Garmin, Get Your Act Together

I went for my 80 mile loop ride today; it's posted at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9719415. I need to start training with PowerCranks again and getting back into a routine; my power data clearly indicates that I'm getting fat, slow, and lazy.

Garmin Connect is a neat service; in fact, it integrates many of the features that I would have liked to see in some other programs, like WKO and SportTracks. Of course, there is no single program that does everything I'd like, so I'll probably end up writing my own in the next few years. In short, I want a program that has all of the advanced power analysis features of WKO, with the mapping features of SportTracks and Connect, that allows you to seamlessly store information both in a standalone app (because I don't always have Internet at races) and online in the cloud (because I like to share my data).

The single biggest complaint I have, at present, is that Connect doesn't work in Opera or Chrome. (I haven't tried Safari.) Come on guys, really? I haven't taken a look at Garmin's Javascripts at all, but I'm guessing it's a simple fix. For all that they've done to embrace Web standards - the .TCX format is, after all, just an XML standard that works with the usual XML processing tools very nicely - it's a real pity that Garmin locks browsers this way. It's like the browser wars all over again. Party like it's 1997.

The best thing about standards, is that there are so many to choose from!