Tag: discontinued

The “Endomondo” of an era.

I’m probably the last person to report on this, but I learned a couple of days ago that popular fitness app “Endomondo” will be closing its doors for good at the end of the year. Gosh darn it.

Both of of you that have followed this blog for any period of time, know that Endomondo pops up quite regularly, either in the form of a screenshot, or a batch of statistics about a particular walk. I’ve used it since I’ve had a GPS enabled phone, so you’re probably talking about 10 years, and several phones.. I fired it up the other day, as I was about to record a (lockdown-sanctioned) pokemon walk, and was presented with this screen…

Ugh. As I mentioned, there’s a lot of data on there which I wouldn’t mind keeping, thankfully, they have a “Download My Data” function, so hopefully I’ll be able to retrieve part, if not all, of everything that’s on there.

Apparently, there’s another app called “MapMyRun” which they recommend downloading, as you can see… Well, seeing as my running days are long behind me, I downloaded “MapMyWalk”. I did a search for “MapMyWaddle”, but it doesn’t exist… whether the information generated by this new software is as intresting as Endomondo remains to be seen.

Goodbye Micro Mart, I shall remember you fondly.

Ah, so 2017 starts off with the first sad death of the year… my favourite little magazine… “Micro Mart”.

Well, OK, technically, it died last year, as this last issue is dated 29th December – 31st Never, but still, I didn’t find out until I was browsing a local WH smith.

I must start by saying , I wasn’t a prolific reader, and instead decided to just pick up an occasional issue, either when looking for a new PC (or parts for an existing PC). In fact, it was waay back in 1996, when one of my old college lecturers told me about it, and especially one of their advertisers, called something like “Page 72”, who, you guessed it, always ran their adverts on Page 72. I’m probably wrong with the page number there, but I always thought it was a nifty little martketing tool. You’d always know where to find them!

In fact, I bought my very first computer from out of a Micro Mart advert, around that same time, possibly from that very first issue I bought. Of course, way back in 1996, the internet barely existed. For me, it had only just started existing, and I certainly didn’t have the ability to shop for a new PC. I relied on the pages of Micro Mart to tell me what I was looking for. And it didn’t disappoint.

My very first PC was a Pentium 166Mhz (With MMX no less!), 16Mb RAM, 2Gb hard drive, and a 1Mb graphics card. Eventually, I outgrew this little machine, and the next one I bought also came from the hallowed pages of Micro Mart.

Time gre on, the internet became plentiful, and I didn’t really rely on Micro Mart for anything after that, but my love for it didn’t die. In the back of my mind, I’d be in a service station somewhere, or an airport, and I’d think to myself “Well, I’ll need something to fill the journey time”, and I’d walk out with a copy of MM under my arm. Sometimes I’d even pay for it!

Ho ho, I jest. In all seriousness, print medium when it comes to computer magazines is shrinking all of the time. Although there’s roughly 100 feet of shelf space in every large WH Smith, the computer section is dwindling rapidly. The vast majority of what’s left, taken up with “special” publications which seem to hang around for months, and the old established monthlies (and in MM’s case, even more frequent) are going to the great paper pulper in the sky. And I, for one, will miss them.

RIP Micro Mart.