We’re pleased to announce that the latest update (version 4.1) of Cyclemeter, Runmeter, and Walkmeter, which have been in development for about four months now. What’s new:

• Automatic Stop Detection senses when you have stopped moving and attributes time automatically to stopped time, so that your elapsed time and other statistics cover only when you are moving. Elapsed time will continue to increase until the stop is detected, and then will roll back to when the stop started. Note: Off by default, turn on in Settings.
• Calendar Sharing synchronizes your workouts to your iPhone Calendar when you tap the Done button in the Stopwatch view, and when a workout is edited. This is useful because the iPhone Calendar may be shared with iCal or Outlook, and with external calendars, such as Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange.

Click the links above to learn more. The update is free, just use iTunes or the App Store application on your iPhone.

This is why we had a blast coding our newest feature, automatic stop detection. Just tap More, then Settings, and turn on Stop Detection. And it just works. Whenever you stop, our app analyzes the incoming GPS data, and then rolls back your elapsed time to when the stop started, and attributes the time you are stopped to the stopped time display.

While you are underway, stopped time is shown underneath your elapsed time. And then after your workout is done, you can see the summary in your detailed workout data. You can even edit the workout and turn off stop detection to see what the time would have been otherwise.

Because GPS accuracy varies, using Stop and Start or our remote control will provide the most accurate results possible. But we’ve been testing and refining it for months now, and we’re quite happy with the results. We hope you are, too!

Thanks to the hundreds of people who wrote to us requesting this feature, your input raised automatic stop detection to the top of the list.

On to the next big technical challenge!

Runmeter, Cyclemeter, and Walkmeter now support calendar sharing, allow you, your friends, your coaches, or anybody you want to easily share your workouts. You can even embed your workout calendar in a Web site or a blog, with the information being updated live.

How does it work? We’ve employed a seldom-mentioned but powerful technology called Event Kit in iOS 4 that allows applications like ours to update your iOS calendar. And from there, your iOS calendar can be shared in both directions with Google Calendar, Microsoft Exchange, AOL, Yahoo, MobileMe, and iCal on your desktop every time you sync.

Why would you do it? First of all, this allows you to see all of your workouts on your iOS calendar, along with everything else you do. Even more importantly, you can share it. For example, your coach can mark on a Google Calendar every workout you should do. Then on the same calendar, your actual results will be automatically posted, and automatically synchronized for your coach to evaluate.

I used your Cyclemeter application to keep all of my friends, family and work colleagues up to date on our progress and I have to say it worked perfectly! Everyone was amazed at the updates that Cyclemeter provided and how it kept people interested in our progress as we travelled across the country.

We all raised money for different charities amounting to more than £10,000!!

Here are the final brief stats from our ride as follows:

Journey Time – 12 Days
Distance Travelled – 931 miles
Elevation climbed – 33,000 feet – higher than Mt Everest!!
Calories burnt – 49,000

I would just like to thank all the people who helped develop this great application. I tested Cyclemeter out in some pretty severe rain and wind, yet it never faltered once!!

At one of our fundraisers, we had supporters guess our accumulated training mileage and Cyclemeter was a cool way to verify to everyone how much we had accomplished.

I think the app is great and I’m looking forward to the next upgrade to Cyclemeter.

• Monday: iOS 4 available.
• Wednesday: Apple approves version 4.0 of Runmeter, Walkmeter, and Cyclemeter.
• Thursday: Received my new iPhone 4.
• Friday: Took my first run  the iPhone 4.

Here’s a video about our support of multitasking and iOS 4.

Thanks to all of our customers who wrote to us, and for the all the encouragement for our apps and iOS 4!

• We added a setting to announcements that gives you two options for how our announcements interact with iPod audio.  In the past, the default had been to interrupt the iPod audio.  Many of our customers said they’d rather have the iPod audio “duck” (lower in volume) while the announcement is play, so we made it an option.  If Interrupt iPod Audio is On, then the iPod will be interrupted during announcements.  If off, the iPod volume will be lowered.  This also helped with an issue in which an announcement would happen, and iPod audio would stay off.
• We added a setting called Power Off Remote After that helps save battery life.  If you lock your iPhone, this setting controls how long the app will keep listening for you to use the earphone remote to start and stop.
• Settings for “Run Shows” and “Walk Shows” was added, which controls whether those activities show speed (distance / time) or pace (time / distance) measurements.  This is also available if you edit the Run or Walk activities, but we wanted to make this easier for folks to find and change.
• By popular demand, we added “Day” and “All” summaries to the calendar.  Now the app can summarize by day, week, month, year, and overall.
• We added more distance intervals for announcements.
• We improved calorie calculations for cycling.
• We also improved performance, especially for generating KML files and and drawing large routes.

We work continuously to improve our apps, and we answer all of our support requests personally, and quickly.  Our 3.0.3 version is the 17th update we’ve done this year, all providing more functionality, improved quality, and enhanced performance.  We hope you like it.

For more detail, see our press release, or better yet, take a product tour of Runmeter, Cyclemeter, or Walkmeter.