Company

Company / Features / Website — Comments Off
12
Apr 13

Earndit Privacy Controls

privacy

As an Earndit member, there’s not much information about you that gets displayed to others on Earndit, not even your followers. However, we are sensitive to the fact that some people are very private and don’t want to expose any info about themselves or their levels of physical activity. We’re happy to announce the launch of some privacy controls on Earndit.

You can now control two different aspects of Earndit from your Settings page:

  1. Control who follows you. People who follow you are able to see the trophies you earn, the rewards you earn and the challenges you enter. This is actually good for the community because your accomplishments serve as motivation to those who follow you.
  2. Control who can view your profile. Please keep in mind that if you join a challenge, your progress in the challenge will be visible to others even if you set privacy controls. That’s the only way to maintain a good user experience in challenges.

Screen shot 2013-04-12 at 4.09.31 PM

Company / Tracking — 17 Comments
16
Feb 13

Change in how Fitbit points are earned

Since first integrating Fitbit into Earndit, we’ve awarded points based on the number of minutes users had in the “fairly active” and “very active” categories as determined by Fitbit’s algorithm. We liked this method of awarding points because it took advantage of a unique measurement captured by the device.

After many discussions internally and with Earndit members, we’ve decided to change the way we award Fitbit points to be based on the number of steps taken as measured by the device. There are three primary reasons why we feel this will be a better user experience for Earndit members who use Fitbit:

  1. It’s simple to understand. Nobody knows exactly what level of exertion is required in order to enter the “fairly active” and “very active” stratospheres. Those classifications are a big unknown to Fitbit users. Many have even griped that they get different activity minute outputs from Fitbit for the apparently same workout on different days. On the other hand, everybody knows what steps are and they’re a completely objective measurement.
  2. You can track progress on the device. By awarding points based on steps, it’s now possible to know how many Earndit points you’ve earned at any time in the day simply by looking at your device to see the number of recorded steps. In this way, if you see that you’re not tracking to the number of points that you’d like, you know that you need to increase your physical activity for the remainder of the day. With the prior method of awarding points, you were forced to upload your data to Fitbit and then come over to Earndit to see how many points you’ve earned.
  3. Working harder gets you more points. Previously, once you were in the “very active” zone, any incremental intensity you exerted wouldn’t be rewarded. You capped out at “very active”. On the other hand, now that points are earned via steps, increasing intensity earns you points that much more quickly. It’s more intuitive.

As with any change, we know that there will be positive and negative reactions to the new way we award points for Fitbit usage. Ultimately we believe it’ll show to be a net positive change for Fitbit users on Earndit.

Andres

 

Company / Game — 3 Comments
18
Jun 12

The Talent Behind Our Trophy Designs

Earndit members seem to really enjoy the digital trophies they get for all their different exercise behaviors. These trophies are a great way of commemorating all the work you put in to leading an active lifestyle. To that end, we try to make sure that each trophy has a quirky title and a fun design.

Meet Jilly Bienkowski. She’s the mastermind behind the trophy designs you’ve been seeing lately on Earndit. Hailing from Brooklyn, Jilly considers herself a geek and a fan of cheese. Ha! She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology (F.I.T.) with a degree in Graphic Design, and previous work includes designs for greeting cards and for some local bands. As dogs are near and dear to our hearts, we were happy to learn that Jilly has a mix of a German Shepherd and Chihuahua (woah!) named Nala — yes, named after the lioness in The Lion King.

We hope you continue to enjoy Jilly’s creations!

Company / Rewards — 15 Comments
22
May 12

Donate Your Earndit Points to Charity

Almost everything we do at Earndit can be boiled down to one purpose: to give you reasons to value your Earndit points. In doing so, you’ll continue to exercise in order to get those cherished points, and in turn we can help create a healthier population. So far there have been two primary reasons for you to want Earndit points — so that you can redeem them for rewards, and so you can be eligible for prizes in the sponsored challenges. For most people, these two value propositions are compelling enough to get them to be active. But now we’d like to add a third value proposition: charitable donations! We’re thrilled to announce that you can now spend your points for a social cause.

How does it work? Whenever a community goal is reached for one of the charitable efforts we support, we will make a donation in support of that goal. By redeeming your points for a certain cause, you’ll bring the Earndit community closer to the goal and closer to unlocking a donation. There are currently 6 causes that you can support.

In full transparency, we generate revenue whenever you redeem your points for a reward or whenever you participate in a sponsored challenge; on the contrary, charitable donations will cost us money. It’s our hope that you’ll continue to see value in the rewards we offer & the sponsored challenges we host and continue to use Earndit in those ways. Ultimately though, these charitable donations are an extension of our social mission of making this world a slightly healthier place.

To see which causes you can donate your points to, just go to the tab titled “Redeem” and click the sub-section called “Giving”.

Please let us know what you think of this new dimension of Earndit.

Andres & Your Earndit Crew

Company / Features / Rewards / Website — 2 Comments
13
May 12

Filtering Your Rewards on Earndit

Now that the number of rewards available on Earndit has grown to close to 40 (wow!!), we figured it’d be good to give you a way to easily filter the types of rewards you’d like to see on the page.

When perusing rewards on the “Redeem” page, you can use the filter tool in the top-right of the page (see the red box in the screenshot above this post). This will allow you to filter the rewards by categories such as food, clothing and lifestyle. You can also sort them in order of popularity, or how recently they’ve been added to Earndit, or in order of points needed. Finally, you can check the box to only show rewards that you have enough points for.

This should make finding and redeeming rewards more convenient for you. Please feel free to let us know what you think.

Andres

Company / Rewards — Comments Off
26
Jan 12

Journey Bar Saved Me In Nepal

We had been climbing uphill for 2 hours and had another 3 hours of uphill climb to go. We were also at an elevation of about 10,000 feet. This is not a good time to run out of stamina!

My wife and I just came back from Nepal where we did a 5-day trek through the foothills of the Himalayas. It was absolutely stunning and I’d be happy to share pictures, but this story is not about that. Rather, this story is about how we were caught a bit by surprise with how strenuous the second day of the trek would be. It was only the night prior that we learned that we’d be climbing steeply uphill for 5 hours straight. We were on our way to Ghorepani – a hilltop village with a gorgeous view of the Himalayan mountains. The food available to us would have been sufficient for routine daily life, but a trek is nothing close to routine.

We set out on that second day around 8:15am. By 8:45am my calves were beginning to cramp and I was breathing quite heavily. While I consider myself to be in decent shape, this was a completely different type of workout than I was used to. We would take short breaks every 15 minutes or so, ensuring to hydrate and stretch our muscles if need be.

Around 10:15am, not even halfway through the day’s physical demands, I began to hit a wall. Keep in mind that we were about 6 hours away from the nearest road, so I had no option but to power through the climb. Fortunately my wife is a great packer and remembered that she had brought a couple Journey Bars along for the trek. Bingo! I ripped open the barbecue flavored bar and smiled with each bite. It was delicious. More importantly, it was like stumbling upon an oasis in the desert. The bar rejuvenated me with the fuel I needed to continue the trek and make it to Ghorepani.

Thank you Journey Bar!! You saved me in Nepal.

Andres

Company / Exercise / Game — 1 Comment
13
Dec 11

BodyMedia Points Formula

We are so thrilled to have a large base of BodyMedia FIT users on Earndit. You have shown yourselves to be a friendly and encouraging group of people and you lift the positive vibe of the Earndit community.

There have been several questions as to how BodyMedia points are calculated on Earndit and we’d like to provide an answer to everyone at once. First, some background on our philosophy with awarding points:

We accept data from many different types of tracking services. Some are devices worn all day (BodyMedia and Fitbit), other devices are worn for a specific workout (Garmin and Nike+ chip), others are apps used for specific workouts (RunKeeper, Nike+ app and Everytrail) and another is just used once to signal you’re about to workout (Foursquare). It’s important that we create an even playing field with all of these services so that someone who uses BodyMedia could compare themselves to someone who uses RunKeeper. We’re trying to draw apples-to-apples comparisons among apples, oranges and bananas. Not an easy task! Additionally, we like to celebrate each tracking service’s unique capabilities by leveraging the specific data it records.

With BodyMedia FIT, we look at each and every minute of the day in which the device recorded activity. For any minute in which your MET level is at a 3 or higher, we assign that minute a point value of: 0.1 x (MET – 1). For example, if you spend 10 minutes at a MET level of 9, you’d earn 8 points for those 10 minutes of activity.

If you were to go for a run with a BodyMedia FIT device while also tracking the run using RunKeeper, you’d certainly get more points from the RunKeeper tracking than the BodyMedia tracking for that one event. HOWEVER, because BodyMedia FIT is worn all day long, you’re also earning points for all your other activities throughout the day (e.g. walking around your home, doing the dishes, etc). As you can see, if we tried to make BodyMedia FIT points equal RunKeeper points on a specific workout, then BodyMedia users would get far more points throughout the day. This wouldn’t be “fair” to RunKeeper users.

Finally, there have been some concerns that people aren’t able to reach 60 points per day. Trust me, it’s okay if you don’t get 60 points in a day. It’s meant to be hard to do. I’ve only done it a couple times in the past year!

As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any feedback. You can also email me directly at dremoran@earndit.com.

Be active, get rewarded, you earndit!

Andres

Company / Exercise / Game / Rewards — 1 Comment
8
Nov 11

iHealth Challenge was our biggest yet

We just wrapped up the 7-day iHealth Challenge and it was our largest one yet with 940 participants! Wow! The prizes were iHealth’s sophisticated blood pressure docks that connect to any iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod). Not only does the product keep track of all of your readings and present them to you in graphical form, you can share them with family or a doctor. iHealth gave one of these blood pressure docks to the absolute winner of the challenge and to four randomly selected people who earned at least 100 points in the challenge.

We were very pleased to see how much camaraderie and support there was among people in the challenge. Participants were drawing inspiration from each other and kept each other motivated. That’s what Earndit is all about!

The winner of the challenge was Damen L. He put up a staggering 1310 points and was followed by Sarah R who had 1202 points. The four randomly selected winners of the other blood pressure docks were: Andrew C, Robin L, Michael M and Emily F.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the iHealth Challenge. And a big thank you to iHealth for supporting the Earndit community.

This same exact challenge will run again on Nov 15th!

Company / Exercise / Rewards / Uncategorized — 1 Comment
1
Nov 11

Peeled Snacks Challenge summary

Woo-hoo! Congratulations to everyone who participated in the Peeled Snacks Challenge that just ended yesterday. There were a few formidable contenders who took the top slots, yet everyone who participated is a winner in our books! ;)  Yes, we’re cheezy.

A big “Thank You” is owed to Peeled Snacks for providing the prizes in the challenge, which included something for everyone!

The first place prize was a 6-month membership to their Organic Fruit of the Month Club (valued at $140). This was intended to go to Garry D. for landing the top spot in the challenge; however, since we forgot to mention that Peeled Snacks doesn’t ship to Australia which is where Garry lives, we will be rewarding him with money out of our own pockets. Thus the 6-month membership will go to Donald M who took second place.

The consolation prizes were a 3-month membership to the Organic Fruit of the Month Club (valued at $90). Four people who earned at least 100 points in the challenge were randomly selected to receive the consolation prize, and those four people are: Benjamin B., John B., Frank W. and Deborah C.

And everyone gets a $5 gift card for participating! You should have received your code via email by now.

Thank  you for participating and having fun with the challenge. Thank you Peeled Snacks for your continued support of the Earndit community!

Company / Rewards — 11 Comments
8
Sep 11

New Reward: FitOrbit Training

FitOrbit is the leading and most successful online personal training system. FitOrbit gives you customized workout plans and meal plans created specifically for you by a certified personal trainer. Furthermore, this trainer is accessible to you at any time to give you continuous guidance and support.

Your trainer will learn everything necessary about you and your needs to provide a daily diet and workout plan to help you reach your goals.

The pricing of the program varies depending on how much time you commit to up-front:

  • Week-to-Week:  $120 per month
  • Month-to-Month:  $80 per month
  • 3-Month Package:  $60 per month ($180 total)
  • 6-Month Package:  $40 per month ($240 total)

This reward gives you two months for the low price of $60 (a $100 savings)!

Go get rewarded, you earndit!

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