I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to bring news to the Nokia Sports Tracker Beta migration to Sports Tracking Technologies issue!

I received a surprise phone call two days ago from Jussi Kaasinen, one of the two-person core team of developers responsible for bringing the Nokia Sports Tracker Beta project to us since March of 2007. Together with the other half of that team, Ykä Huhtala, they founded their own company named Sports Tracking Technologies back in June of this year. Jussi told me that his call was partly in response to my earlier post and partly just to touch base with a long-standing user of the service.

Jussi wanted me to let everyone know that the Sports Tracking Technologies (STT) incarnation is very much alive and kicking, and that they have appreciated the huge volumes of suggestions and feedback that continually flood their inboxes every day. He also apologized for the “quietness” throughout the exhausting process of migrating from Nokia. STT is slightly larger now than the original two-person core team, but their available resources have been especially limited due to complicated intellectual property issues; Jussi said, “You wouldn’t believe the amount of diligent individuals it has taken to make this transfer the amicable success that it is!.” Our conversation lasted for about a half hour.

I will not be able to make any major announcements on their behalf today, sorry. What I can tell you is that STT are working around the clock to ready a variety of feature enhancements and compatibility refinements for products and services which promise to remain wholly sports-centric. Jussi agreed with my opinion that the “Ovi Journeys: The Evolution of Sports Tracker” recent write-up is more of an evolution of the former “Vine” project than anything to do with the new STT. Nokia wil remain in the picture, solely and importantly (imo), as a client of STT.

One thing is clear: STT are passionate about their horizons and are committed to the development and integrity of the Sports Tracker service.

I will continue my dialogue with STT later this week, so stay tuned.

Thanks to Vaibhav Sharma of TheSymbianBlog, we had news yesterday from the Ovi Maps team that Nokia Sports Tracker Beta (NST) is “evolving” into a Maps component, called Ovi Journeys. I’ve been anticipating a move like this ever since Nokia made a statement that they would be “…giving Sports Tracker wings…” a couple months ago.

For those of us who have been following NST closely from the beginning, the last time the it’s developers (Ykä Huhtala and Jussi Kaasinen) engaged their audience directly was about a year ago. Since then there’s been a virtual blackout, save for server change/downtime announcements. And yes, I am including the Polar for Nokia heart rate monitor experiment. In today’s fast-paced and crowded application market, many notable apps have been refined by developers directly responding to user feedback. However, if our guys at NST are listening, no one would ever know.

When Ykä and Jussi were last publicly asking about what NST users were thinking, it was surrounding the Nokia Vine Project. Those of us who had fallen in love with SportsTracker saw Vine as a probable successor to the sports-centric app. It made perfect sense when you considered the most universally applicable aspects of NST; Geo-tagging captured media along a recorded route. All the runners, cyclists and skiers using NST combined would be dwarfed by a well-impemented social geo-networking service using the same tools NST provides. Admitting this to myself, I was waiting for Vine to take over NST sometime soon in December 2008. Then, suddenly, Vine went dark and its embeddable tracking widget stopped working in January 2009.

February rolls around and Nokia announces NST will be adding heart rate monitors in a joint venture with Polar. Looking back, this had to be one of the worst handled bits of news for NST. Initially I was elated that my favorite app was not only showing signs life, but seemed to have more momentum than ever. The addition of heart rate stats confirmed NST as the king of the mountain. Packaged and promoted correctly, I saw NST as a potentially better athletic tool than anything Suunto, Garmin or Polar currently had. You got route recording, vital statistics, maps, camera, music, phone and everything else typical of a S60 device versus an expensive wristwatch with all kinds of accessories to buy.

So, what happened? The NST/Polar for Nokia (N79 Active Edition) announcement had an incredible public response initially. A cute YouTube video promoting the package gets hundreds of thousands of views. Nokia Beta Labs (NBL) Sports Tracker forum lights up as the most actively commented application. Questions came often and from everywhere looking for release dates. NBL moderators told us the NST devs were overwhelmed with their workload and would no longer be able to respond to questions, but that the team was “silently listening” to all feedback given. Eventually, we learned that the N79 AE and Polar for Nokia accessory was just an experiment, a test if you will. No details were ever given to the status of the project and NST’s devs became more silent than ever before. Only three test markets (NO, FI and ZA) would see a very limited release of the N79 AE and the Polar for Nokia accessory would only make it into the hands of a lucky few.

Then, on July 30 of this year came this announcement from Nokia Conversations: “Nokia is not killing Sports Tracker, but giving it some wings and will discontinue the Nokia Sports Tracker beta towards the end of 2009 migrating it to Sports Tracking Technologies…Given more breathing room, the Sport Tracker guys will be able to start developing other related sports apps.” 10 weeks later and we have yet to hear from our guys at NST about anything.

Back to the news which broke yesterday calling Ovi Journeys an “evolution” of NST.

I don’t care how you spin it, as good as Ovi Journeys sounds as a more practical implementation of NST’s basic tool-set, please don’t call it an evolution for the app. To the contrary, it’s the death of Nokia Sports Tracker Beta and is Nokia’s way of salvaging their stake in the popular app. An EVOLUTION for NST would be a more stable mobile app, adding richer workout analyzations and fitness calculators/tools to its web services and for it’s developers to re-establish open dialogues with their loyal users.

With nearly 3000 km recorded in the last calendar year alone (running only) using NST, tons of forum feedback, bug reporting, assisting other users, promoting the service and proud owner of a N79 AE, I’m self-qualified as a loyal user. How about some news from Sports Tracking Technologies? Please.