thepersonalnetwork:

Your alarm goes off at six a.m. It’s a good day for a run, so you tie your laces and step out the door. The first steps work out the morning stiffness but you start to hit your stride, and soon you’ve reached your route’s first hill. Your legs are beginning an early burn. Then through your…

Big update to Path today — their first API partner, Nike. Right now, you can push your running data to Path and soon you’ll be able to pull in data right from the FuelBand. 

Something else awesome: when people see you’re running they can take action to virtually “cheer” you along the way. If you have your headphones in, you’ll hear a cheer.

These types of real-world integrations show a glimpse of the huge potential for the service as a platform. A fully mobile platform.

Path 2.1 also has some great updates to the Music and Photo features. Find it in the App Store here. 

Update: And visit this site for more slickness on the Nike integration.

Disclosure: CrunchFund is an investor in Path — because it’s awesome and we invest in awesome things.

What’s most interesting to me is that I’ve had the exact same feelings as Dustin Curtis has had at points in my own life. And I have a feeling that many others have as well. Which is why both Twitter and Path work. (And interestingly enough, both had to overcome a ton of early skepticism.)

And yes, I have the same feeling about Highlight. (I haven’t yet tried out Glassmap, but I certainly will now). It was one of those initial gut feelings. Which is exactly why we invested. And why we did in Path as well. And why we would have in Twitter if CrunchFund existed back then.

Dustin Curtis more directly states something I hit on earlier with regard to the Path address book situation:

I did a quick survey of 15 developers of popular iOS apps, and 13 of them told me they have a contacts database with millons of records. One company’s database has Mark Zuckerberg’s cell phone number, Larry Ellison’s home phone number and Bill Gates’ cell phone number. This data is not meant to be public, and people have an expectation of privacy with respect to their contacts.

This really isn’t a secret, ask around. There are a lot of apps you use on a daily basis doing the same thing. Some have for a long time. None (that I know of) are doing it to be evil, they’re doing it because it’s a connection/spreading mechanism that iOS allows for. 

And again, from what I hear, Apple is likely to change this soon as well. But I’m with Curtis, I can’t understand why this unrestricted access was in place to begin with. I really can’t think of a good reason.

Hate to say it so early on in the product’s life, but the Jawbone UP has been a pretty big disappointment. Not just the failure/refund fiasco, but the actual product itself too.

This competitor from Nike at least sounds interesting for two key reasons. 1) Bluetooth. 2) Something that Jordan Crook fails to mention in the TC article — it works with Path.

Some smart thoughts on the new Path by Hunter Walk (full disclosure: a good enough friend of mine to be a Path friend).

A great point on the “seen” numbers:

Lots of the P2 design choices are wonderful and detailed. The one I totally disagree with is making “view by #” a default piece of metadata. Seeing high #s on my friends’ posts (because they’ve accepted more friend requests) is subtle pressure for me to friend more people as well to establish my credibility within the ecosystem. Path has focused on creating value in its feature, not via game mechanics and this is the one inconsistent decision. My solution would be to record that data and make it visible only to the post’s author in their own view. That way i can see which of my posts had the most interaction relative to the size of my own graph.

That’s one element of Path that seems to go against its core strength as a tighter network. Walk’s solution is a good one, I think. 

Related: a week ago, Josh Constine also wrote about Path’s unique social dynamic:

The maximum sharing volume likely comes with a friend count of between 3 and 5. As you hit 15, 40, or 100, you’ll censor yourself more, and find less reason to use Path in addition to other services.

That means you have to undertake the socially awkward experience of rejecting requests from your co-workers, acquaintances, and fellow early adopters, and make sure not to put them in the same position. You may have already let some loose acquaintances into your inner circle or have outstanding requests from Path 1, and will need to go in and remove them.

I was coming dangerously close to the 150 limit when I went in yesterday and removed some people. I don’t mean this to be an insult, of course, but rather a reality check. Am I really that close with you? Should we actually be connected here?

I cut about 15 connections. I plan to do more. But it’s hard. It really does go against everything we’ve been taught about social networks the past 5 years. That’s not a bad thing by any means. It’s just different. 

Speaking of Path, hopefully you’ve visited their new website by now. If not, click the link above. It’s amazing.

It’s the kind of thing you used to need Flash for. And it was one of the few decent arguments for why it perhaps should stick around. With it, you could make a website that felt alive — more like art and less utilitarian. Path’s Danny Trinh replicated that using only HTML5. 

It’s a tad bit blurry and it doesn’t work on the iPad, but we’ll let those slide.

Watching the reaction to Path 2 that past few hours has been fascinating. It’s a testament to the idea that design matters. And I don’t just mean how the app looks. To quote Steve Jobs, “It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

The Path team has nailed so many little things with their app that the first impression users are coming away with is sheer delight. That alone won’t get them to their full potential, but it’s a hell of a start.

Little things matter. Not compromising matters. Attention to detail matters.

I bet there are at least a half dozen things in this app that become standard design practice in most iOS apps. And they’re things Facebook and Google won’t be able to copy anytime soon with their UIWebView wrappers. 

Update: Path engineer Rafik Salama explains that the HTML5 video isn’t the problem on the iPad, it’s the auto-play functionality — which makes sense.