where we will be highlighting the route function using Geo.

Listed are some key features we’ve improved or added. We’ll provide an in-depth blog to introduce each new and improved sections later, but until then here is a sneak peak of what to expect!

Key New Features

• Custom workout title – name your workouts!
• Strands Parser – convert text to workout post!
• Social – share who you trained with!
• Race Prediction – compare your Race Prediction with others!
• Supplements – how do you recover?
• Trophy Case – earn your medals through your training miles and days!
• Goals – Faster time? Weight goal?
• Calendar – new design, easy view of all workouts
• New stats - new charts and graphs for easy viewing
• Questions – Training Questions? Shoe Review?
• Smart Routes – Search routes by distance and location. Compete and challenge against others!
• Tips – Injury prevention, best gear, supplement, routes, stores, sales…

Improvements

• Expanded layouts for better visualization
• Design overhaul throughout the site for better navigation
• Better filtering – filter your life stream
• More activity – just about any activity you can think of!
• Race Prediction – apply day off into the training calculation
• Improved view navigation – easily access your stats
• iPhone 3.1
• Improved Strands Tracker with bug fixes

Every few days, we’ll introduce each new feature in-depth so that you won’t miss a thing.

Stay tuned – it’s worth it!

We are recruiting 20 enthusiastic individuals to spread the word about Strands.com in their community. We are looking for individuals of all ages and abilities. If you have been an active user of Strands.com for at least 30 days and you think you would make a good candidate, send an email to Mike Reneau. Please include your name, home location, Strands.com user name and a paragraph why you would like to be a brand advocate.

Strands.com Brand Advocates will receive a Team Strands.com singlet, technical running T, water bottle, and the opportunity to earn more Team Strands.com gear. They will be featured on the website on both the landing page and as recommended users for new registrants to follow. Brand advocates will have the opportunity to beta test new Strands.com software and iPhone apps if they choose. They will be provided with cool promotional material for community events, group runs and Strands.com user “Meet-Ups”.

Guidelines
Your participation in the Strands Brand Ambassador program is subject to the Strands.com Terms of Use and the following additional guidelines.

You must comply with the FTC guidelines relating to compensated endorsements of goods or services, 16 CFR Section 255.5. When you post or blog encouraging people to use Strands.com, you must disclose that you have received something of value from Strands. You should do this by including a link to this page (page that explains the Strands Brand Ambassador Program). You are encouraged to post positive comments about Strands.com, but you should NOT post negative comments about other sites that may compete in the same space. Posting anything that is false or misleading, about Strands.com or a competitor, is not permitted and is grounds for immediate termination from the Strands Brand Ambassador Program. Anything you write, post or tell people relating to Strands.com is user-generated Content as defined in the Terms of Use so please ensure that the Content is not illegal or offensive to the recipient.

Your relationship with Strands will be that of an independent contractor. You are not authorized to make any contracts or commitments on behalf of Strands. You are solely responsible for all tax returns and payments required to be filed with or made to any federal, state or local tax authority with respect to your compensation for participation, and Strands will not withhold or make payments for social security, unemployment insurance, disability insurance or worker’s compensation insurance on your behalf.

Full Length Guidelines

With a sleek new design and simplified user interface, version 3.0 is our cleanest, most user-friendly version yet. New and improved features include real-time tracking with live text-to-audio messaging and photo sharing, new stats and charts, calendar view for easy workout history browsing, event listings, and much more!

For a complete listing of new features or to download now, visit Strands for iPhone

Real Time Tracking at Events

Race participants running with the Strands iPhone app can be tracked real-time with other competitors on the live event page map on Strands.com. This feature was first tested with 2-time World Marathon Champion Abel Anton during the 2009 New York City Marathon. Earlier this month, another Team Strands.com athlete Paco Ribera and a group of beta testers ran the Eugene Half Marathon with the the Strands iPhone Application. Paco Ribera placed second overall in the half marathon. A replay of the live tracking from the Eugene Half is available here.

Real-time tracking is available at any event with an official listing on Strands.com. Click on the route map at the top of the event page and scroll down. 8 Hours prior to the race start time, Live button will be available. After the event has ended, Replay button will be available.

Official event listings are denoted with a gold shield. If you are a race organizer and would like an official event listing at your event, upgrade your Strands.com to a promoter account here.

If you would like real-time tracking you are attending, request an official event page for the event to Feedback

Run with Strands iPhone App

The Strands for iPhone real-time athlete tracking begins with the user (Eddie) launching the iPhone app and selecting Chrono from the Main Menu.

Strands Chrono displays real-time pace, average pace, time and distance. From Chrono, Eddie can select a music playlist, share photos real-time, or join a local event. Today, Eddie is just going out for a run, so he presses start, locks the screen, and dims the brightness setting for increased battery life. For other useful tips and information on button-by-button instructions, click on version 3.0’s new help button.

Eddie then heads out his run.

While Eddie is out running, he appears on the Strands Geo view. Other users on the app Click on the username (eernestjones) and you can view a live map from your iPhone–displaying real-time route, pace, time and distance. You can access the live map from your iPhone AND from your desktop.

In addition to real-time run data, Eddie can share photos from his route.

When Eddie takes a photo during his run it posts immediately to his profile and to the live map at the precise location where he takes the photo.

Real Time Live Tracking is also accessible on your desktop from your Strands.com online account. Look for the red dot associated with your friends profile and click on the “Now Running” link and you access a live map.

Type a few words of encouragement from text field on the live map and the text will be converted to an audible message on Eddie’s iPhone while he runs. Strands.com users can send text-to-audio messages to friends and family members working out or racing directly from their desktop at home.

Questions, feedback or problems? email us!

The Strands.com Hi-Lite Meet will draw many of the nation’s best mid-distance and distance runners for the first high performance track meet hosted in Corvallis since the Oregon State University men’s and women’s track programs were cut in 1988. The Hi-Lite meet originated on May 30, 1974 under the direction of Oregon State Head Coach Berny Wagner. During its 14-year history, the meet was host to some titans in the history of USA Track & Field, including Steve Prefontaine and Mary Decker, among others. The meet will take place at Corvallis High School, where Prefontaine set the National High School 2-mile record 41 years ago.

“Corvallis has a tradition of great track and field and a vibrant running community,” said Strands.com Marketing Director, Matt Downin. “We thought it would be fun to host a track meet that brings together the community and some of the nations best track talent.”

Community events are slated to begin at 6:30 PM. Runners of all ages and abilities are invited to participate in an Open Mile, Boys Middle School Mile, Girls Middle School Mile, Pre-teen 400 Meter Dash, Kids 50 Meter Dash, and Corporate Relay (4 x 400). To register for the community events, visit the Official Strands.com Hi-Lite Meet web site and follow the registration link.

The elite meet will feature a men’s and women’s 800 meters, 1500, 5000, and a men’s 10,000 meters. Coaches and athletes interested in attending the meet need to contact Seamus Nally to register at nally@strands.com.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been one year since we launched our free personal finance management software! A lot has been accomplished during the past year and we wanted to take a moment to review some of the highlights we’re proud of:

• Expensr Merger
  
  As you may know, in 2008 we acquired Expensr, a popular web-based personal finance application. After the acquisition we worked on incorporating the best features of Expensr with our own personal finance management site. In July 2009 we successfully did this and merged Expensr users into moneyStrands.

• Manual Accounts
  
  With the merger of Expensr we added the capability of creating manual accounts. The new feature allows users to take advantage of our free personal finance software, even if their bank is not supported through our automatic aggregation. We do this by enabling you to upload your financial transactions via a CSV, QFX or OFX file.

• iPhone App
  
  Shortly after our official launch, we announced our free iPhone app. Since launch we’ve done a number of updates including the ability to add transactions to manual accounts, edit budget goals and manually update accounts from within the app. We also made the app available in 77 countries including the UK and Canada!

• Currency Support
  
  moneyStrands added support for 44 currencies, which allows people from all over the globe to take advantage of our free money management software.

• More Cash Flow Features
  
  Since our initial launch, we’ve added several new features to help you better control your cash flow. These new features include split transactions, custom rules, budget goal hints and pending transactions.

• Partnerships
  
  MoneyStrands announced its partnership with Savings.com making it the first online personal finance solution to offer new ways to save by providing personalized online coupons to its customers.

  We also announced a partnership with SouthPointe Digital Technologies to power My Money Manager, a personal finance management service that is now available to all MyPersonalVault users.

• 100K registered users
  
  In seven short months we surpassed 100,000 registered users! This makes us one of the fastest-growing, independent online personal finance management services on the market.

• Strands Personal Finance
  
  In addition to these incredible milestones for moneyStrands, our B2B solution, Strands Personal Finance has also experienced significant growth. Over the past year, two of the world’s largest banks have been busy implementing customized solutions for their online customers powered by Strands Personal Finance technology. In Spain, BBVA launched their Tu Cuentas program, while ING of Netherlands completed a private beta of their PFM offering.

We could not have accomplished all of this without our users. Your feedback, suggestions and requests have helped us grow into one of the leading PFM tools on the market. Thank you all and keep the suggestions coming!

We have much more in store for our second year, so be sure to subscribe to our blog, follow us on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook for the latest updates.

A recommendation systems goal is to help customers find what they want easily and help them discover products they like but were not looking for. Customer’s satisfaction due to recommendations is becoming more and more important. Understanding how the recommender works and why a product has been recommended builds trust and customer loyalty.

Two types of explanations based on two personalization degrees can be given to build credibility:

1. Explanations Based On How The Recommendation Engine Works:

Sometimes customers are not conscious of that fact that the site they are visiting has a recommender system. By eliminating the typical black box recommendation process and adding transparency (see screenshot below), customers can better understand how a recommender system works and also use the system to improve the relevancy of their recommendations.This benefits both the customer in better recommendations and the retailer in increased sales.

In addition, if the recommender encourages customer feedback to correct the recommendations trust will be increased. These options include messages like: “more like this” or “don’t show me this again”.

2. Explanations Based On Customer’s (Stated or Learned) Preferences:

This type of explanation does not tell the customer why the recommendation are given and instead shows how. Such as “You Viewed” or “You Bought”

These explanations are based on the customer’s profile which includes: their purchases, visits, favorite colors, brands, sizes and tag cloud. The explanations based on the customer’s profile are clearly more personalized than the first type shown above, and may be more effective when helping customer’s make a decision.

In some cases explained recommendations might not be convincing enough. Encouraging customer’s input in ways such as “I own this” or “not interested” helps customers fix the recommendation to obtain better results, or to adapt them to their current preferences.

Retailers Also Benefit:

Some studies have shown how the user can even be manipulated to give a valuation or specific rating for a product. Although giving not very accurate recommendations, a sufficiently persuasive explanation can influence users’ decisions. A good explanation could make the retailer obtain benefit greatly as it can raise awareness and make the user to purchase products more effectively than without a personalized explanation.

Another advantage to the owner of the site, whether retailer or social media site, is that explanations can be fun for the customer. If the customer sees that they can interact with the system, it will engage the customer and increase their satisfaction with the shopping experience. Likewise, this higher interaction with the recommender will produce a greater amount of feedback, which helps the recommender and owner know their customers better.

Have you found value through explanations? Did it lead to a purchase? What are your thoughts? Comment or tweet at us @strandsrecs.

Based on the video below, which was shot on opening day at a new H&M store, it looks like customers are bouncing back and storming the stores literally!

via:ScrapeUp

In a recent Bloomberg story, H&M’s CEO Karl-Johan Persson said the economy will be “a little better” this year and confirmed that Europe’s second-largest clothing retailer plans to open 240 stores in 2010. “2010 will be a challenging year for the economy and somewhat better than 2009,” The Swedish retailer, which sells ladies’ denim jackets for 14.95 euros ($20.32), continues to benefit from customers “trading down” during tough times, the executive said. Sales in January rose 11 percent.

Signs from other retailers such as Walmart, Kohl’s and Costco are positive, hinting at increases in sales in single digits in Q1. It looks like cost conscious customers are ready to open their pocket books and luxury retailers are treading water but not for much longer. We’ll see what the rest of 2010 brings. Until then watch out on your next H&M visit you might need to practice your rush and tackle techniques to get that shirt or pair of jeans you’re looking for!

What do you think will be the outlook for 2010 in retail? Will customers continue to search for stellar deals and continue to hold off on luxury goods? Or is 2010 the start of a rebound where customers will start opening up their pocket books again? We’d love t to hear your opinion on Twitter: @strandsrecs.

Successfully invite 15 of your friends, training partners, or teammates to join the Strands.com community between March 2nd and April 17th and we’ll send you a free technical running shirt.

An invitation is considered “successful” when the individual was invited through Strands profile and signs up using the link provided in the email invitation.

Get Started:

1.  Visit www.strands.com, click ‘Register Now” and set up your free profile.

2. From your Strands profile click on the official contest banner or click here.

3.  From the “Invite Overview” you can start Inviting people two different ways:

• “Invite Contacts by email” (up to 5 emails at a time)
• “Invite Address Book Contacts” (your entire address book from Gmail)

Check the status of your invitations in the “Invite Overview”. When youj’ve successfully invited 15 friends, we’ll send you an email request your t-shirt size and mailing address.

Terms and Conditions

We are excited to announce the Strands Recommender Miva Merchant Module. We have spoke with multiple Miva Merchants over the past month and have taken your feedback to create an easy to install module for all merchants.

This is an exciting time, as we are bringing recommendation technology that has been used by multichannel merchants directly to you at an affordable price of $49.99 per month for 50,000 recommendations.

Benefits

• Helps Convert Organic Search Traffic
• Increases Average Order Value & Sales
• Boosts Repeat Visitors and Customer Loyalty
• Decreases Time Spent Manually Merchandising Cross/Up-Sells

Start Your 30 Day Free Trial Now: Download The Strands Recommender Module via our website here.

What You Get With The Module

Personalized Product Recommendations:

In your Home, Product, Shopping Cart and Order Confirmation Pages.

Example of Product Page Personalized Recommendations

Easy To Use Dashboard:

Quick & Easy Install Wizard:

Our automatic wizard will ensure you are up and running in under an hour.

Boost Your Sales By Up To 15%.

Most merchants see a sales lift in the first 2-3 weeks. On average sales increases range from 5-15%. For a merchant making $80,000 a month that means an increase in sales of $2 – 10K per month for a cost effective price of $49.99 per month for 50,000 recommendations. We also have larger plans for bigger merchants.

Start Your 30 Day Free Trial Now: Download The Strands Recommender Module via our website here.

We are excited to announce the Strands Recommender Miva Merchant Module. Our module allows merchants of any size to add personalized product recommendations to their home page, detail page, shopping cart and order confirmation. Stop by our booth to learn more or visit our site to get the module.

WIN A NETBOOK AT THE CONFERENCE:

Visit our booth at the Miva Merchant Conference, drop off your business card and you might win this Gateway LT2104u Netbook at the end of the conference. The Netbook giveaway is only good for Miva Merchants.

In case you can’t find our booth here’s what it looks like

Follow Us On Twitter during the conference for industry tips, updates and news.

You’re probably wondering how can I make my site more “social”, help keep visitors longer and buy more?

Wet Seal Helps You Build & Share Outfits With Others:

Facebook Now Helps You Find Friends Old And New:

Three Ways You Can Increase Engagement & Community:

1.) Update Content Frequently: In order to keep your customers engaged it’s important to keep products and content fresh. Meaning, new content should be released daily or multiple times per day. In our consumer culture with Twitter and new forms of media making real-time content easier, releasing new content helps keep your customers interested and also helps spur new conversations.

2.) Encourage User Generated Content (UGC):
Twitter, YouTube and other networks provide platforms for customers to create their own relevant content around your products, which is beneficial in two ways. It helps generate new content for your site with no cost to you and also it is a great way for your customers to interact with your brand and products boosting their brand loyalty. The only suggestion when using UGC is that you filter the content before using it. Every customer has a different world view, so filtering the content before it is published will save you some headaches.

User Generated Content on Folica.com

3.) Utilize Social Engagement Tools:
The content on your site is only as good as the quality of the community that interacts with it. A few tools that can help encourage interaction on your site include Rating & Reviews and Recommendations. Ratings & Reviews providers such as RateVoice, PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice all have affordable and creative solutions that allow customers to provide feedback about your products or services which spur conversations and keep customers on your site.

RateVoice Ratings & Conversations on Heels.com

Personalized product and content recommendations are a second engagement tool that helps bring your products/content and customers together into a community. This type of community recommendations utilize user-to-user collaborative filtering which is based on this idea of creating recommendations based on other users with similar profiles to yours. These profile’s consist of products and content that your customers have viewed, purchased and indicated they like explicitly “by telling you” or implicitly “by being learned by a recommender, i.e. you wear small and like levi’s”. The beauty of recommendation engines is that they anonymously learn from each customer, build a profile and deliver recommendations personalized to each customer automatically.

Recommendations can help your customers:

1. Find other people with similar tastes

2. Find similar things to those I like the most

3. Discover new things through other people.

All three of the above customer engagement hints should give your site a leg up on the competition. What other things have you found that help connect your customers? Tweet at us @strandsrecs.

As most of you may or may not know: When delivering recommendations to customers different methods can be used.

On one hand we have personal recommendations, that is, those recommendations based on the user’s profile. Which are built from the user’s interaction history on the site and explicitly mentioned personal preferences. On the other hand we have collaborative filtering (CF) methods, which make recommendations based on the behavior of other users whose preferences are similar to those of the target user. However, these methods do not consider how the customers’ purchase behavior may vary over time.

Recommending for the Mainstream:

The mainstream audience of trendsetters and their followers mimic similar behaviors

Let’s use a customer who follows the fashion trends or certain patterns driven by the trendsetters. The behavior shown over successive visits to a site will be very similar to other people. The recommendations based on past behavior of these customers can work, but the recommender is not going to be able to react in time to a trend change if we rely only on this data. Only when one begins to search for items according to the latest fashion trends, will they start receiving new recommendations tailored to their preferences. The collaborative filtering, in a way, could anticipate that moment, because there’s always someone who has already begun to follow the new trend, and has already made purchases or have visited product pages that the target user will want soon. The store owner has an important role here too. A good recommendation engine is aware of emerging trends amongst products, and automatically adjusts business rules so that each person receives recommendations based on the new lines of products without having to wait for the users profile to “react” to the trends.

Outliers Can Put A Wrench In The Recommendation Equation:

What would you recommend for her?

However, recommender systems can sometimes fail for people whose tastes fall out of the mainstream, or have a very narrow or too wide range of tastes. Changing tastes and preferences are usually not sudden but morph over time. The recommendations for these users based on their profile and their interactions are inherently harder to create. In these cases current data should be given greater weight than historical data, focusing on the changing preferences of these users who follow their own way.

Collaborative filtering is more complicated. Because there is little correlation between these outsiders and the rest of the community and there is fewer users of that type lacking matches between them. This situation makes it difficult for the recommender to predict which will be the customers next preference. But these kinds of customers are not a hopeless case. The CF could work if the recommendation engine would only consider a few customers that may be similar to our target, and they are usually his/her friends. If the recommendation engine can automatically select smaller groups of people to learn from and to trust, they will receive more accurate recommendations that are tailored to their tastes and their possible evolution. This is what we call Not Anonymous Collaborative Filtering (NACF).

What’s Best? Both Methods or User Choice?

We usually receive different types of recommendations at the same site, depending on the location, based on different data sets or based on a mix of them. Some of them are going to work better for you, than others. The ideal case for both situations previously shown is that the user could choose what sort of recommendation they want, based on what other users bought, only showing related items, similar or complementary, not showing more one type of recommendation or only what my friends recommend me. This way, the customer can choose what to use and thus enhances both the learning of the recommender according to your changing preferences, and the results obtained by the user and the store.

Is this then a failure of the recommender? Should they satisfy everyone equally and there is a need to refine the algorithms for finding the right recommendations for everyone? or do we have to admit that it doesn’t always work? Would it improve if the recommendations based on smaller groups of users, and consistent with the customer? Or is the point that the customer’s should choose what kind of recommendation they wish to receive? Post a comment below or tweet at us on Twitter @strandsrecs.

Below you’ll find a selection of different badges, which you can easily place on your blogs, websites, or other online profiles to show that you, your races/events, or your groups are on Strands.

Just use the source code to easily integrate them. The only thing you need to do – depending on the badge – is to:

• replace YOUR_USERNAME with your own username on Strands, then the badges will directly link to your Strands.com profile, or
• replace YOUR_RACE with your race name on Strands, then the badges will directly link to your Strands.com race, or
• replace YOUR_EVENT with your event name on Strands, then the badges will directly link to your Strands.com event, or
• replace YOUR_GROUP with your group name on Strands, then the badges will directly link to your Strands.com group.

Remember, only one of the above steps needs to be taken per badge!

In case of any questions or problems, please feel free to email us at feedback@strands.com, send a Strands message to @Strands, or just send a tweet to @Strands.

Select a badge	And just copy and paste the code Don’t forget to change YOUR_USERNAME, or YOUR_RACE, or YOUR_EVENT, or YOUR_GROUP depending on where it should link to on Strands.com!
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/YOUR_USERNAME" target="_blank" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_01.png" alt="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/YOUR_USERNAME" target="_blank" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_02.png" alt="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/YOUR_USERNAME" target="_blank" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_03.png" alt="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/YOUR_USERNAME" target="_blank" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_04.png" alt="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" title="I am on Strands.com – Follow my training" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/events/YOUR_RACE" target="_blank" title="Find this race on Strands.com"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_05.png" alt="Find this race on Strands.com" title="Find this race on Strands.com" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/events/YOUR_EVENT" target="_blank" title="Find this event on Strands.com"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_06.png" alt="Find this event on Strands.com" title="Find this event on Strands.com" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="http://www.strands.com/groups/YOUR_GROUP" target="_blank" title="Find this group on Strands.com"><img src="http://www.strands.com/images/badges/us_strands_badge_07.png" alt="Find this group on Strands.com" title="Find this group on Strands.com" border="0" /></a>

As many of you know now Apple just launched the long awaited iPad tablet device about an hour ago. Watching the blog updates from the keynote event it looks like Apple’s new device has extreme potential for retailers.

Here’s the stats:
9.7 inch display
Touch screen
1.5 pounds, .5 inches thick
1 ghz apple A4 chip, 16 to 64 GB flash storage
WiFi 802.11n
Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR
Speaker, Microphone, 30-pin connector
Accelerometer & Compass
10 Hours of active battery life, 1 month of battery life on stand by
Earth-friendly!

Here’s possible potential:

In-Store:

Store representatives could enter a few details about you into the iPad or swipe your frequent loyalty card and help you find products you will like. A recommendation engine would be a perfect addition to this process searching profiles both online and in store to recommend relevant products. This application would also help the store rep know the customers, favorite, sizes, brands, etc making the shopping experience for the customer seamless.

Shopping & Sharing On The Go:

Mobile commerce is slowly picking up, think of the possibilities that a larger screen provides. Not only can customers shop from retailers websites on their iPad’s while on the couch and lounging around. Sharing features such as Facebook and others will add a social shopping component that will allow shoppers alike to take their favorite new clothing item, device, etc and show their friends.

Shopping Apps:

With 10 inches of surface area the iPad provides a great deal more space to create innovative apps for shopping. iPhone apps are the latest craze among retailers, many apps that have been released are basic apps that display the retailers product or catalog and allow a purchase. The new SDK and larger screen provide amazing potential for very interactive shopping apps.

Consumer adoption of the iPad will be a large determinant of the potential of new shopping, but if iPhone and iPod are any signs of Apple’s ability to jump from early adopters to the mainstream I think the iPad will be a big hit. What are your thoughts? Do you think the iPad will make an impact on the way we shop today? Comment below or tweet at Strands Recommender on twitter @strandsrecs

In most instances, sites do not incentivize users enough or provide a true purpose to how the time and information provided by the customer will help. The result is typical users just move on.

Why is this you may ask? generally it seems that the recommendations and their mechanisms are a secret, but an open secret. The user is not conscious of the fact that the site they are visiting has a recommendation system and does not bother to interact with it. If the website adds feedback mechanisms, where they are asked to make a review, or votes by stars, hands, and an endless list, the user loses interest, without realizing that they are loosing a good opportunity to get something back.

One site that breaks the mold is Amazon. The question is why do people bother to vote in Amazon and no where else? Because they know how it works and know the results they will receive. They know that the recommendations help them make educated purchases.

The figure below shows sites where users felt recommendations were a beneficial element, and almost required part of the user experience. It is interesting that customers know that recommendations are useful in e-commerce, but they don´t know about the benefits of recommendations in web searches, entertainment and media, or even social networks.

By:UX Expert Afshan Kirmani
Published: March 23, 2009

Every day we want more things fitted to ourselves, customized to suit our needs, but we are generally lazy as humans and don´t feel like doing anything to get it. Why don’t sites follow the Amazon model and openly say or infer that they need to know your tastes?

Implicit behavior on a site is very useful, and surprisingly it can be tracked and understood. Some recommendation systems such as Strands Recommender are able to learn a customer’s brand preferences, colors, sizes and context automatically as they interact with the site. The goal is making a customer’s life much easier and the experience seamless.  Explicit feedback such as ratings, reviews, etc are very powerful and  can direct you toward what you want faster. But users need to know how to use explicit feedback to obtain better result from it. A combination of implicit or learned feedback, when paired with implicit feedback can significantly improve the speed of their experience and ease of finding what they want.

Customer’s general stubbornness is hard to beat because their time is valuable, but with good motivation and explanations, even the most stubborn will provide feedback.

What do you think do websites do a good enough job of explaining why their feedback mechanisms are important? Or are we as consumer’s just averse to providing feedback without some incentive?  Or both? Send us your comments below and tweet at us @strandsrecs.

You hear the buzzwords every day in the office, on the street and in the latest hip hop and country songs: Blog This, Social Media That, Retweet It and Follow Me. What does it all mean and is Twitter applicable to your growing E-Commerce business?

The short answer is YES.

Why Twitter?

1.) Provides transparency inside your company:
When people buy from you online or in your store, they believe in the story you are trying to telling them, that is why they are buying from you in the first place. Most likely they will never see who is running your company, the employee’s that make the magic happen, how your product was made and so on. Customers want to know that there are real human beings behind the curtain, not robots. Twitter is a perfect mechanism to open a dialog with your customer base and show them your true personality.

2.) A feedback mechanism for your customers:
A customer’s worst nightmare is to dial the dreaded 1-800 number and speak with someone who has no connection to the product, company or their native language.Twitter provides a perfect mechanism for your customers to submit feedback and for you to solicit feedback on products, customer service

3.) An open forum for customer conversations:
Whether your business is big or small it’s hard to stay on top of customer chatter about your products. Not only is Twitter great to solicit feedback from your customer’s, it’s also a great tool to listen to what your customers are saying about your product. Listen in on the conversation and you might find a new product, feature or customer you may have missed.

4.) A new targeted marketing channel:
Twitter is a perfect place to build a new community of followers that you can direct special offers to. When you build your following, reward them with special offers only for Twitterers. The beauty of Twitter is that your followers can forward specials to their friends growing your customer base.

5.) Improves your Google searches:
Twitter is now crawl able by Google. If someone talks about your company or products on Twitter, when your customer’s do a Google search, tweets will now come up in the search results.

How to get followers:

1.) Email newsletter: Easily add a “Follow Us On Twitter” link in your emails. Another good way to get a higher click through rate is to add “For Special Offers”, or if you want to take it further give away a gift card to the 500th follower, etc.

2.) Your website: Adding a banner to your home page, or even a form for a customer’s Twitter name during sign up/registration is a great way to acquire information.

3.)Other social media: Add a Twitter link on your Facebook, Blog or Youtube page.

Tweeting Tips:

1.) The more the merrier: If you do decide to tweet, which I highly recommend you do, make sure you tweet often. Twitter is just like a blog, if you only tweet once a month, customers will loose interest. Tweeting something valuable daily is suggested.

2.) Add value: Make your tweets valuable. While it’s cool to know Shaq is taking a shower, your customers want to hear things that are meaningful and either pull them closer to your brand or start a dialog with them.

3.) Pics & videos: Link to pictures and videos. Twitpic and twitvid are great tools that allow you to link to pictures and videos from your Twitter account. Both video and images provide an even higher level of transparency with your customers.

4.) Multiple accounts: As your company grows, you may want to create multiple Twitter accounts, e.g. one for your customer service, another for possibly the CEO, CMO, etc. If each person has an interesting story to tell and generally they are inaccessible to the general public, a Twitter profile will help increase the transparency into your company. Tony Hsieh’s the CEO of Zappos, most people will never meet him in real life, but he always responds to his tweets.

A Few Noteworthy Twitter Pages:

Metroparkusa: www.twitter.com/metroparkusa
Heels: www.twitter.com/highheels
CycleGear: www.twitter.com/CycleGearsales

A Few Noteworthy Twitterers:

Express: http://twitter.com/ExpressLisaG
BestBuy: http://twitter.com/BestBuyCMO
Zappos: http://twitter.com/Zappos

Embrace social media and let it work for you. Feel free to comment below and add in your feedback on how successful Twitter has been for your E-Commerce site. Tweet at us @strandsrecs on Twitter too. Stay tuned for more tips to help your small business grow in 2010.

Not only is Natal a very cool concept, it also helps to solve a few problems many online shoppers experience as well as encourages community based shopping.

Sizing & Fit Problems Solved

There are a few issues with shopping online if you haven’t bought from a store before. Fit and look. Natal solves both of these problems by mapping your body and matching it with the appropriate size online. In addition to ensuring a perfect fit, Natal helps you pick the perfect look by allowing you to try on an outfit and see how it looks in a 360 view on your own body.

Recommended By A Friend

Another cool concept in the video is the ability for your friends to suggest clothes for certain occasions as well as build outfits. This provides the opportunity for retailers to upload their catalogs and allow shoppers to pick and chose outfits and share them. Also with Xbox360′s recent addition of Facebook to the console’s offering I can see some pretty interesting opportunities here for community based recommendations.

With a user base of over 39M users, the Xbox360 console is morphing into a family entertainment device that holds some great promise for some amazing shopping experiences. What do you think about Natal? Would you use it to shop? What would you like to see in a shopping experience on a console? Comment below or tweet at us @strandsrecs.

Here’s a sneak peek at what Natal will look like when its released later this year:

The US News 2009 Retail Chain Winners & Losers are in, drum roll please… topping the list of winners was Aeropostale with a sales increase of 10% and coming in dead last,  Abercrombie & Fitch with a sales decrease of 19% for the year. Others in the winners category were Ross Stores, Costco and surprisingly Saks and Nordstrom’s. Losers sharing the bench with A&F included American Apparel, Hot Topic and Wet Seal.

Many of the retailers on the list who are losers in 2009 were cleaning house a few years ago, the question arises: Are some retailers not focusing enough on the customer experience?

Aeropostale: has a much better grasp of their customer’s experience on their site. It’s very easy to navigate, the marketing messaging to the user is clear and they have a generic merchandising approach that generally works for each item viewed. One lacking functionality on the site is ratings & reviews and also any form of personalization.

A&F: I have to admit that I worked at A&F for a year and value their store experience and atmosphere they create, but their online experience leaves much to be desired. The site is cluttered with branded marketing messages, their detail page, search and checkout pages are very basic, lacking reviews, previously viewed, any form of merchandising and also personalization.

While this is only a basic sample of the retailers who were involved in the report, it becomes evident that a lack of focus on the customer experience on your website can lead to diminishing sales and unhappy customers. Stay tuned for our weekly blog postings on ways to get your website in top shape for 2010, starting next week!

What are your thoughts? Are retailers losing touch with the customer experience? Who are some other retailers who need to step up their game? Post your comments here or tweet at us @strandsrecs.

After looking at numerous recommendation providers, Metropark chose Strands due to our quick implementation, easy to use merchandising interface, detailed reporting and also our reasonable pricing.

Currently Metropark is utilizing Strands Recommender on it’s product detail under “May We Suggest” and will be adding email recommendations and shopping cart up-sells soon:

Metropark is one of the many retailers who have taken advantage of our Standard Pricing plans, which start at $249/month and provide a similar feature set to our premium customers at an affordable price. It’s a great way to improve your merchandising, sales and learn more about your customers buying behaviors. As your revenue grows, you can always upgrade to our premium service.

To continue their growth, Kedin was looking for new forms of differentiation and personalization was key to their strategy. Kedin was impressed with Strands ability to drive increased engagement and customer loyalty on similar sites such as 11870.com and Blip.tv. With these goals in mind, Kedin was able to implement Strands in two functional areas of their site:

1.) Personalized Events Page: Once a user creates a profile, Strand’s automatically begins learning about their tastes and preferences and makes relevant suggestions.

2.) Related Events: Strands learns from all visitor’s behavior on the site and suggests related events in their area.

If you’re visiting Spain or already live there and are looking to bring out your inner socialite visit Kedin.es. Also visit our website for more information on how recommendations can dial up your social media site.

The results aren’t quite in yet, but ShopperTrack will release their Black Friday report Saturday morning and we’ll share our ideas soon after. For the economy’s sake, we hope the weekend numbers are high.

Here are a few links to our Strands Recommender clients and the great holiday promotions they are running:

• Free Gift Wrapping at TravelSmith
• 5 days of deals at SkyMall
• Free 3 day shipping on all orders over $200 at Footwear etc
• Free shipping on orders over $49 at Luggage Point

Winner Outstanding Website, WebAward 2009

Brian Walker, @BKWalker, of Forrester Research, recently shared the B2B eConference Trends and Solutions Market Overview. The presentation highlights the growth drivers and range of models in B2B ecommerce plus the evolving B2B site. Check out the full details at the above link. Since many of our clients are preparing for 2010, we thought we’d share Brian’s 5 Key takeaways (with our Strands spin on it).

1. Design your site for the customer.

Consider the end user who needs your product, information or service. Identify their values and search path on your site. Think of Amazon or Apple and follow their website schema when designing your own.

2. Don’t design your site for the sales manager.

Allow your site to sell the end product that relates to the end user. The sales manager will understand the value in your product when seeing the value it serves to their customers. Think of it like this: they are focused on sales, so show them (indirectly) that you are too.

3. Employ familiar UI principles from online retail.

Keep your website structure, simplicity and visibility in mind, but also position your site as a one-stop-shop. Allow someone to easily navigate and identify all the possible things they can purchase. Artistic navigation schemes will decrease time spent on your site and increase the bounce rate.

4. Focus on marketing and merchandising tactics.

There is no better way to cross-sell and up-sell than with Strands Recommender. By showing what other items people have purchased and what items they might be interested in, you will increase your average cart total by 20%. Shamelessly, we’d like you to find more information about the Strands Recommender by clicking here or below, or to the right…

Strands Recommender

5. Don’t let internal business processes, systems, and sacred cows drive the online experience.

What processes can you streamline to make it easier for a customer? It doesn’t matter how it’s always been done, what matters is how it’s currently being done in your customers opinion. Innovation and modernization is key.

For further discussion of key trends or assistance with recommendations, please feel free to contact the Strands Recommender Team.

We are proud to announce that Team Strands is now accepting applications for athlete sponsorship for the 2010 calendar year.  Interested athletes should submit a running resume along with a one-page sponsorship proposal.

The resume should include, but is not limited to:

• Running Background
• Personal Bests
• Race Highlights
• Tentative 2010 Race Schedule

The proposal should highlight why you believe you would be a good brand advocate for Strands.com.  It would be helpful to include information about your level of involvement in the running community, and your “reach” online with social networking sites and blogs.  Preference will be given to athletes willing to relocate to Corvallis, Oregon, and your sponsorship proposal should indicate whether you would be willing to relocate as part of your sponsorship.

You must be willing to share your training and interact with the Strands.com community.  So, familiarity with Strands.com is a must.  If you would like to apply for sponsorship and have not yet set up a profile, please do so at Strands.com before applying.

When you have completed your application, please send an email with both documents attached to teamstrands@strands.com by December 15, 2009. We will begin notifying athletes starting January 1, 2010.

The number of online services providing users with real-time recommendations has increased exponentially over the last few years. Recommender Systems that were originally only accessible to a limited number of high-tech companies are now widely available through a growing number of both technical choices and vendors. The acceptance, however, of automatically delivered recommendations by users depends on numerous factors that go far beyond the algorithms that constitute the major focus of researchers.

Over the past 10 years, Strands has been creating and operating recommender systems in a multitude of domains, ranging from digital music to fitness plans and personal finance management, and in a multitude of business settings ranging from lightweight integrations to highly-coupled integrations within secure bank environments.

As summarized by Neal Lathia of MobBlog, below are the top 10 lessons we’ve learned developing, deploying, and operating real-world recommender systems:

• Lesson 1. Make sure a recommender is really needed! Do you have lots of recommendable items? Many diverse customers?… also think Return-on-Invesment… a more sophisticated recommender may not deliver a better ROI.
• Lesson 2. Make sure the recommendations make strategic sense. Is the best recommendation for the customer also the best for the business? What is the difference between a good and useful recommendation? Good recommendations vs useful recs; obvious recommendations may not be useful; risky recs may deliver better long-term value.
• Lesson 3. Choose the right partner! Select the right rec vendor vs hire some #recsys09 students. If you are a big company the best thing you can do is organize a contest.
• Lesson 4. Forget about cold-start problems (!) …. just be creative. The internet has all the data that you need (somewhere…).
• Lesson 5. Get the right balance between data and algorithms. 70% of the success of a recommendation system is in the data, the other 30% in the algorithm.
• Lesson 6. Finding correlated items is easy but deciding what, how, and when to present them to the user is hard… or don’t just recommend for the sake of it. Remember, user attention is a scarce and valuable resource. Use it wisely! … dont make a recommendations to a customer who is just about to pay for items at the checkout! User interface should get at least 50% of your attention.
• Lesson 7 Don’t waste time computing nearest neighbours (use social connections)… just mine the social graph. Might miss useful connections?
• Lesson 8 Don’t wait to scale!
• Lesson 9: Choose the right feedback mechanism. Stars vs thumbs …. the YouTube problem. More research on implicit and other feedback mechanisms is needed. The perfect rating system is no rating system! … focus on the interface.
• Lesson 10 Measure Everything! … business control and analytics is a big opportunity here.

Keynote Takeaway

Think about application context; Focus on interface as much as algs; be creative with startup data. … the UI needs to get the lion’s share of the effort (50%) compared to algorithms (5%), knowledge (20%), analytics (25%).

Strands.com will host the inaugural edition of the Strands 5k in Corvallis on October 24th. The race will feature a community 5k, a children’s race, post-race party and a prize purse totaling $13,000. Supporting sponsors of the race include Emery & Sons Construction, Eufora, and Marrakesh Salon.

All race proceeds benefit Childhelp, an organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect. Childhelp’s mission is to meet the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of abused, neglected and at-risk children through advocacy, prevention, treatment, and community outreach. Find more ways to get involved or information on how to donate directly through the Childhelp.org website.

Prize money is only available to U.S. Citizens and will be distributed as follows for the men’s and women’s open field:

• 1st place–$3,000
• 2nd place–$1,500
• 3rd place–$750
• 4th place–$600
• 5th place–$400
• 6th place–$250

The 5k race will begin at 9:00 a.m. PST on October 24. The children’s race will begin at 10:00 a.m., followed by an awards ceremony and post-race party outside Strands headquarters at Central Park in Corvallis.

Online registration is $15.00 and race day registration is $20.00. For more information and a race registration link, visit the race website at Strands5k.com, call the race hotline at (541) 740-5306, or email us at strands5k@strands.com.

Strands Recommender welcomes it’s newest client, CostumesInc.com, in time to offer recommendations for Halloween.

CostumesInc.comquickly deployed recommendations powered by Strands Recommender throughout their site just in time to offer recommendations during their busiest time. The recommendations are offered on the product and shopping cart pages.

Additionally, Costumes Inc. uses Strands recommendations to power each of its tabs for accessories, wigs and hats, makeup and related items shown on individual product pages. Click here to get your Halloween Costume!

We are pleased to invite you to participate in this first workshop on Recommender-based Industrial Applications, to be held on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 in New York City, USA, in conjunction with The 3rd ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (New York City, October 22-25, 2009).

Complete workshop schedule and details can be found here.

Recommender systems help users deal with large amounts of information by assisting them in their decision-making processes.  Recommender systems have been applied very successfully in a variety of domains, and one of their most exciting characteristics is that they combine interest from industry while posing very interesting research challenges, having significant impact on end user experience, and on business.

Motivation and Topics

Recommender-based industrial applications have hit the mainstream: they are being used today by millions of users in a variety of domains (e.g., film, music, book purchases, travel, advertising, etc.), having significant impact on end users and contributing to the generation of millions of dollars of revenue in some industries.

In addition, the explosion of social network websites, on-line user-generated content platforms, and tremendous growth in computational power of mobile devices are generating incredibly large amounts of user data, and an increasing desire of users to find what best matches their personal interests.  This is creating new technical challenges as well as new business opportunities.  However, in spite of significant progress in the research community, there are still important gaps in making accurate and timely recommendations in industrial applications.

This workshop aims at bringing the gap between academic researchers and industry practitioners on the area of Recommender Systems.  We are interested both in research work that faces real industry problems, and in industry cases that create research challenges.

We aim to discuss problems the industry is facing in real-world applications when applying recommendation and personalization techniques.  The goal is to bring together top-level researchers from academia and recommendation practitioners.  Ideally the workshop should serve to establish new collaborations and projects involving academic researchers and companies.

Topics of interest include industrial applications and research challenges related but not limited to:

• case studies of recommender system implementations and deployments
• personalization vs. content-based vs. collaborative-based applications
• evaluation and user studies of recommender systems
• recommendations in the long tail
• user preferences and recommender systems
• social and cultural impact of recommender systems
• security and privacy in recommender systems
• sparsity and lack of data in recommender systems
• context-aware and ubiquitousness in recommender systems
• user interfaces and usability issues in recommender systems
• scalability in large recommender systems
• new business models related to recommendation and personalization
• search vs. recommendation

Workshop Chairs

• Dr. Alejandro Jaimes, Telefonica Research
• Dr. Marc Torrens, Strands

Please address questions to recsys [at] strands.com.

The two-time Olympian (2000, 2004) has participated in 7 World Cross Country Championships, 3 World Outdoor Track and Field Championships, as well as the World University Games and Goodwill Games.  In four of her seven World Cross appearances, she helped lead Team USA onto the podium, with team bronze medal finishes in 1998 (4km), 2000 (8km), and 2003 (8km), and team silver in Portugal in 2002 (8km).

Dryer, who has a personal best of 1:11:42 from her 2007 USA Half Marathon Championships title, was selected based on her 7th place finish at the USA 20 km Championships earlier this month.

Dryer will team up wth Amy Yoder-Begley (Portland, Oreg.), Desiree Davila (Rochester Hills, Mich.), Serena Burla (Baldwin, Mo.), and Amy Hastings of Mammoth Lakes, California.

“I am honored to be representing the US in the World Half Marathon Championships in Birmingham”, Dryer said. “My goal is to help bring home a top team finish.”

The invitation came just days after Elva elected to forgo racing in the US Marathon Championships in what she says will be an effort to “focus once again on reconnecting with the shorter distances”.

The race will begin at 9:00 a.m. (Birmingham) on October 11, with a web cast from Universal Sports. For more information, visit the official IAAF race website.

Team Strands athlete Jason Hartmann ran away from the field in the last 5 km at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon to claim the overall title in a personal best of 2 hours, 12 minutes, 9 seconds.

Hartmann paced himself a few seconds ahead of the lead pack for much of the race, before making a decisive move to the front on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, dropping the 2004 Twin Cities Marathon Champion Augsutus Mbusya of Kenya (2:13:03), John Njorge (2:13:26), and Joseph Mutinda (2:13:47).  It was the first marathon for Hartmann since his 2:15:27 tenth place finish in the Olympic Marathon Trials.

The win caps a strong road-racing season for Hartmann, which included a runner-up finish in the USA 25 km Championships, ninth place in the USA 10 km Championships, and a sixth place finish in the USA 20 km Championships last month.

For complete results, visit the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon results page.

Team Strands Update: USA 10-mile Championships

Team Strands athletes Mike Sayenko (48:28), Mike Reneau (48:53), and Josh Glaab (49:20) raced in the US 10-mile Championships, placing 11th, 15th and 18th, respectively.

Complete results for the 10-mile Championships are available here.

Online Merchants Implement Strands Recommendations
to Enhance Customer Experience and Increase Sales

SHOP.ORG SUMMIT – LAS VEGAS, Nev., September 23, 2009 – Strands Recommender a leading provider of personalization and behavioral recommendations announced today that TravelSmith, a Cornerstone Brands company, Body Glove and MotorcycleSuperstore.com (#223 on Internet Retailer’s Top 500) have selected Strands to employ a new level customer experience throughout their websites.  The sites implementation of Strands Recommender will provide automated cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for visitors of the site based on real-time behavioral data, historical data, and merchandising.

“We chose Strands as a partner because we were confident in their ability to help us cross-merchandise our products appropriately, while driving our online conversion rates. The ultimate result was an enhanced user experience and lift in sales”, said Jeff Miller, Director of Interactive Marketing and E-commerce, Body Glove.

Strands Recommender increases conversion rates and average order values by continuously learning about the behavior across all sections of a website.  This flexibility allows for the most relevant and timely recommendations for each site visitor.  “We are happy to become the partner of choice for a growing number of Internet Retailer Top 500 merchants and look forward to rolling out large-scale infrastructure enhancements and innovative features in the coming weeks,” said Jesus A. Pindado, VP and General Manager, Strands Recommender.

About Strands

Strands is the leading provider of social recommendation technologies that deliver personalized shopping experiences and targeted product recommendations for online shoppers. The Strands Social Recommender™ learns consumer tastes and preferences as they evolve over time and is typically used with email marketing solutions, search engines, shopping carts, and e-commerce platforms.  Strands is headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon and has offices in San Francisco and Madrid, Spain.

To learn more about Strands products and services, visit us at http://recommender.strands.com or call 415.398.4333.

Well, don’t fret because you have other options.

If you are looking for a free personal finance tool as your Mint alternative, moneyStrands has a number of great features to offer including:

Adding Accounts

• Support for more than 8,000 financial institutions, so you can keep refreshing your data automatically with the ability to link your checking, savings, loan and credit card accounts.
• The choice to create manual accounts you can maintain by importing your own data files (CSV, QFX, OFX). This allows you to aggregate all your accounts even if your financial institutions is not on the list.
• The ability to manually key in transactions once you add a manual account.

Insightful Analysis & Comparison

• Widgets that let you know where your money goes, your spending trends and whether or not you are living within your means month-to-month.
• Ability to create custom reports and export data to a CSV file.

Budgeting & Alerts

• Ability to set monthly and annual budgets.
• Ability to configure customizable alerts that let you know of balances running low, large purchases or deposits, budget goals approaching your limit and the like.

Highly Customizable Interface

• A highly customizable widget-based user interface where you can design your own page layout with the personal finance widgets most important to you.
• News feeds from the most popular personal finance portals and blogs.

Security & Privacy

• 256-bit encryption and industry standard security infrastructure. Read more.

Multi-lingual, Multi-Currency

• English and Spanish version of the website.
• Support for 44 currencies.

Mobile Access

• A free iPhone app with unmatched visual drill down spending analysis. Read more.
• A mobile web version for quick access to your balances and more, available at m.money.strands.com

Signing up is easy

1. You can sign up for moneyStrands with any valid email address here.
2. Add your financial accounts with daily automatic feeds and you’re in business.

Bring in your Mint archive, too

Adding your financial accounts gets you going quickly, but if you would also like to transfer your transaction history data from Mint follow these steps:

1. Export your data from Mint.com by logging into your account and visiting the “Transactions” tab. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you will see the “Export all transactions” link in the bottom right hand corner. Click on this link and hit “Save”.
2. Login to your moneyStrands account or click here to create one.
3. Visit the “Accounts” tab and click on the “Add account” button. Look to the bottom of the pop up box and click on the link that says, “Try our manual file uploader.”
4. After you click on this link an account box will appear. Here is where you can name your account, identify the type of account, the initial balance and the currency.
5. Once you click OK, you’ll be taken back to the Account overview tab of your moneyStrands profile. Here you should see the manual account you created. In the lower right hand corner of this box you’ll see the “Import” button and this is where you can manually import your CSV file.
6. After you click Import, the uploader box will appear. You can browse for your CSV file and easily upload your data in seconds.

For more information, check out our how-to video on creating manual accounts:

Note: Those who plan to auto link accounts in moneyStrands AND import archived data should be aware that there may be some overlap in transactions since your auto linked account will pull part of your transaction history too. This will only occur the first time you import the data and duplicate transactions can easily be deleted from within the “Details” tab.

As always, please let us know how we’re doing and in what other ways moneyStrands can help you improve you financial well being.

Version 2.6 is the first ever full-featured training log for iPhone! It allows runners, cyclists, and active people to add to their training log from categories like exercise, nutrition, injuries, therapy, gear, and more.  And, using the built-in GPS, athletes can use their iPhone 3G or 3GS to map routes and record workouts… but that’s not all!

In the latest version we have added some extra goodies that many people have been asking for…

Route Replay lets users pause their current workout to play a satellite video reply of their progress, or wait until they are finished and view video of their final route.  Along with the video replay, Strands for iPhone will simultaneously display the overall distance and current progress along the route.

iPod and playlist integration so athletes can listen to tunes while working out!  Before or during a workout, tap the playlist button from Strands Chrono to access iPod controls and add tracks to a playlist.  Add tracks by artist, song or album, or add a playlist you’ve created with iTunes on your computer.

Voice Feedback by distance and/or time so that users of the app can hear how fast and how far they have gone without even looking at the iPhone.

Automatic calorie calculation for both calories burned during each workout, and for calories consumed when adding nutritional information to the training log.

Sharing to Facebook & Twitter allows users to optionally share to Facebook and Twitter for their friends on those networks to see.

In the latest version we also introduces 2 modes: Strands Chrono, and Strands Social.  Within Strands Chrono an athlete can add to their training log, view their workout history, and find short-term weather forecasts for their area.  Strands Social allows users of the app to follow how their friends are training, leave comments, and interact with people and groups among other community-based features.

If you haven’t already, download Strands for iPhone from the App Store today and tell us what you think.  We’re always listening and would love to hear about your favorite features and suggestions!

At Strands.com/LaVuelta, users can follow each stage’s GPS route LIVE, receive minute-by-minute situation updates, and listen to an exclusive broadcast of Radio Vuelta, the internal radio of the competition.  Additionally, all cyclists competing in the tour have personal profiles on Strands, where fans can chat and comment on each stage’s performance.

Through our partnership with La Vuelta, we will also be hosting several contests on Strands.com.  A total of 21 Golden Jerseys signed by the final winner of La Vuelta, and one official bicycle of Team Euskaltel will be given away!

For full contest details and information about the event visit Strands.com/LaVuelta.

With the addition of our manual upload feature, we’ve received requests to make our iPhone app available on the UK and Canada app stores. We’re happy to announce today that the moneyStrands app is now available on these app stores.

To download the app, click here or search “moneyStrands” in your iTunes application.

To learn more about our iPhone app, check out our recent blog post on v2.5 of the app.

Next week the app will also be added to the Australian and New Zealand App stores. If you are an international user and would like to see the moneyStrands iPhone app on your App store, please contact us.

Based on your current training and previous performances, we are able to predict your next race performance.  The more detailed workouts you add to your training log, the more accurate the predictions will be.  In addition to current training and previous performance, determining factors include weight and age.

To show off your your race predictions to your followers, simply visit your profile on Strands and personalize your sidebar to display the widget.

Set a time goal for an upcoming race and track your progress with the Strands Race Predictor. To set a goal, click on the goal button on your Strands share bar.

Happy Training!

Strands Team

For all our global fans out there, moneyStrands is pleased to announce the addition of 33 new currencies to our personal finance management tool. With these additions, moneyStrands now supports 44 currencies! (see our full list below) This enables people from all over the world to take control of their finances and save money with moneyStrands’ innovative, easy-to-use platform.

Along with additional currencies, we’ve added the ability to view your financial analysis and overview in your specified currency.

Setting your account to your native currency is simple. Just click on the settings icon in the top right hand corner of your profile. This will open up the setting panel, where you’ll see an option to set your currency. Choose your currency of choice and click on the save changes button to complete the process.

Please note that currency exchange rates vary by day as they are calculated by the most current exchange rate. Here is a complete list of all 44 currencies we now support:

Team Strands athletes Mike Aish and Justin Young will race the IAAF World Championships Marathon tomorrow in Berlin.

Aish, New Zealand’s lone representative in the marathon, has a personal best of 2:13:21 from his victory at the 2008 PF Chang’s Rock and Roll Arizona Marathon in Phoenix.  In January he returned to Phoenix and ran a 2:15:43, placing 6th overall.  His crowning achievement for the year came with an easy victory in tough conditions at New Zealand’s Christchurch Marathon.  Aish ran 2:18:18 in spite of strong winds, snow, and hail.

Aish has competed for New Zealand at numerous championships including the World Cross Country Championships (2000, 2001), World Indoor and Outdoor Track & Field Championships (2003, 2007), and the Olympic Games (2000, 2004).  He will be joined in Berlin by Team Strands teammate Justin Young, who will be representing Team USA.

Young was selected to the USA roster based on his breakthrough run in Rotterdam in April 2008, where he ran 2:13:52.  His time in Rotterdam was the third fastest by an American for the year.  This will the second time Young has represented Team USA — the first coming in 2004 at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships, where he led Team USA with an 18th place overall finish.

He will be racing in Berlin with Team USA teammates Dan Browne (Portland, Oreg.), Nate Jenkins (Lowell, Mass.), Ed Torres (Boulder, Colo.), and Matt Gabrielson (Minneapolis, Minn.).

Check out the comprehensive men’s marathon preview, and be sure to send encouragement to Mike and Justin on their Strands.com profiles.

The race will be broadcast live on Universal Sports at 5:45 a.m. EST.

If you’re a fan of the moneyStrands iPhone app, be sure to update your current version to the newly released version 2.5. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, you’re missing out! We’ve launched a slew of new features that make our app even more user-friendly and convenient for managing your finances on the go. Here’s what’s new:

• The ability to update your bank account data from within the application. This new feature can be found in the upper left hand corner of the My Accounts page. Just look for the curved arrow icon. You can now bring your account data up to date without you having to access the web site.
• A newly designed analysis page allows you to see the total amount of your income or expenses in the pie chart. Click on each color-coded category to see the total amount for those individual categories.
• The new Analysis page also features various time range options you can select. These are located along the top of the page. Scroll through them by sliding your finger across e.g. this month, last month etc.
• A newly designed budget tab allows you to see the total amount spent for all your budget allocations. You can also choose to view monthly or annual budget allocations by selecting the appropriate tab at the top of the page.
• We’ve added new support for our Spanish version

Check it out by downloading the moneyStrands v2.5 app on iTunes.

Awards were given to the Best Overall Male and Female Athletes of the Championships, and were received by Reyes Estévez and Mayte Martínez respectively.

Estévez is a 1,500M runner who won the 1998 European Championships in Budapest, bronze medals at the 1997 and 1999 World Championships, and silver medals at the 2001 IAAF World Indoor Championships and 2002 European Championships.  Martínez is an achieved 800M runner, winning silver medals in the 2002 and 2005 European Indoor and Outdoor Championships; and bronze medals in the 2003 and 2007 World Indoor and Outdoor Championships.

Also, awards for the Top Male and Female Athletes Participating in the Championships with the most followers on Strands were received by Carles Castillejo and Marta Esteban.   Castillejo and Esteban both competed in the 5,000M this weekend, finishing 3rd and 13th respectively.

Awards were presented by World and European Marathon Champions Abel Antón and Martin Fiz, along with European and Olympic 1,500M Champion Fermín Cacho.

The 45-min webinar discusses the best practices for optimizing implementation with the Strands Recommender and shares the experience of customer Nimli, an online marketplace for eco-brands as told by CEO/Founder, Rajat Arora. The key points summarize Strands best practices for:

1. Uploading your product catalog
2. Tracking user behavior
3. Installing recommendations for multiple use cases

These guidelines were followed by a walkthrough of Nimli’s current implementation on the product detail and shopping cart pages and ongoing improvements to them. In the next phase, Nimli will use personalized Strands recommendations in the purchase confirmation and abandoned shopping cart emails. Seventeen percent of the revenue is attributable to Strands recommendations, along with a CTR of 40-50% on the recommendations. Rajat also shares his key takeaways and best practices such as treating recommendations as a continuous process for improvement and leveraging the customization features. Learn more today by creating an account at recommender.strands.com.

Today we are excited to announce our partnership with the Spanish National Track & Field Federation for the celebration of the 2009 Track & Field Championships, which will be held during the 1st and 2nd of August in the Olympic Stadium of Barcelona.

Through the partnership Strands will be present during the event with banners, booths for both athletes and attendees, and spots on both the JumboTron and the National DTT Sports TV Network: Teledeporte. 

Additionally, Strands will be hosting the Official Post-Championship Party, which will include awards for the Best Athlete of the Championships and the Most Popular Athlete on Strands.com; as well as the announcement and introduction of Team Strands Spain – a team of post-collegiate, professional middle and distance runners.

To follow all the events throughout the Track & Field Championships, log into your Strands account and check out the event profile at Strands.com/Barcelona09 to see pictures, videos, and meet the athletes.

Armstrong ran 39:06 in her return to the roads, laying claim to her second U.S. Road Championships top-ten finish in her first year as a professional.  Armstrong was fifth in the Road Mile Championships in the Twin Cities last May.  Teammate Zoila Gomez, in the midst of World Championships Marathon preparation, was 31 seconds back in 12th place, and Elva Dryer ran 40:18 for 15th place in the women’s Championship race.

On the men’s side, Cele Rodriguez placed 11th overall, running a 34:07.

For complete results, visit the Bix-7 Results page.

Boston Scientific Heart of Summer 10k – Minneapolis, MN
Also active this weekend was Team Strands athlete Nicole Aish, who overcame a bout of food poisoning and still managed a second-place finish at the Boston Scientific Heart of Summer 10k.  Aish ran 34:56 on the loop course around Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.

For complete race results, click here.

This week Tú Cuentas was awarded by Actualidad Económica, the Spanish business magazine, as one of the “100 best ideas of the year.”

But our joy does not end here. Our personal finance project has been recognized twice recently:

First, we are tremendously honored by the Actualidad Económica Award of the 100 best ideas of 2008. This is just another endorsement of the enormous value that we believe the tool has and the awesome potential it has to complete the ideas that we plan to develop with BBVA.

The second milestone is the publication by Forrester Research, of a case study monograph. In it, under the title “BBVA’s Tú Cuentas Shows What Next-Generation Online Banking Will Look Like,” Forrester places BBVA and it’s Department for Innovation as a benchmark for innovation in the global financial world, providing detailed information and explaining how Tú Cuentas is better than similar tools in the market. Undoubtedly, something that makes us extremely proud.

With this, we see how the path we started next to a year ago is generating encouraging results and will continue to encourage us to come up with new ideas as we team with BBVA. According to Manuel Castro, director of Innovation and Development of BBVA, “the goal of innovation in the Group is to generate products and services that are useful to people. In that sense, Tú Cuentas is really an example of how to develop innovation in BBVA.”

In the end, the key to success are the users of Tú Cuentas, for using it, for giving us feedback, conveying their ideas, and, above all for positioning the tool as a project made by all and that is enjoyed by everyone.

Therefore: Thanks to all and thanks to you!

(To read the Spanish version of this blog post please visit the BBVA Tú Cuentas blog)

Financial services companies that offer personal finance solutions increase their customer retention by up to four times.  This proves the importance of relying on this technology to build customer loyalty. In Spain, BBVA was the first to implement Strands’ technology last November and to launch the Tú Cuentas service.  A month after it’s launch, more that a 130,000 users had already tried the tool and to this day, more than 250,000 customers have already improved their personal finance management.

Now, Strands is proud to announce that ING has launched TIM for their customers in the Netherlands. The Dutch bank has chosen Strands technology to offer new services to their customers that allow them to better manage their expenses and income.

For the moment, TIM has been launched in the Dutch market in a private beta and only for a limited number of customers who have applied to participate in this pilot phase.  In the future, ING will offer the service to the bank’s online customers in the Netherlands.

The main goal of the new tool is to allow users to have a clear and complete overview of their financial situation.  Some of the innovative functionalities of the new tool include:

Automatic categorization of information:  The application automatically categorizes the users’ information into a set of predefined categories that make it easier to manage (for example, food, household…).

Analysis of a customers’ finances:  Based on the categorization, the information is presented to the user in a graphical way, enabling him to analyze his financial situation to better understand what his money is spent on.  The customer can see the evolution of his income and expenses in time and print pre-defined reports to consult at any time.  The information is displayed on the screen in an simple way that can be easily interpreted at first glance.

Comparisons with other users:  The service also allows users to compare themselves anonymously with other community members of his choice.  This helps customers better understand their financial situation and compare it to other collectives which can be useful to him or her.

Budgets and alerts:  The service allows the user to define his own budgets for different expense categories and set up alerts on their evolution by email or SMS

To learn more about Strands Personal Finance Technology, download the PDF brochure and discover why hundreds of thousands of people are using it to manage their personal finances.

I continue to be impressed with the breadth and depth of BBVA‘s social technology offerings; this is the most advanced bank in the world when it comes to social technologies.  For example, they have built Tú Cuentas a tool customers can use to benchmark their spending against their peers, and Actibva, a financial community.  Learned: Once a company gets started with applications, the pace of social applications accelerates.  Have seen it here and at Dell, Intuit, Best Buy, and other places.

Developed by BBVA and Strands, BBVA Tú cuentas (You count, in Spanish) is an innovative personal finance tool that allows online users to better manage their personal finances, offering friendly analysis tools to better understand spending and savings.  Likewise, Strands’ own moneyStrands provides similar services to users in the United States and abroad.

Additionally, Strands recommendation technologies power Actibva Predicciones, a community-based prediction network offered as part of BBVA Actibva.  Through Actibva Predicciones users can ask the crowd’s opinion, express opinions through a market game, and win points and prizes based on accurate predictions.

We are looking forward to further developing our technology through agreements with other banks looking to offer new value-added services to their users.  To learn more about Strands Personal Finance Technology, download the PDF brochure and discover why hundreds of thousands of people are using it to manage their personal finances.

Javier is now competing in the United States under the sponsorship of Suunto, Louis Garneau, Oakley, Nike, and Cervélo among others.  You can follow his training at Strands.com/javiergomeznoya.

The men’s champion was Ridouane Harroufi of Morocco who narrowly defended his title over Kenyan John Yuda.  The pair ran 17:44 and 17:46, respectively.  Boaz Cheboiywo (Kenya) claimed the final podium position in 18 minutes, 2 seconds.  Complete results are available at http://onlineraceresults.com.

Team Strands Weekend Race Recap
In Duluth, Team Strands athlete Mike Reneau finished fifth at the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon.  Reneau ran 1:05:56.  Eugene Kebenei of Kenya won the half marathon title in 1:05:15.  Complete Results are available at http://www.onlineraceresults.com.

Ryan Kirkpatrick cruised to a 15-second vistory in 14:52 at the Sailin Shoes 5k in Colorado Springs—missing the course record by only 4 seconds.

Team USA’s Kami Semick (Bend, OR) finished first overall in the Women’s race with a time of 07:37:23, and teammates Devon Crosby-Helms (Seattle, WA) and Meghan Arbogast (Corvallis, OR) finished 07:59:17 and 08:04:28 respectively.

Both Kami and Meghan are local Team Strands runners, and you can discover out how they prepare for upcoming races by checking out their training logs on Strands.com.

Returning to one of the most hallowed sites in the sport, the 2009 USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships will take place at Hayward Field, site of the ’72, ’76, ’80, and the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials.  Eugene has long been dubbed “Track Town, USA” for its rich track and field history and the community’s overwhelming appreciation of the sport, and Strands has 20 tickets to give away.

The top winner will receive 1 pair (2 passes) of All-Session passes, good for all days and all events of the 2009 USATF Track & Field Championships.  Four runners-up will each win 3 Individual Session passes, good for all events for 1 day each (date of passes TBD).

To enter to win, simply leave a comment on this post and include your Strands.com Username.  For extra style points, add your favorite running quote or include a link to your favorite running video on the internet.  Winners will be chosen at random from the comments below, and all winners will be announced by June 24th.

For more information about the event, please see the USATF event website.

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Meghan’s tip of the week…get regular massage therapy. Massage is a great tool to keep you healthy and running faster than ever. Massage therapy keeps your muscles supple and strong by promoting blood circulation, elasticity, flexibility and relieving stress from both workouts and everyday life. And did I mention; it feels great!

A quick note: after your first session of massage you may not feel like normal, your legs may feel “heavier” than usual. However, with continued therapy you will see the results you are looking for, namely an increase in work capacity and faster times.

Think massage therapy would be too much of a burden on your wallet? Think again. Search online or the phone book for a local college offering massage therapy. Students are always looking for volunteers on which to hone their skills. And it is great for you because you get a person who is enthusiastic about what they are doing and usually at a deeply discounted price. I personally have tried many different massage therapists and can say without a doubt that Suzie, a student at St. Paul College, gives the best massages. In an hour’s time my legs go from tired and sore to feeling refreshed and ready for my next workout.

Massage is just one little piece in the puzzle of becoming the best runner you can be. People often emphasize the importance of a great workout, but you shouldn’t forget that recovery from workouts is equally as important.

2008 Olympic Trials 800m champion; Two-time USA Outdoor runner-up (’06, ’07); 2007 USA Indoor champion; Seven-time NCAA Div. III Outdoor champion (800m, 1,500m)

I can still remember my first season of high school cross country with stunning clarity. It was an exciting time as I embarked on a new chapter of my life. I recall how those first few weeks of conditioning were brutal and I would go home every afternoon barely able to lift my fork at dinner. However, each day after school I would throw on my beat up trainers and head to the track to meet the coach and find out what new form of torture he thought up for us. At the time, I hated everything about running (except maybe the fact that the men’s and women’s team practiced together). I hated the pain; I hated the way my body was always drained of energy and I didn’t like the coach telling me when to go to bed and what to eat. But, the thing I remember hating most was the t-shirts we were given the first week of practice. Now, I certainly don’t claim to be any kind of creative genius, but these shirts were the worst. They were relatively standard issue: white, cotton and our school’s letters on the front. But it was the quote on the back of these shirts that really rubbed me the wrong way. It read, “Our sport is your sport’s punishment.” It was seeing these words and understanding their truth that made me realize how masochistic our daily endeavor really was.

To understand my feelings you have to know what led me to the cross-country team in the first place. In the fall of 1998 I stood just over 5’0″ and weighed in at a whopping 95 lbs. Up to that point, my sport and passion in life had always been soccer. I dreamed of playing on the high school varsity team and perhaps one day in college. However, there was very little interest from the head soccer coach in putting a pre-pubescent fourteen year old anywhere near the playing field when there was a good chance he would be obliterated by fully developed juniors and seniors. Instead, it was suggested that I spend a season with the cross country team and work on my fitness so that when I returned a year later I would be more developed in my cardiovascular fitness and muscular strength. This was tough for me to hear because I loved everything about soccer. I loved the team, the games, even the practices. In fact, I would say that the only part I did not enjoy were the times when we would mess up a drill or show up late to practice and the coach would actually PUNISH us by making us run laps. So, imagine my utter disgust when I was asked to wear shirt advertising the fact that we were, as the coach put it, “running for fun!” I thanked the team captains for my shirt and as soon as I was home tossed it in the bottom of my closet.

I continued to push my body to its limits each day at cross country practice and found myself growing stronger and faster and, of all things, winning races. At first it was the winning part that kept me going. I loved crossing the finish line in first, knowing that on that particular day I defeated an entire field of people in a physical challenge. Of course, as a late bloomer, the cross country course was one of the few places where I could actually achieve such a feat. For years it was the pure desire to win competitions that fueled my training. Though I would dread the countless miles that I would have to log day in and day out to be great, knowing that the next competition was only a few weeks away would keep me going.

Then, somewhere along the line, everything changed. I learned to love the training as much, if not more than the competitions. There was something incredible about going for a ten mile run and knowing that I had seen and accomplished so much, usually before noon! Whenever I ran in a foreign city I would return to my hotel room knowing that few tourists saw the sights and places I had been; those out-of-the-way bike paths and trails that we runners eagerly search for the second we touch down in a new place. Running a workout no longer felt like a punishment of any kind, but rather more of a challenge to surpass my prior achievements. I got to the point where training had become so much a part of my life that my eating and sleeping cycles completely revolved around my workouts. To this day, I live my life the same way. I love to race and feel the rush that competition provides, but I have learned to appreciate the process and cherish the journey.

We dug through our photos and grabbed some reminders from the past — check out the slide show of some Strands employees, projects, adventures, and fun.

On August 28th over 12,000 runners will embark on the largest relay race in the World — 197 miles from majestic Mt. Hood to the beautiful Pacific Ocean in Seaside, the Nike Hood To Coast Relay is truly “the mother of all relays”.

Strands is sponsoring two teams of up to 12 runners each to participate in the 28th Annual Hood To Coast Relay, and we are inviting specialty running stores and individuals from across the nation to compete for 12 all-expense paid trips to Oregon to participate in this incredible adventure!

Stores can win by creating an account on Strands.com and inviting their customers and friends to join them, and individuals can win by creating a video about “Why I Run” and posting it on Strands.

Full contest details can be found at http://contest.strands.com.

Aish led the field through most of the race, with help early from Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Andrew Letherby.  The pair brought the field through 5 km in under 16 minutes, but a strong headwind, hail and occasional snow drifts saw them slow from Jack Foster’s national record pace (2:11:18) to the more modest SBS Christchurch Marathon course record (2:15:12) pace.  They came together through the half at 1:07:28, but by mile 18, Aish was out in front alone – forging ahead and extending his lead to a decisive 4-minute margin before claiming a win in his first marathon on home soil.

“It wasn’t a great day to run fast out there,” Aish is quoted in release from the marathon.  “And to be honest, we sort of gave away the records at about 20 km.  I felt good, and the support on the course from spectators was awesome, but the wind was just too tough today.”

In second place was Australian Paul Martinico finishing in 2:22:50, and rounding out the podium was defending champion Rowan Hooper at 2 hours, 24 minutes.

Complete results are available at the SBS Christchurch results page.

Team Strands Weekend Race Recap

At Freihofer’s Run for Women in Albany, Team Strands athlete Elva Dryer placed 18th in 16 minutes, 42 seconds.  This was Dryer’s first race since a 12th place Boston Marathon finish (2:38:50).  For complete results, visit the Freihofer’s results page.

In the Reebok Grand Prix, Meghan Armstrong finished 11th in 16:25.53.  The race was won by Linet Masai (Kenya) in a surprise victory over Beijing gold medal winner and world 5000 meters record holder Tirunesh Dibaba (Ethiopia).  Complete results are available on the Grand Prix results page.

He will be working along side Spanish friends, rivals, and teammates Abel Antón and Fabian Roncero – together these three men lead Spain to be the largest world power in long-distance running in the 1990′s.

Photo: Mike Hewitt/Getty Images, 1995

You can follow Martín’s run @ http://www.strands.com/martinfiz

The 2009 USATF National Club Track & Field Championships will be held at New York City’s Icahn Stadium on July 10-11.  This marks the third time the championships have been held in New York since 2005.  The meet will be hosted by the Central Park Track Club, who captured the 2009 combined team title.

“We are extremely pleased that the Club Championships are returning to one of America’s premier track & field venues, in an area that is a hotbed for our sport and the USATF club program,” said USATF Director of Grass Roots Programs, Andy Martin. “The 2005 and 2007 Club Championships held at Icahn Stadium were both big successes, and the meet continues to grow. We hope to continue that growth in 2009.”

The schedule of events, entry information, and housing information for the 2009 National Club Track & Field Championships, and meet headquarters hotel information, is available at the USATF website.

Team Colorado teammates Fernando Cabada and Edwardo Torres finished 13th and 17th, respectively, giving the trio a total of 42—just 5 places shy of 3rd place Kenya.  Ethiopia won the overall team title, with a strong run from men’s champion Tilahun Regassa (28:17) and runner-up Tadese Tola (28:36).  Team USA placed third in the team competition. For complete results, visit the Bolder Boulder elite men’s results page.

Team Strands athletes Josh Glaab and Ryan Kirkpatrick raced the Citizen’s Race at the Bolder Boulder — with finishing times of 30:58 and 31:18, respectively.  Glaab was third overall and the first American finisher in the citizen’s race.

Also this weekend, Team Strands athlete Matt Downin was runner-up at the Ridgeline Ramble in Eugene, Oregon.  Downin was edged by brother Andy for the 10 km title.

Team Strands athlete Justin Young has been selected to represent Team USA at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin this August.

Young was selected based on his breakthrough run in Rotterdam Marathon last April, where he ran 2:13:52. His time in Rotterdam was the third fastest by an American in 2008.  This will the second time Young has represented Team US, the first coming in 2004 at the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships, where he led Team USA with an 18th place overall finish.

He will be racing in Berlin with Team USA teammates Dan Browne (Portland, Oreg.), Nate Jenkins (Lowell, Mass.), Fernando Cabada (Boulder, Colo.), and Matt Gabrielson (Minneapolis, Minn.).

The 12th IAAF World Championships will take place in Berlin from August 15 – August 23.  The men’s marathon is scheduled to take place on Saturday, August 22.

For a complete schedule of events and more information about race, visit the Berlin 2009 web site.

“After a rigorous selection process by the 25-member panel of angel investors, CenterSpace was chosen to receive an $125,000 angel award investment,” said Trevor Misfeldt, CEO.  “We’re proud to have been chosen from over 40 excellent start-up companies to receive this award.  The investors recognized the excellent traction CenterSpace has already achieved in the .NET numerical component market, and the exciting growth opportunities for leveraging CenterSpace technology into new markets, such as cloud-hosted numerical web services and numerical applications.”

The first annual Willamette Angel Conference was held May 14, 2009 in Corvallis at the CH2M Hill Alumni Center on the Oregon State University campus, and is a new investors conference aimed to connect early stage and seed businesses with angel and venture investors in the Willamette Valley.

The 2010 Willamette Angel Conference will be held in May in Eugene, Oregon. For more information about the conference see www.willametteconference.com.

“So, what’s the big deal?”

Strands has been able to support AA Sports’ races by sponsoring disposable ChampionChip timing chips, allowing users of Strands Online Training Logs to receive LIVE race results as soon as they cross a timing mat!

Within 5 seconds of crossing a timing mat, results are saved directly to Strands.com for fans and family to view from the web and the Strands iPhone App.

So far we’ve been able to provide live results for the Salt Lake City Marathon, Eugene Marathon, and Lake Run 12k; and are excited to offer live race timing for the upcoming Coeur d’Alene Marathon, 10Cane 10k, and Pacific Crest Sports Festival, with many more to come.

If you are a Race Organizer or Coordinator and would like to bring Strands LIVE timing to your race, be sure to let us know!

Zoila Gomez was selected based on her fourth place finish at the 2008 Olympic Trials Marathon where she surprised the field and ran a 1.5-minute best of 2:33:53 – highlight video here.  Gomez also represented Team USA in the 2007 World Championships Marathon, and was third in the 2006 US Marathon Championships where she ran 2:35:26 on a tough Twin Cities course.

The Adams State graduate was an 11-time All-American and six-time NCAA champion at distances ranging from the mile to the 10,000 meters.  Capping her outstanding collegiate career was the 2004 Collegiate Sports Award for the Division II Athlete of the Year.

When she’s not training, Gomez spends much of her time with community outreach programs—teaching English as a Second Language classes to unschooled youth, speaking to local clubs and schools and working with youth in after school programs such as In the Arena.

The 12th IAAF World Championships will take place in Berlin from August 15 – August 23.  The women’s marathon is scheduled to take place on Sunday, August 23.  For a complete schedule of events and more information about race, visit the Berlin 2009 web site.

Check out her training log on Strands.com and see what it takes to represent Team USA.

Hartmann, a Grand Rapids native, gutted out a 1:16:14 finish in pouring rain and strong winds—matching his highest-ever US Championships placing with the second-place finish this weekend.  In 2006, he was runner-up in the US Half Marathon Championships.

Dan Browne (Beaverton, OR) pulled away from the men’s field near mile 13 and extended his lead to 16 seconds over Hartmann before finishing at 1:15:56, to claim this third 25 km title (2003, 2004, 2009).  Browne now has 14 national road titles. Fasil Bizuneh of Flagstaff was third, Ryan Sheehan (Rochester Hills, MI) fourth, and Josh Eberly (Gunnison, CO) fifth.

Watch the post-race interview with Jason Hartmann below:

Complete results are available at the River Bank Run web site.  Addiitonal race coverage is also available at RunTheRoads.com.

Hooley won the marathon by nearly 8 minutes in his first overall marathon title.  He ran a new personal best and course record of 2:18:38 in the process.  The second place finisher, Chad Worthen crossed the finish at 2:26:36 after local 2:18-marathoner John Lucas dropped out late in the race.

Jason Pyles placed second overall, running 1:11:48 in the half marathon and Marian was third overall in the women’s race with a new best of 1:21:57.  Visiting Team Strands masters athlete Paco Ribera of Spain, led from mile 3 of the half marathon until he was directed onto the marathon course, where he fell out of contention after running a mile on the wrong course.  Ribera was a 2:12-marathoner during the 90′s and ran 1:08 in Madrid as a masters athlete earlier this year.

Photo: Amanda Smith, The Eugene Register-Guard

For complete marathon and half marathon results, please visit the Online Race Results.  Another recap of the race is also available from the Eugene Register-Guard.

There are already Elite Athletes and ‘Average Joes’ from numerous countries using Strands to train smarter, but we want to help athletes from every country around the World!

The contest is based on the number of friends and training partners you share Strands.com with, and the biggest fans will receive Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS watches w/HR monitors. Other prizes range from Strands technical shirts, to Puma jackets and running shoes.

The contest is open to the World, and there is no limit to the number of prizes to be awarded.

Not a member of Strands yet? Click here to get started.

Already a member? Log in to get the full scoop on the contest and see when you’ll get the next prize.

Best Training!

The latest release of Strands.com allows athletes to log workouts and routes manually through the web, or automatically from Garmin, Nike Plus, and the Strands iPhone App. In addition, users are able to see their statistics graphically, comparing themselves with the rest of the community (or just the people they follow).

(click for detailed preview)

Besides the common features of a daily training log, Strands.com allows its users to add other online services using the idea of “life-streaming.” This enables users to add videos or pictures from services like YouTube and Flickr, and share their training log through Twitter or Facebook. In total there are more than 25 services currently supported.

Although just recently launched with this renewed vision, Strands.com has already proven to be a powerful tool for anyone wanting to train smarter by logging their miles, routes, gear, and nutrition; as well as an effective tool for communicating with training partners and teammates.

This is just the beginning of a feature-packed road map for Strands.com, and we’ll be excited to make more announcements as we continue to grow. And as always we love to hear from you, so feel free to send us your feedback.

His presence on the Strands Team has been generating some buzz, and you can see him interviewing alongside fellow runner and Strands Team member Fabián Roncero for a Spanish TV station while greeting fans at the Madrid Half Marathon.

If you’ve already received your invitation, you can follow his run at strands.com/abelanton. Not a member yet? Request an invite!

Photo: George Herringshaw, 28th August 1999

Strands is pleased to announce and introduce Team Strands!

With gear support from Puma Running, Strands is excited to be one of the few non-running company or shoe-store sponsors of runners on the national and world class level. Team Strands currently includes a handful of Olympians, Pan American Qualifiers, NCAA All-Americans, and USATF road-race circuit finalists. Many of them have been running for Team Strands for over a month now, and you can become a fan or catch up with their latest victories on the Team Strands Facebook group.

Team Strands is led by Matt Downin and is currently comprised of 25 runners, but there will undoubtedly be more added to the roster as we continue to grow. All of the runners have been using Strands.com to log their training and preparations for upcoming races, and you can find links to their training logs from the Team Strands page to discover how they train, and see where they’ll be competing next.

A couple of articles have already been generating some buzz about Team Strands, including an interview with Matt Downin on Track Shark.

tunesBag uses Strandsâ„¢ flexible algorithm configuration to influence how the recommendations are calculated. Based on the current track that the user has selected, other tracks with the same tags and artists are given high priority resulting in similar music recommendations. Through Strandsâ„¢, users can also discover new artists that share similar styles with the tunes in their music libraries. While users can get recommendations from day one, the quality of recommendations improves with continued use as the user behavior starts to influence the results. Strands Social Recommenderâ„¢ builds on listening histories and evolves with the current behavior ensuring that recommendations are relevant and offer consistent content discovery. Unlike recommendation features in other music clients, Strands Social Recommenderâ„¢ is able to truly personalize recommendations by filtering out tracks that are no longer relevant, ie, user gave track low ratings, already owns track or added track to favorites.

First off, staying true to our intent to keep improving our site we are happy to announce you can now access moneyStrands on your iPhone using our new native iPhone App. This first version requires that you have an existing registration with moneyStrands and currently let’s you:

• See all your account balances on one screen
• Drill down to the account level and see your transactions organized by date
• Manipulate transaction categories, and assign your own tags
• See your most recent budget status
• Get a list of recent alerts as configurable from within the web app

More cool features and updates are on their way, but we are looking forward to hear back from you in the meanwhile. The app is totally free, and you can now find it in the iTunes Store. Once you install the app we welcome you to rate and write a review as you see fit!

We have not forgotten about those of you not using iPhones either. In fact, since our launch we have had our mobile web site. It is still alive and well ready to get the job done for you on any browser enabled smart phone. Simply type in ‘www.moneyStrands.com’ in your mobile browser, login with your moneyStrands credentials, and “Voila!” you have everything the web version has to offer optimized to be viewed on your mobile screen.

So, how about some potent financial fusion for the road? Yes, we thought so too!

We’d like to send a big “THANK YOU!” to all our private beta testers for their valuable feedback and patience all along. We know any online service is by definition a work-in-progress so admittedly we still have a long list of improvements that are being prioritized and scheduled for upcoming releases. Stay tuned in for frequent updates to the application.

For those of you looking to jump on the bandwagon you may want to download and check out the moneyStrands poster describing how it can complement your existing money management rituals no matter how perfect they may already be

Tell us what you think and let us know what else you would like to see included. Always looking forward to new faces and more shout outs be they rants or raves.

We’ve been busy at Strands Business Solutions, working with some really great partners.

We have some insightful and interesting content about our technology, as well as some case studies up on our new site, and you can check them out here:

The secret sauce: What Strands technology is really all about
http://recommender.strands.com/tech_social.sbs

The Strands recommender API for developers
http:/recommended.strands.com/dev/

Skymall: Personalized Recommendations drive double-digit sales lift
http://recommender.strands.com/ecommerce_case.sbs

IHeartMovies: Personalized recommendations result in double digit CTR (Click through rate)-lift
http://recommender.strands.com/social_case.sbs

We’re also out and about meeting some great people at conferences this month and next, and would like to introduce ourselves!

Here’s where we’ve been and where we’ll be:

eTail West 2009 in Phoenix, AZ
http://www.wbresearch.com/etailusawest/

eTail has been around for 10 years and it is the premier event to discuss e-commerce small and large.

Jane Kwak and Scott Doan were there representing the team and would love to follow up with you.   Email us at sales-sbs@strands.com

South by Southwest: Interactive (SxSWi) – March 13th -17th
http://www.sxsw.com/interactive
Austin, TX

We’ll be making a splash in Austin this year at the Superbowl of internet technology conferences.   If you’re planning on going, be sure to make it to our panel session:

“You may also be interested in…”
How recommendation affects our digital lives.  An interactive discussion about recommendation technology, implementation and analytics.  How can it help your site or app?  Come find out.   Sponsored by Strands Business Solutions.

Drew Olanoff of Strands will be moderating, and the panelists include Mike Hudack from Blip.tv, Trevor Legwinski from Strands Business Solutions, and Alex Hillman, founder of IndyHall.

The session is on Monday the 16th at 5pm, come out and join the discussion!

As those of you closely following the online personal finance and banking space would know, Finovate conference series organized by the authoritative banking technology research firm Online Financial Innovations (also behind the popular blog NetBanker) have become the marquee event in this category. Last year Strands came out announcing the acquisition of Expensr at FinovateStartup in San Francisco and followed that up with the announcement of the NetWorthIQ acquisition shortly thereafter.

This year moneyStrands has been picked as one of the participants of the event that will be held once again in San Francisco on April 28th, 2009. We are looking forward to showcase our new look and a host of new capabilities while getting a chance to see what fellow presenters have been working on.

FinovateStartup’s high octane 7 minute live demo format coupled with plenty of well organized networking sessions against the beautiful backdrop of the “City by the Bay” surely make it a can’t miss gathering to keep up with the pulse of what’s happening on the financial innovation front.

Check out last year’s presentations from FinovateStartup08, and learn more about this year’s event… hope to see you there!

11870.com, the European equivalent to Yelp, is used for people to save, share and keep track of the places and services they like around the world through reviews, pictures and videos.

From now on, 11870.com will offer its users suggestions of places and services based on users interests and behavior. 11870.com will use Strands Social Recommender, which delivers advanced social recommendation and personalization technology, as an easy-to-use Strands hosted service.

The recommender works in several areas:

Personalized recommendations: when user log in, they will find a list of places and services tailored just for them.

Recommendations within a specific location: each city or location includes a “recommendations” feature, where users will find personalized recommendations of places and services within that region.

Recommendations inside categories: when you visit a category such as “hotels in London” or “Spanish restaurants in San Francisco”, the recommender suggests each user a number of services that might fit with his or her interests.

Similar services: when you go to a product page, the system suggests a list of similar services, broadening the list of options for you to chose from. This is available both for registered and non-registered users. For example, if you chose an Italian restaurant, the recommender will suggest similar Italian restaurants.

Strands is especially happy to be involved in this project, as 11870.com is one of the most successful European start-ups. Watch them carefully!

You can read more information on the 11870.com blog.

Thanks to everybody who attended Recked, the informal event for engineers interested in recommender systems. It was awesome. And thanks to Robert Gaal for putting the event together.

You can find the three presentations (Strands, Wakoopa and Reccoon) below.

If you are in Europe and you are interested in recommendation technologies, Recked is for you.

Recked is an informal event for 100 engineers interested in recommender systems, organized by Wakoopa, the software and games discovery start-up, and Strands.

Held on January 26th in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Recked will focus on how to implement collaborative filtering for your product in a manageable and practical way. Three experienced speakers will give you all the real-world use cases and solutions you’ll need to start building your own recommendation platform.

The speakers at the event will be Dominiek ter Heide, founder of Reccoon, the location based services start-up (and finalist in the Strands Call for Recommender Systems); Coen Stevens, Lead Recommendations Engineer at Wakoopa; and Jim Shur, Strands Chief Software Architect.

For more information and to sign up, please visit to the Recked website. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Read more about it on our community blog.

You can:
- View recent activity from your friends
- Check and reply to your inbox messages
- Like and dislike things in peoples Strands
- Comment
- View images and click on links to blog posts and bookmarks
- Check out recommended posts
- Save things for later viewing once you get to your computer

It’s pretty addictive.

You can read more about it here on our Community Blog!

Open to anything. We believe the smartest devices should keep getting smarter. That’s why we’ve left the Nokia Nseries open to enhancement, experimentation and evolution.

Mobile has always been a central component of what we do at Strands.

In the last year, we’ve been very active on mobile. The team has grown, and now 15 persons at Strands are exclusively dedicated to mobile. We also finally opened an office in Helsinki, home to the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile telephones, Nokia. We have built an amazing personal finance tool with tailored versions for Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia (S60) browsers, launched by BBVA, one of the largest banks in the world. We added Last.fm support to the Strands Social Player, presented Strands Widsets, organized parties and hosted mobile developers events.

All the team’s hard work was recognized by Nokia (winners of Nokia’s Mobile Rules 2008!), by BlackBerry (winners of the BlackBerry Developer Challenge) and last year by Orange (winners of the Orange Innovation Award in 2007).

This year in mobile has been an exciting one, but what the future will bring is even more exciting. In fact, the future is today: with so many possibilities open to developers to build cool services for iPhone, Nokia (S60), BlackBerry and soon Android, the future for mobile users looks great. And we will be making some great announcements soon.

Stay tuned!

]]> http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/29/one-year-later-the-future-of-mobile-looks-even-better/feed/ 2 http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/24/gravity-winner-strands-100k-call/ http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/24/gravity-winner-strands-100k-call/#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:29:17 +0000 Strands http://blog.strands.com/?p=948 Gravity R&D, developer of an Instant personalized entertainment solution for TV, has been selected by the jury as Winner of the first edition of the Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-ups. Gravity R&D will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands, Inc.

In addition to the winner, the Jury selected two runners up: the location-based recommender developer Reccoon (2nd place), and Iletken (3rd place), a recommendation engine for rapidly emerging contents like news/rss feeds that utilizes social data.

Gravity R&D, Reccoon and Iletken participated in the Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups together with a total of 68 scientists and entrepreneurs from 24 teams in 15 countries who presented 26 projects. Five finalists were selected to present their projects today at the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems – RecSys08 in Lausanne. This is an impressive pool of talent and innovation, congratulations to all of them!

The Winner

Gravity R&D with its associate, Reignsoft, have created IMPRESS, a “magic button” that provides TV viewers with instant personalized entertainment at any given time with relevant program tips instantaneously on customer demand. It automatically schedules recordings with the highest probability based on user’s interest.

Gravity R&D is a four person team (Domonkos Tikk, István Pilászy, Gábor Takács and Bottyán Németh) from Budapest University of Technology in Hungary, and it was founded to exploit the experience learned at the Netflix Prize competition. It is specialized in algorithms, methods and practical application development for recommendation systems.

Reccoon helps people discover new places based on their input, current location and current time:

Iletken is a hybrid recommendation engine for services like news and RSS feeds:

The other two finalists were SentiMetrix and Commendo. See their presentations below:

SentiMetrix extracts and quantifies the huge and growing number of text-based opinions expressed through online media worldwide.

SentiMetrix @ Strands $100K Call for Recommender Start-Ups – RecSys08

The seven members of the Jury were:

Strands Social Player, powered by Strands Social Recommender, has previously won Nokia’s Mobile Rules 2008 Award and the Orange Innovation Contest 2007.

Strands Social Player for BlackBerry will soon be released. We have existing versions for Nokia S60 3rd edition and S40 devices which can be downloaded here.

As you know, Strands Social Player is a music player for mobile devices that lets you discover new music,connect with people, and share your tastes with friends.

.

Thanks to everyone for your support!

]]> http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/21/blackberry-winner/feed/ 4 http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/21/skymall-signs-strands-social-recommender-in-time-for-holiday-season/ http://blog.strands.com/2008/10/21/skymall-signs-strands-social-recommender-in-time-for-holiday-season/#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:00:53 +0000 Strands http://blog.strands.com/?p=951 Board a domestic flight and check the seat pocket in front of you, chances are you’ll find Strands’ latest client, SkyMall.

Launching in early November, Strands Social Recommenderâ„¢ will be powering personalized product recommendations for SkyMall’s extensive online store of over 7,500 gifts, gadgets and home innovations—from the unusual to the practical—just in time for the holiday season.

Strands Social Recommender will provide an enhanced shopping experience to SkyMall customers, providing highly relevant recommendations to help them discover products based on their taste and intent.  Analyzing thousands of customer touchpoints, Strands Social Recommender “learns” what SkyMall shoppers are looking for, and then dynamically recommends tailored suggestions, while they browse.

We are thrilled to be working with SkyMall!

As you know, Strands seeks to identify the best early-stage project in the area of recommendation technologies. Finalists are invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) this October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Winner will be offered an investment of $100,000 from Strands, Inc.

A total of 68 scientists and entrepreneurs from 24 teams in 15 countries presented 26 projects. Countries included Australia, Austria, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Romania, Spain, The Netherlands, Turkey and the USA. Areas where the recommendation technologies were applied are: pharmaceutical industry, cosmetics, video content, online media content, people and relations, TV content, search, events, social enterprise, advertising, location based services, travel and food.

And here is the list of the five finalists. Good luck to you all in Switzerland, this is very exiting for all of us!!

IMPRESS – Instant Entertainment, by Gravity R&D

IMPRESS “magic button” provides TV viewers instant personalized entertainment at any given time with relevant program tips instantaneously on customer demand. It automatically schedules recordings with the highest probability on user’s interest.

Gravity R&D was founded to exploit the experience learned at the Netflix Prize competition. It is specialized in algorithms, methods and practical application development for recommendation systems.

Team of 4: Domonkos Tikk, István Pilászy, Gábor Takács and Bottyán Németh. University: Budapest University of Technology. Hungary

SentiMetrix, Opinion-based Recommendations
SentiMetrix extracts and quantifies the huge and growing number of text-based opinions expressed through online media worldwide. SentiMetrix has automated sentiment extraction/analysis/scoring, the ability to find and quantify opinions in text.

SentiMetrix was founded in 2007 and it is based on the award-winning OASYS technology.

Team of 4: Patrick McBride, Vadim Kagan, V.S. Subrhamanian and Diego Reforgiato. University: University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Sciences, USA

iletken, Personally Relevant Content Based On Social Connections

Iletken, which means “Conductive” in Turkish, is a hybrid recommendation engine for services like news and RSS feeds. The core system of “Iletken” mimics the dynamics behind real life information dissemination to enable friends to share and conduct relevant information.

In contrast to traditional social networks, it maintains weighted graphs of social proximity among users for different categories of interest. Analyzing user behavior, Iletken dynamically updates its social graphs and uses this data to determine information conductivity among peer.

Team of 4: Murat Deniz Oktar, Baris Can Daylik, Firat Gelbal and Selcuk Atli. Universities: Koc University Istanbul, RPI New York and TU/e, Eindhoven.

Reccoon, location-based recommender

Taking advantage of the vast amount of GPS-enabled mobile devices, Reccoon helps people discover new places based on their input, current location and current time. It also adjusts recommendations to attention profile (e.g. Last.fm listening history). Reccoon responds to the simple question: what are my options for tonight?

Team of 2: Peter Tegelaar and Dominiek ter Heide. The Netherlands

Commendo – Drug Design Recommendation

Commendo uses recommendation technologies to optimize the drug design process in the pharmaceutical industry, including speeding up drug development and the minimization of adverse drug reactions.

Commendo was founded out of the project team “BigChaos”, which still participates very successfully in the Netflix Prize competition.

Team of 4: Andreas Töscher, Michael Jahrer, Georg Preßler and Michael Schrotter. Universities: Technical University Graz and University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Austria

Business owners and charities shop at DollarDays to find deals on small business-sized orders for more than 30,000 consumer products–from toys and household décor to apparel, electronics and seasonal merchandise.

Strands will also offer a free 30-day trial of Strands Social Recommenderâ„¢ to DollarDays’ 1.1 million retail customers/members.  Starting October 1st, members will be able to trial the same recommendation and personalization technology powering www.dollardays.com without any setup fees and implementation costs.

DollarDays adds 900 new members each day that include a variety of retailers from convenience stores, medium-sized brick & mortar retailers, shopping mall kiosk companies, discount stores, seasonal shops to large established companies.

Strands Social Recommender™ is a SaaS plug-and-play recommendation engine that can be easily and quickly installed by eCommerce and Media Web sites. The Strands Social Recommender can be installed through the Strands API or by adding personalization widgets to a retailer’s site, and can be up and running in as little as 30 minutes.

We are thrilled to be working with Dollar Days and its network of members!

As you might remember, Strands has organized the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project (also see the announcement post), an opportunity for students to receive funding for open source development focused on the web based programming language “haXe“. Today, the Strands Summer 2008 haXe Project has officially come to a close

Miguel Serrano Milano stepped up and became our first student project developer.  The main contribution for his project has been the development of a CLI .NET target for haXe.  Yes, that means that haXe can now target .NET platforms.  While the project is still missing some language features, and is in need of some optimization, Franco and I commend Miguel for his hard work and efforts towards implementing the base functionality.  Miguel has provided an overview of his work as a tutorial over at the haXe wiki.  Check it out if you’re interested in how haXe works to target other languages such as PHP, Actionscript, or CLI bytecode.

P.S. Danny Wilson (the other student participant) dropped out early because of a hectic summer work schedule, we still wish him the best of luck!

Get your iPhone and start playing here now!

We just started a community blog, community.strands.com, where we’ll talk about what’s new on Strands, the things we’re doing in our communities, and most importantly… you!

YourStrands is our new community show all about you, the cool stuff you share, the things you do in your communities, and what’s hot on Strands. We’ll also be having guest appearances, so give it a look!

Lastly, we’re hosting a series of informal townhall style events called Strandups. Take a minute, talk about what makes you you, and why your fans follow you online. Kind of like “speed friending”, but more friendly The first Strandup is tonight at Gnomedex ’08, and we hope to see you there.

Why?

Because Finland = Mobile. Around 92% of Finland’s population has a mobile phone, and it is home to the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile telephones, Nokia. We have a lot to do in Finland!

Drop us a line if you are visiting and want to meet, and check out our job openings in Helsinki:

• Senior Business Development Manager
• (Senior) Mobile User Experience / Interaction Designer

Drew is joining Strands as Community Manager / Evangelist, his job is to increase the number of Strands enthusiasts and to spread Strands awesomeness. Easy

For the entire Strands team and for me personally, this is very exciting. I’ve known Drew for almost a year since Marshall (thanks!) connected both of us, and I am convinced we will have a lot of fun while doing a great job. Very interesting times ahead for all of us… welcome to the team Drew!

What is new in the new Strands Social Player 3.2?:

• UI improvements
• Bug fixes
• Reduced application size
• Improved playlist management
• Support for English, Spanish and Finnish
• Auto check for future updates
• Help file
• Rebranding to Strands Social Player (from MyStrands Social Player)

As you know, the Strands Social Player, Nokia’s Mobile Rules! 2008 winning application, is a music player for mobile devices that lets you discover new music, connect with people, and share your tastes with friends. Version 3.2 works with Nokia S60 3rd edition or S40 devices (optimized for most recent Nokia S40 devices), which brings the Strands Social Player not only to 10s of millions of smart phones but to the true mass market of 100s of millions of Java devices.

Powered by Strands Social Recommender, Strands Social Player provides artist and song recommendations from over 6 million songs, automatically shows cover art and fully integrates with a social network of music enthusiasts.

The “Who’s Listening” feature lets you discover like-minded people who are listening to the same songs you are playing. You can send messages, see the listening histories of your friends, and keep an ear on what’s hot.

Strands Social Player allows you to scrobble tracks to Last.fm as you play music on your Symbian S60 3rd Edition and J2ME (optimized for Nokia S40) devices. Recently listened tracks on your mobile device will now be available on your Last.fm profile.

Earlier versions of the Strands Social Player have won Nokia’s Mobile Rules 2008! Award as the Best Multimedia Application and have received great reviews by many users.

If you are a music / ring tone service provider and looking for a new distribution channel, Strands Social Player might be your new web & mobile community business generator. Get in touch with us!

We’d love to hear your feedback!

Back in March we announced the “Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-Ups“, the Fastest Path to Fund your Project. Now that we are getting closer to the end of the submission period, next September 15th, we’d love to receive your proposal!

As you know, the Call is open to individuals or sole proprietors and privately held businesses throughout the world, and five Finalists will be invited to present their projects during the ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys08) next October 23rd to 25th, 2008 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Winner will receive a commemorative plaque and an offer of a $100,000 investment in the form of a convertible loan.

For further information, please visit http://recommender-startups.strands.com or contact the Strands $100,000 Call for Recommender Start-ups organizers at recommender-startups@strands.com.

Important dates:
September 15th: Proposal submission period ends
October 6th: Five Finalists are announced
October 23rd-25th: Presentations of Finalists at RecSys08
October 25th: Winner Announced

Contact and updates:
Email proposal to: recommender-startups@strands.com
http://recommender-startups.strands.com
http://blog.Strands.com
http://recsys.acm.org

Developed by BBVA and Strands, BBVA Tú cuentas (You count, in Spanish) is an innovative personal finance tool that allows online users to manage their personal finances better, offering friendly analysis tools to better understand spending and savings. A 100% customizable interface, personalized suggestions, and versions for the iPhone, Blackberry and Nokia phones are some of the unique characteristics of BBVA Tú cuentas, being offered to BBVA customers.

BBVA has 4.1 million online customers performing over 1.3 billion annual online transactions. Strands Social Recommender, a key component in the solution, will help BBVA better understand its customers’ needs and behavior, offering them personalized suggestions of financial and non-financial products.

BBVA Tú cuentas is launched today in private beta with the following features:

- Analysis of personal financial information. BBVA Tú cuentas displays a graphical representation of the customers’ financial health, break-down of their income and expenses, as well as their evolution through time. Charts help customers better understand their finances and see whether they have done better or worse than planned over time.

- Categorization of transactions. BBVA Tú cuentas organizes all transactions into a series of categories, and customers can also use personal tags if they prefer them. Having data well organized can help customers make better financial decisions.

- Comparison tools. Customers can tag themselves and BBVA Tú cuentas will compare them to similar customers. Offering meaningful comparisons with similar customers will help people better understand their personal finances and put them into context.

- Budget Goals. BBVA customers can set up their budget and keep their spending within the limits of what they can realistically afford. Additionally, they can choose to be notified if they happen to go over their set budget.

- Alerts. Customers can configure their own financial alerts and BBVA Tú cuentas will notify clients whenever they cross predefined limits. To round things off, customers can also combine these Alerts with their Budget Goals.

- Just for me. The collective knowledge of BBVA user base allows for BBVA Tú cuentas to offer an automatic selection of personalized suggestions for customers to make better decisions. (1) Practical financial and consumer tips to inform customers before they make money choices; (2) short list of most liked products matching each customer spending patterns; (3) financial products and services that may better address customer needs; (4) relevant facts and insightful aggregate stats based on community behavior.

- Aggregation of accounts. BBVA Tú cuentas allows BBVA clients to keep all of their financial data conveniently in one place. In addition to aggregating their BBVA accounts, customers can automatically add any other bank and utility accounts they may have.

Other key characteristics of the Strands personal finance solution are:

1.- A powerful widget platform enables maximum customization with minimum set-up time. Each of our 20 widgets is a little application that performs a specific feature. Clients can personalize each tab with the widgets they choose, to view the content they need.

2.- Powered by Strands Social Recommender, BBVA Tú cuentas provides users with the best personalized suggestions possible, helping them find new ways to save money and invest.

3.- It comes with tailored versions for Blackberry, iPhone and Nokia (S60) browsers, so that the service can be used on mobile devices just as easily as it can be used on computers.

BBVA is a financial services group with more than $783 billion in total assets, 42 million customers in 40 countries and a market capitalization of approximately $85 billion.

We are thrilled to be working with them in this amazing solution!

Well, we certainly think so. And this is precisely the topic of our next event Proactive Displays: Bridging the Gaps between Online Social Networks and Shared Physical Spaces, to be held at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona, next Friday June 27th.

The Strands innovation team in Seattle, lead by our Principal Instigator Joe McCarthy, works on developing technologies that bridge the gaps between the digital and physical world.

The focus is on creating large displays applications that can sense the people and activities taking place nearby and show content relating to those people, activities and place. Proactive displays enable people to share the richness of their online lives with others in physical contexts in which they feel – or want to feel – a sense of community and connection, bringing the benefits of virtual communities into the real world.

Some of the possibilities envisioned by science fiction movies are a bit disturbing (see this provocative picture from the film Minority Report). However, we believe that if users have total control to opt in – and out – from being exposed to things that might be relevant to them, these technologies can be friendly and useful.

We’ll leave for another post a description of some of the applications of these technologies, its evolution and challenges.

In the two weeks MyStrands WidSet has been available, more than 65,000 users have downloaded it!

WidSets is Nokia’s mobile widget platform, and is completely manufacturer and browser independent. Probably the biggest mobile widgeting platform in the world, it reaches more than 300 handset models and has over 6,000,000 users. As Nikolaj Nyholm wrote a while back, “WidSets is for the mobile what Netvibes is for the browser”.

How does this fit with the rest of our music services? MyStrands music experience is present in the complete triangle of Internet experiences:

1. Online service at http://mystrands.com and http://mystrands.TV.
2. Mobile with the MyStrands Social Player for Symbian, Java and Windows Mobile devices; MyStrands mobile website; and now also the MyStrands Widset
3. PC/Mac desktop applications with the Strands Tracker that works with iTunes, Windows Media Player, Winamp, Songbird, Pandora Radio, Last.fm and Amarok.

All are integrated through our public APIs (OpenStrands), and your one MyStrands account is good for all these services. OpenStrands demonstrates the power and universal applicability of the Strands Recommender to the entire ecosystem.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to send us your feedback!

Miguel is working on a CLI target compiler for haXe, which means that haXe will be able to run on the popular .NET framework , which should provide another solid desktop environment for development. This project will add a valuable new facet to haXe, providing even more opportunities in addition to haXe’s current target options of Javascript, SWF, Neko, and PHP.

Miguel had this to say about himself:

I’m Miguel, a Spanish student from Valladolid, a middle-size city 180 Km in the north of Madrid. I’v