Doge

The thing that is somewhat useful is seeing races that were posted that contain riders who you compete/may compete against. Especially TTs, where you can assume it is an all out individual effort. I know several coaches think its a bad idea, but riders are doing it.

f4rrest

This is fun. Here's mine (and I've been off the bike for the last 2 months).

Johnny Rad

Just joined VW... still trying to figure it all out. Looks like I'll have to nerd out with it for awhile so I can learn its capabilities.

phil_k

I haven't followed this convo, but I will add that as I have gotten stronger and faster and started tackling harder rides and climbs, my score has gone down compared to when I was riding most flat rides. It was in the high nineties, and now it's in the slow nineties. However I could blow the doors off of old me, I just don't do the easy rides anymore. I find it misleading enough to be useless.

chaadster

Veloviewer is dead. They decided to go "pay," in the worst way, and screwed their own pooch royally. A vanishing minority cared in the first place, but of those, only a sliver cared enough to pay for the service.

it hasn't quite been a year since they decided to sh*t on their users, but I'm surprised they've made it this long; this is the first I've heard any mention of VV in a long time. It sure seems as though no one cares about it anymore,

kbarch

Huh. I just discovered it, and think it's awesome. The numbers are interesting, but I really dig the graphics for the hills.
Here's the toughest one I've ever done: a picture is worth a thousand words - imagine trying to describe this:

Frankly, I'm surprised that Strava manages to offer all that they do for the basic service with no ads or anything. Seems that if anyone is getting screwed, it's the premium users of Strava who subsidize all the dabblers like myself.

chaadster

Doesn't seem too hard to describe: a 7.9km climb with an average 9.5% grade. Kicks hardest in the bottom half, with some stretches in the double-digits.

But yes, I agree that VV offers some fun features, it's just that they seem to have made themselves as unappealing to use as possible. Go back and search for VV in threads here, and I'm sure you'll see a marked and precipitous decline since they implemented their pay scheme. That, at least, is what I noticed.

Seattle Forrest

Delay can be good if you want to go in and edit anything (eg give the activity a name, or cycling -> road cycling).

bbbean 

Translation "I don't use or like Veloviewer."

LesterOfPuppets

Eurosport was using VeloViewer profile views in their coverage of TdF. That might bring in some new users.

I bailed after pay myself. After killing my S4 I had to go back to my olde Droid Pro, which Strava won't run on nowadays. Noticed that the free version of Endomondo has been stripped bare.

kbarch

Well, I figure you get what you pay for, so one shouldn't be surprised if what's free isn't worthwhile. If anyone is abusing anyone else, it's the people who take, without paying, what others have to work to provide.

Spoonrobot 

I just rolled through here to say that I love Veloviewer. I signed up for the pay service as soon as it was announced since it's totally worth it to me. Being able to view and sort online as well as export all my rides or segments to excel and the cool graphs and maps are totally worth the price. It's a measly $15.74 for a whole year. I've found more money on the side of the road this year.

I recommend it to everyone I meet that uses Strava since it really increases the functionality of that program when paired together.

kbarch

You missed the switchbacks, the teases, and the relentlessness of it
We did another 1st Category climb later that day, but I HATED that one, and I generally like hills. Same category, but look how nice this one is

chaadster

No, I used to use it, and even donated once. It just does not provide me anything useful, interesting, or otherwise worth $15/year.

chaadster

The irony, of course, is that Veloviewer does not pay me or Strava for the data it takes it provide its "service," so I figure that makes VV the biggest abuser of all. Is that what you meant?

chaadster

There is certainly a level of detail provided by the charts that is valuable to some, but from what I can tell, from a business perspective, VV would have been better off retaining and building their user base rather than slashing it (I admittedly don't know the numbers to verify that, but it'd be very surprising if it worked out otherwise).

Given that the incremental costs of delivering some key functionality to all users was undoubtedly low, VV should have identified it's core element of appeal and exploited that. I happen to think that element was the Score, but that's just me. Instead, the sequestered the feature, and walled out most users.

If anyone in 2015 thinks that walling off users on a web based data analyzing tool-- VV doesn't even have an app!-- that only generates interpretive content is the way to go, then please allow me to propose you get in on this virtual Brooklyn Bridge project some of the best hackers in Russia are working on. A small Bitcoin investment could reap millions of nairas in profit!

kbarch

Not ironic at all. Our raw data is like raw wheat. You take your wheat to the mill, they grind it and turn it into flour. You pay to have your flour ground without getting paid by the miller for the wheat to put in the mill. Then, whether you sell the flour or make it into bread for your own consumption is your own business, but if you won't or can't make anything useful of it, that isn't the fault of the miller.

Now you might say the difference here is that they take your data for their own use, in order to produce the rankings and comparisons, and they make money off that. Naturally: it's pay to play, and it's only a rip off to those who didn't understand what they were getting into (and sore losers of course).

And by the way, I don't imagine Strava are being taken advantage of too much, what with the way VV promotes them.

Seattle Forrest

Have you ever heard of apache, linux, php, mysql, etc?

diphthong

94.75 with 3,263 segments. apparently i love to explore-slowly.

kbarch

Yes, and I misspoke. Sharing, volunteering, public domain, etc., are all very nice. I just think it's childish the way some people think they ought to get things for free just because they can sometimes, and resent it when other people just try to make a go of things and profit from their labors. If one thinks that a job ought to be done without compensation, then one can do it oneself rather than demanding it from others or being upset when they don't do it.

f4rrest

I paid. $15 is chump change and I value the effort put into it.