As of today a total of 366 372km has been recorded and uploaded to the Marathon website. Quite a large number, isn't it? To put it into context I've calculated the progress in percentage of the average distance between the earth and the moon. You can see it here.
Uploading data to the webpage is optional, about 17% of the users who have downloaded the Windows Phone 7 app have also registered and uploaded at least 1 result. The most active users are more likely to register and utilize the webpage, but I think it's safe to say that we would be back on earth by now if we count every recording ever made.
Recordings by platform
The Windows Mobile app still beats Windows Phone 7 in number of recordings with a total of 64%. If we only count results from 2011 Windows Phone is ahead by a total of 59%. We can also see that Mango is spreading quickly, over the past month 68% of Windows Phone 7 results were recorded using Marathon 3.0 (which requires Mango).
A positive trend
The number of Marathon users is continuing to grow; as are the amount of data uploaded to the website. Our speed is currently at about 20 000 km/month, but I suspect it'll slow down a bit during the winter in the northern hemisphere. Mars is at its closest point about 55 million km away from earth, so for our next mission we need all the help we can get :).
It’s now been one year since Marathon was made available in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace; and over two years since the first public release on Windows Mobile! As of today you can also grab the Mango update and enjoy an even smoother user experience with fast app switching and 32bit colors. A lot of features have been added, bugs fixed and performance tuned over the past year. Here are some of the most significant additions:
- Live Tracking - Let your friends follow your progress online in (almost) real time.
- Achievements – A little reward for your hard work.
- Bing Maps – See how you’ve been running on an interactive map.
- Statistics on a km (or mile) basis.
- Backup and restore data using http://www.marathon-mobile.net.
- Voice announcements in all supported languages.
- Automatically pause a recording when you’re standing still.
- A lot of other minor features and tweaks.
The website hosting Marathon has also been updated with a new design and had a few features added. Together the users of Marathon have uploaded more than 29 000 results with a total of over 340 000 km, or 8.7 laps around the world!
So if you still haven’t tried Marathon, now is the time. It’s available in both a free and a full version with trial, so there’s no excuse not to try it out :).
Premium with trial ($1.49):
Free: