May 15, 2009 was National Ride your Bike to Work day, and I pulled out my bike and rode the 6 or so miles between my house and the Kynetx offices at Thanksgiving Point. I enjoyed it, and rode a few more times in the next week. I was musing how many miles I could ride this summer, and mentioned it to my wife. She promptly challenged me to ride 1,000 miles this summer.

I better say here that I'm not a cyclist. I haven't ridden 1,000 miles in the past 5 years, all combined together. While 1,000 miles might not be much for a cyclist, it is quite the challenge for me.

Tracking My Progress

In addition to making a few bike repairs and buying some commuting tires for my mountain bike, I immediately cooked up some geeky ways to track my progress and share my results with my family and friends.

I'm a (BIG) Android fan, and so I'm using my T-Mobile G1 as a cyclometer. I'm using the My Tracks application, which records both the route of my ride and my ride stats. After my ride, the app uploads my stats to a Google Docs Spreadsheet, where stats are calculated. I'll share more about that in a future post.

To share my progress, I'm using Kynetx Network Services (KNS) to augment my personal blog with my stats. If you are reading this post on my blog, look at just under the title for my updated stats. KNS pulls my ride stats from the Google Spreadsheet and annotates my website. All I had to do was plant some javascript tags in my blog's template to activate the Kynetx Application that makes the change.

My friends and family don't visit my blog EVERY day, so I've also produced an Action Card that displays my ride stats on Google's home page. KNS allows me to augment websites for anyone that has my Action Card installed. I'll explain more about how I wrote my Kynetx Application in a future blog post, but for now, you can install my "Sam Rides 1000" card to track my progress on Google's home page.

Installing The Action Card

An Action Card is a type of Information Card that allows your web experience to be augmented with a Kynetx Application. You activate the application by installing an Action Card Selector if you don't already have one, and then installing the card. You can disable or remove the card if and when you don't want to use the application.

1. Verify you have a supported browser: IE/FF on Win, FF on OSX
2. Install Azigo
3. Install the Sam Rides 1000 Action Card

Then, browse to Google's main page to see my stats: http://www.google.com

When I finish a ride and update my stats, you'll see the new numbers. If I'm falling behind, be sure and give me a nudge!