The Athlete's Diary ™ for iPhone
from Stevens Creek Software
Go to the iTunes store to purchase a copy of this software
Latest released version: 2.2.1
Version history and known problems
The Athlete's Diary from Stevens Creek Software is designed to let you keep track of athletic activity in multiple sports. You can log your activities, see the pace automatically calculated when relevant, example weekly, monthly, or yearly totals of time and distance in different sports, look at graphs of those totals and also at graphs of any other numeric quantities you have logged - your weight, your resting heart rate, the total ascent you've run or biked, and so on. You can also search for activities based on virtually any criteria (such as the sport, the time, the distance, words found in the description of the route or comment), and look at sub-totals (or graphs of those sub-totals) based on only the selected activities. The Athlete's Diary for iPhone is designed to produce log files in the same format as The Athlete's Diary for other formats. You can upload and download data to and from your desktop computer or a website, importing or exporting from the desktop versions of The Athlete's Diary, available (sold separately) for Macintosh or Windows, as well as the PalmOS version of the software.
This manual presents the program in a more-or-less sequential order. When you start using the program for the first time, you'll need to do one of two things. If you have not been using The Athlete's Diary for Macintosh or Windows, you must set up your sports list (described below in the Adding an Entry section), so the software knows what sports you do (running, cycling, swimming, etc.) and what units of distance and pace (speed), you like to use to measure them. Until you add at least one sport to your sports list, you won't be able to add an entry. If you have been using our desktop version (or our Palm version, and have transferred the data from your Palm to your desktop using the conduit), then you'll probably want to start by downloading your existing log. That function is described in the last section of this manual, Uploading and Download Data.
Registering the Software
On the Files tab you'll find an "information" ("i") icon in the upper-right hand corner. Be sure to tap on it to register your copy of The Athlete's Diary for iPhone, entitling you to discounts on the desktop versions of the software.
The Log Screen
The main screen of the software, which you will see when you open the software, looks like this:
On the bottom of the screen are five tabs which take you to the five main areas of the program - Log, Journal, Totals (and Graphing), Search, and File. The Log screen shows the entries in your log in an abbreviated form. When the program opens it will automatically be scrolled to the bottom, where your latest entries appear. You can scroll the log in the usual way, with a flick of the finger, but once your log contains data going back several years, you'll find it easier to scroll based on date. To do so, tap the Calendar icon on the upper left of the screen, and a "date picker" will appear. Dial in the date you are interested in, tap Go, and the log will scroll to the chosen date.
Adding an Entry
To add an entry, tap the + button on the upper right of the screen, and a blank Add Entry screen will appear:
The different fields are as follows:
Date: When the screen appears, the date will be set to the current date, which is most likely the date of the activity. If it isn't, tap in that field, and a "date picker" will appear, in which you will dial in the date, and then tap the Select button.
Type: There are three "types" of workout - Training, Intervals, and Race (these are fixed in the current version of the software). Training is set as the default; to change it, just tap in the field and pick from the list which appears.
Sport: Tap in the field and select the appropriate sport from the list. The first time you use the program, you will need to enter one or more sports in the list. To do so, tap the Edit button in the upper left of the Select Sport screen, and then the + button to get to the Add Sport screen (Note: the first time you do this, when you have no sports set up, the software immediately advances to the Add Sport screen; you'll only need to tap the Edit and then the + button when you add further sports):
On the Add Sport screen, you enter the Sport Name (whatever you wish), a one-letter Sport Initial (which must be unique, i.e., no two sports can use the same initial), and the select the appropriate Distance Units and Pace Units from the lists, tapping Save to add the sport to your list of sports. For users of The Athlete's Diary for Windows, Macintosh, or Palm, if you start the program by importing an existing log (which will be described later in the manual), then your sports will be imported along with the log, so you won't need to worry about adding sports within the iPhone version.
Distance: The distance is entered as a number, either an integer or a number with one or more decimal places, as you wish. The field to the right of the distance field is for the Distance units. When you select a sport, the default units for the distance will appear here, but you can change it if you wish. For example, your default units for Running might be miles. However, if you run a 10K race, after selecting Running from the list of sports, and entering 10 in the distance field, you can tap in the distance units field (which will read Miles), and select Kilometers from the list which appears.
If you don't know the distance, but you do know the time and can estimate the pace, you can leave it blank, enter the time and pace, and the distance will be automatically calculated.
You can mark the distance as estimated by preceding it with the approximate sign, ~.
Time: Time is entered in the form Hours:Minutes:Seconds, e.g., 1:03:43, or Minutes:Seconds, e.g., 42:17, but you only enter the numbers; the colons are added automatically as you enter the numbers. Tenths of seconds can be entered if you wish (you can enter hundredths as well, but the entry will be rounded to the nearest tenth). Using the approximate sign ~ makes this an estimated time, e.g., ~34:30.
Pace: Normally, you will not enter a value into the Pace (speed) column; rather, the program will calculate it for you after you have entered your sport, distance, and time. It is possible, however, to reverse the process. If you exercise over an unknown distance, enter a time and an estimated pace, and the program will calculate the approximate distance. If you exercise for a known distance but don't have an accurate time, just enter the distance and an estimated pace, and the program will calculate the approximate time. The program knows that if you are entering pace it must be an estimate, so don't put a ~ when you enter it. The program will place a ~ in front of the data it has estimated (time or distance).
The program will not let you enter a pace unless you have entered a sport. If you enter a pace, it must be in the relevant format. If the pace for that sport is a speed (miles per hour or kilometers per hour), the entry will look like a simple number, e.g., 21.3. If the pace is in minutes per mile or kilometer, pace must be entered in the time format, e.g., 7:45 (again, the colons are automatically entered; you just enter the numbers).
Some people prefer to enter just the time for their workouts, even for sports like running. This is permissable, but your totals and averages will be more useful if you enter a pace estimate and let the program calculate your estimated distance. Most people can easily estimate their pace to within 15%, and isn't that better than no estimate at all?
Route: This is a free-form entry where you can describe the route you took, the workout you did, or the name of the race you participated in.
Autofill: The Athlete's Diary can memorize your "standard workouts," workouts or routes that you repeat frequently. To do this, first begin a new entry, and enter whatever information will be common from workout to workout. For a running route, for example, the distance would be standard, but not the time or pace, so you would enter the sport, the distance, the route description, and even a note if that repeats each time (for example, the ascent of the route). After you have done this, but before you tap Save, tap on Autofill to get to the Select Route screen.
To add a new route, tap Edit on the upper-left of that screen, and then the + button on the upper-right of the Edit Routes screen (which can also be used to re-arrange or delete routes) to get to the Memorize Routes screen. Enter the name that you have chosen for that route; once you do that, and tap Save, the new route will be added to your list of memorized routes.
Now, whenever you do a memorized route or workout, before entering any other information except the date, tap Autofill on the main screen. Tap the route or workout you just did, and all the memorized information will be filled in on the main data entry screen. Add the "changeable" information (today's time, a note perhaps) and tap Save to save the workout.
Note: This is a free-form entry where you can add whatever notes you want. The weather, your companions, your intermediate splits at various points on the route, etc.
Keywords: In addition to free-form comments, there is one other kind of information that goes into the Note field. In addition to time, distance, and pace, The Athlete's Diary will allow you to analyze any other kind of numeric information — your weight, your resting heart rate, the ascent of your routes, and so on. To do this, it uses a concept it calls "keywords." To create a new keyword, first tap on Add Keyword underneath Note. A Select Keyword screen will appear which, once you have established some keywords, is used to add that keyword to the Note field. To add a new keyword, tap Edit on the upper-left of that screen, and then the + button on the upper-right of the Edit Keywords screen (which can also be used to re-arrange or delete keywords) to get to the New Keyword screen:
On this screen, you have three things to do. First, enter an abbreviation for the keyword. For example, you might abbreviate "Weight" as "Wt". Keep this short but recognizable, because it will be what actually is entered into the Note field of your entry. Next, enter a more complete description, e.g, "Weight (lbs)" or something like that. This description is what appears on the list that you select from when you insert keywords into your log, and it is also used to label graphs.
Beneath the Keyword Abbreviation and Keyword Description there are three choices for the type of keyword: Total, Average, or Non-Numeric. Some types of numeric quantities are meant to be totalled. For example, if your bike ride includes 2500' of ascent one day, and 1700' another, you want to know that your total ascent for the week was 4200'. Other numeric quantities, like your weight, are meant to be averged. If you weight 172 one day, and 174 another, it's only the average (173) which is interesting, not the total.
And finally, there are Non-Numeric keywords, which are primarily used for selection (described later in the manual). For example if your dog's name is Nicky and you always enter "with Nicky" in the comment when you run with him, you'll be able to look at all the runs you've done with him, and even total up his mileage as well as your own! If you wrote "with the dog" in the comment one day, however, that run wouldn't be included in Nicky's totals if you select looking for "with Nicky." Using "non-numeric keywords" for phrases like this that you enter frequently will assure consistency. A very common use of non-numeric keywords is to keep track of shoe mileage. Create an abbreviation for each pair (e.g., "NB1", "NB2", etc.) and make those into keywords. Now you'll be able to select entries containing that keyword and see the total mileage on that pair of shoes. Be aware as you do so that you need to pick unique abbreviations. If you used "N" to represent your pair of Nike shoes, for example, then every Note in which the letter "n" appears would be selected – not what you want, obviously!
Save: Tap the Save button on the upper-right of the screen to save the workout once you have finished entering it. Note that the data entry screen, which is larger than the size of the iPhone screen, scrolls by flicking your finger, so you can go back and forth to the different fields. The screen will also advance automatically as you enter data in each field if you tap the Next button in the lower-right-hand corner of the keyboard.
Beginning with version 2.0, if you have started data entry, but are interrupted by, for example, a phone call, and need to exit the application, your partial data will be remembered, and when you next start the program, you will be returned to the data entry screen with your partial entry filled in.
Examining and Modifying Entries
The main log screen shows the date, sport, and numeric information from the entry (time, distance, pace), but, depending on how verbose you were with the Route and Note fields, may show all or only part of those fields, and even when it shows the complete entry, the type is fairly small. To examine entries more closely, tap on an entry on the main screen and you'll get to the daily Journal screen (you can also tap the Journal tab on the bottom of the screen, which will automatically show the last entry in the log):
On top of the screen, you see an indication of the "page number" of your log, and also left and right arrows which let you move backwards and forwards through your log, "page" by "page". You can also flick your finger horizontally in either direction on the log itself to change "pages," but only on the top portion of the screen (above "Route"), because finger motions on the bottom part of the screen are reserved for scrolling the Route and Note fields, which are scrollable (vertically) if the amount of text exceeds the available space on the screen.
On the bottom, you see three buttons:
Duplicate takes you back to the Add Entry screen, filling in all the information with a copy of the information from the workout in question (but with the date as today's date, not the old date). This is a useful feature if you have repeated (exactly or even roughly) a previous workout, but one which isn't in your list of memorized (Autofill) workouts. Note that the workout is not actually added to the log until you tap the Save button.
Modify also takes you back to the Add Entry screen, filling in all the information (exactly this time, including the date), but the screen will be labelled Modify Entry (instead of Add Entry) to make clear what will happen when you tap the Save button (after, presumably, changing some piece of information).
Delete is self-explanatory. You will be asked to confirm that you really mean to delete the entry, because the action is not "un-doable."
Embedding Photos and HTML Links
Beginning with Version 2.0, you can embed HTML links and/or photos in your log entry, in either the Route or Note fields. An HTML link, which should be a complete URL like "http://myblog.com/myracereport.htm", will appear in blue on the daily Journal page, and, if you tap on it, you'll be transferred to Safari to view the web page. This is a great way to attach a long race report to your log.
Pictures are a great way to save Google Map views of the route you took, or altitude profiles or heart rate traces from your GPS- or HR-enabled watch, or race photos or other photos you took during the course of a workout or race. Pictures work differently than simple HTML links. First of all, in the iPhone Settings application, you'll see this section at the bottom of The Athlete's Diary section (labelled "Athlete Diary" because of limitations of the iPhone with respect to application names):
The Parent URL is the location where your pictures are stored; this can be a website or a local URL for your desktop or laptop computer (see the section below on "Uploading and Downloading Files" for more information about that). Unfortunately it cannot be a reference to the iPhone Photo library itself because of current limitations in the iPhone OS. To embed a picture, you'll simply enter the actual filename like "myracephoto.jpg" which the software will expect to find at that Parent URL. The filename can be entered into either the Route or Note fields, as you prefer. Filenames can be part of Autofill workouts (described above), so that everytime you do one of those workouts, you'll see the picture associated with that workout (for example, a map of the route might be appropriate).
Autoload tells the program if you want to automatically load the pictures from that website when you display the Journal page for that entry, and Picture Cache lets you save the pictures on the iPhone itself (after they have been downloaded the first time) for instant future viewing (but, of course, taking up available memory space on the iPhone).
One unfortunate aspect is that, if you store pictures on websites such as Flikr, the Parent URL you would need is not a constant for all your pictures, because of the way such websites parcel out photos among various servers. If you cache the photos on the iPhone, however, you'll be able to change the Parent URL periodically to match the current needed value for new photos.
Beginning with version 2.2, you can add pictures into the Picture Cache on the iPhone using Apple's File Sharing technique rather than downloading them from the web. How to do so will be described later in the manual.
Pictures can be any size, but the larger they are, the more room they will occupy on the iPhone, obviously. The Athlete's Diary will display photos up to the full screen size, 320x460, so if you are cropping or resizing photos, that's a good size to aim for.
When you view a Journal page with an embedded photo the first time, assuming you don't have Autoload set to On, you'll see a view like this:
Now if you want to view the picture, you'll tap in the square, which will display the photo. If Picture Cache is set to On, the photo will be saved on the iPhone (not in the Photo library, but within The Athlete's Diary software itself), so that subsequent viewings will simply display the picture.
Now if you tap on the picture itself, the picture will slide in to occupy the full screen (or as much of the screen as possible, if the aspect ratio of the picture doesn't match the aspect ratio of the screen), automatically rotated if the picture has a horizontal rather than vertical format.
Expansion of the picture is not supported at this time. Tap anywhere on the picture to return to the Journal screen. (That's a picture of the real Stevens Creek, by the way, taken, as the Journal entry indicates, on a recent run!)
Beginning with version 2.1, photos of size 320x460 (or of an aspect ratio identical to that) take up the entire screen except the "status bar" (the bar on top showing your connectivity, the time, and the battery level), while photos of size 320x480 (or aspect ratio 1.5) take up the entire screen (eliminating the status bar, which will of course return once you dismiss the full picture).
Selecting Photos from the iPhone Photo Library
Beginning with version 2.1 of The Athlete's Diary (currently under review by Apple, not yet in the App Store), you can also add pictures to the log straight out of the iPhone Photo Library, rather than by downloading from the web or a local computer. There is, however, a major limitation on this ability. Because of the limitations imposed by the current version of iPhone OS, applications cannot maintain permanent "links" to photos in the photo library. For this reason, the capability to add photos from the library is only enabled if you have "picture caching" (see above) enabled, so that The Athlete's Diary can make a copy of the photo and put it into its own storage. This also means that if you ever decide to purge the cache (described below), you will have to re-link your log to the desired photo in the Photo Library (assuming it's still there).
With those limitations, if you have picture caching enabled, when you add a new entry to your log, at the very bottom, you'll see a button enabling you to select a photo from the library:
Tap the Photo Library button, and a standard "photo browser" will appear allowing you to select (and edit by expansion if you choose) a photo. When you have selected the photo and tapped the Choose button, the data entry screen will reappear but will look like this:
As indicated, you now must enter a name into the appropriate space by which the photo will be saved. The name must end in ".jpg", but you needn't enter that part yourself if you don't want to; the software will determine if you have and will add the ".jpg" itself if you haven't. Now when you hit the Save button to save the new entry, the filename for the picture will be added to your Note field automatically. If you prefer to add the filename to the Route field, you can do so yourself, before you tap the Save button (and in addition to entering the same name in the field at the bottom); in that case it must be the full name, including the ".jpg" extension.
Note that, when selecting photos from the current roll on the iPhone, the iPhone always displays and selects for you a 320x320 portion of the image, which is the perfect aspect ratio (1:1) to display in small format on the Journal screen, but only occupies a portion of the screen when you display it in large form. On the other hand, photos downloaded into the iPhone from iPhoto on the desktop generally allow you to select the entire photo. Why this is, we don't exactly understand, but after a little experimentation you'll figure out what is and isn't possible.
Totals and Graphs
Tap the Totals tab on the bottom of the screen and you'll see the Totals screen:
You can switch between Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly totals. The list of totals, separated by sport (and totalled for time only if there are more than one sport in a given time period), is scrollable with a flick of the finger. As with the Log, you can also scroll directly to a particular date by tapping the Calendar icon on the upper-left of the screen, and then choosing the date from the date picker which appears.
Beginning with version 1.1, the Settings application lets you select the starting day of the week, with choices of Monday, Saturday, and Sunday; previous versions of the software used the "iPhone standard" of Sunday. Choosing Monday or Saturday is generally the best choice for athletes who do long runs or rides, because that way, if you do a long run or ride which may happen on Saturday or Sunday depending on the week, your weekly totals will be more consistent. With weeks starting on Sunday, If you do your long run on Sunday one week and then Saturday the next, that week will have a particularly high total, while the surrounding weeks will be lower.
Tap the Graph button on the upper-right, and the same information which appears numerically on the Totals screen will be presented on the Graph screen:
The graph of the data is color-coded by sport, with the "key" shown above the graph. In this graph, running (abbreviated "R") is in red, cycling (abbreviated "C") is in blue, and the other sports the user has set up (swimming, triathlon, etc.) weren't performed in the time period shown on the graph. You can scroll the graph horizontally to go to different time periods by flicking your finger horizontally across the graph, or go directly to a desired date using the Calendar icon on the upper-left. You can change the vertical scale of the graph (which is automatically calculated so that the tallest point on the graph, which may be "off to the left" or "off to the right", will fit) by flicking your finger up or down. You cannot (in this version, anyway) change the horizontal scale, which is configured to show ten time periods (which may be weeks, months, or years, as set on the Totals screen).
Above the graph on the left you can change the type of graph. This graph shows time (in hours) for all sports. Tap the All Sports selector, and you'll be able to select and then graph data for just a single sport. Once you have done so, you can switch to a Distance graph (the software won't allow you to do that if All Sports is selected, since running, cycling, and swimming distances are not comparable or perhaps even measured with the same units). And finally, whether you are in All Sports mode (which would be typical) or in single sport mode, you can tap the Key icon to graph keyword data. Tap the Key, select the keyword (Total and Average keywords only; Non-Numeric keywords will be grayed out), and the information for that keyword will be graphed.
Starting with verson 1.2, there are three "time widths" possible for the graph x-axis – 10, 21, or 43 time intervals. To change the time width, put two fingers on the graph and use either a horizontal "pinch" to go to a larger number of intervals, or a horizontal "spreading motion" to display a smaller number of intervals.
Return to the Totals screen by tapping the 1+1 icon.
Selection
Tap the Search tab on the bottom of the screen and you'll see the Select screen:
You can select by Sport, by Type (Training, Interval, Race), by Date (the "From" and "To" dates are automatically filled in with the earliest and latest dates in your log; change one or both to select data before a certain date, after a certain date, or between two specified dates), by Distance or Time (automatically initialized to 0 to infinity, so you can change one or both to select distances or times less than, greater than, or between two values), by Pace (but only if you enter a Sport), or by a word or phrase contained in the Route or Note fields.
The type of selection is controlled on the top of the screen:
Normal is the usual selection mode. Enter one or more criteria with Normal highlighted, tap Select, and entries meeting those criteria will be selected (displayed in the log, totalled on the totals screen, graphed on the graph screen).
Fewer and More only make sense after you have done another selection. After you have selected by one set of criteria, return to the Select screen. Enter a different set of criteria, tap Fewer and then Select and then a subset of the entries previously selected, which also meet the new set of criteria, will be selected. Tap More and the Select and entries which match the new set of criteria will be selected in addition to those previously selected.
Reverse selects entries which do not match the criteria. Set Running as the Sport, for example, tap Reverse and then Select and you will see all the entries in your log for sports other than running.
All is an action button all by itself (i.e., you don't need to follow it by tapping Select). Tap All and all previous selections will be nullified and all entries will be selected, displayed, totalled, and graphed. All ignores whatever criteria you have on the screen.
Finally, Clear on the upper-left clears the criteria, making it easier for you to switch from one set of criteria to another.
Uploading and Downloading Data
Uploading data from the iPhone to the desktop (or to a website), and download data into the iPhone from the desktop or a website is accomplished by tapping the File tab, in conjunction with the iPhone Settings application. Here's what you'll see in the Athlete's Diary section of the Settings application:
Unlike Palm, Apple does not at this time allow developers to write "conduits," providing for synchronization of data between desktop and iPhone (as it does for its own applications like iCal and Address Book via iTunes). As a result, uploading and downloading data is a bit convoluted, but once you have it configured, it works quickly and easily. You can download your entire log from desktop into the iPhone application, and upload back to the desktop either the entire log, or only new entries that have been made on the iPhone since the last time you uploaded new entries. In the latter case, you simply use the File->Merge capability of the desktop software to incorporate the new iPhone entries into the desktop log, or utilize the "Automerge" capability of the desktop software to do so automatically (see below).
Swapping data via File Sharing
Beginning with Athlete's Diary version 2.2 (released to Apple but not yet in the App Store as of this writing), Athlete's Diary supports exchange of data between computer and iPhone / iPod Touch via Apple's File Sharing. Use of this feature requires iOS version 4.0 or higher, and iTunes version 9.2 or higher. This method of sharing files between computer and iPhone is in some ways more cumbersome (because it requires that your iPhone is directly connected to your computer) than the methods we'll describe later, but for many people will also be much more straightforward and less "techy," so we describe that here first before getting to the other methods.
To access file sharing, with the iPhone or iPod Touch attached by cable to the computer, open iTunes, select the unit in the left-hand column under "Devices," and click on the "Apps" tab. Scroll to the bottom to view the File Sharing section. Select "Athlete Diary" (Apple restricts the length of program names in some places) and to the right you will see a list of files which can be shared between computer and iPhone. The files with extensions (e.g., Categories, Routes, Log) are internal files to the software and you should not touch these (we may "hide" them in a future version).
To download an Athlete's Diary log from the desktop version of the software into the iPhone:
To repeat this process in the future, you'll be able to skip steps 2 and 3; assuming you don't change the name of your desktop log, only steps 1 and 4 will be necessary.
To upload an Athlete's Diary log from the iPhone to the desktop, follow these steps:
Adding pictures to the Athlete's Diary picture cache on the iPhone:
In addition to the plain files you see in the list shown by iTunes, you'll also see one folder: Pictures. This is the "picture cache" where, if you have the Picture Cache turned on using the Settings app, the software stores your pictures to display on your Journal entries. It turns our that File Sharing won't let you add pictures directly into that folder, but Athlete's Diary will do it for you. Follow these steps:
You can't remove a single picture from the picture cache. If you tap Clear picture cache button on the File screen, you will delete all of them, at which point you can reload (using the method just described) just the ones you want saved. How relevant this will be to you depends on how many pictures you associate with your log, how big they are (i.e., how many kB or MB they take up), and how much free memory you have on your iPhone. Most people probably won't need to worry about this, since your Athlete's Diary picture cache will occupy only a tiny fraction of your total iPhone memory.
Uploading (output) and Downloading (input) without File Sharing
Downloading data into the iPhone is done using the standard HTTP protocol, which allows you to easily download data either from a website, or a computer on which a web server is running. If you want to download the data from your own computer, as is most likely the case, you need to make sure it has a web server running.
Configuring and testing a web server on your computer:
On Macintosh OS X: a web server is active if you go to the Sharing portion of the System Preferences, and check the box next to Web Sharing. If you have a Mac on which OS 10.5 or 10.6 came installed, this is all you need to do. If you have a system which was upgraded from an earlier OS (e.g., 10.4), there may be a problem. Here's how to test whether you're ready to go and how to proceed: when you go to Sharing under System Preferences and click on Web Sharing, you'll see something like this: "Your computer's website: http://192.168.1.109/", and underneath that, "Your personal website: http://192.168.1.109/~yourname/". Click on the first one and your web browser should open a default web page, which is Macintosh HD:Library:Web Server:Documents:index.html. Go back to the System Preferences screen and this time click on the "your personal website" URL. If you see another default web page (this one is Macintosh HD:Users:yourname:Sites:index.html), you're good to go. If instead you see a "Forbidden 403" message, you have a known "permission problem," for which Apple describes the solution here. The solution is fairly straightforward, involving just following some simple instructions, but no doubt some of you will find them intimidating. You have two options. If you either didn't encounter the "403" problem in the first place, or if you choose to fix your system by following Apple's instructions, then your "web home" directory will be Macintosh HD:Users:~yourname:Sites, and you'll be placing your log into that directory (folder) for downloading into the iPhone version. If you did encounter the "403" problem, and choose not to fix it, you can still download data, but in this case, your "web home" directory will be a "system" folder, Macintosh HD:Library:Web Server:Documents. This is perfectly fine, even if it's not the "approved" location.
On Windows Vista or Windows 7: The IIS (Internet Information Services) server is a standard part of Vista and Windows 7 (and XP Professional), but not installed. Instructions for installing it can be found in a number of places on the Internet, such as this one. Use the web browser on your desktop computer to verify that your web server is functioning.
On Windows XP: A web server is not included with XP. However, the Apache web server, the most widely used server on the web, is freely downloadable and easily installed and configured. These instructions for doing so are quite easy to follow; the only "trick" we found is that, when using Notepad to edit the httpd.conf file, you need to make sure you tell Notepad to show all files, not just ".txt" files, or you won't see the file you're looking for. Once the web server is installed, use the web browser on your desktop computer to verify that your web server is functioning.
To verify you've got a web server running properly and that you can access it from your iPhone, use Safari on the iPhone and enter the URL of a file you will be downloading, e.g, http://192.168.1.109/~yourname/MyLog.tad (on a Mac) or http://192.168.1.109/MyLog.dat (on Windows, or on a Mac in which you are using the system level folder). Because The Athlete's Diary files are simple text files, Safari will display them as simple text, and you'll have confirmation that your server is working and you'll be able to download the data properly. If you are going to place your log in a subdirectory, you either want that subdirectory to have a name not including a space, or, if you do so, you need to use "%20" in place of the space, because Safari (or any web browser) doesn't accept spaces. So if the subdirectory is named My Logs, the URL you would need to enter in Safari (which doesn't accept spaces) would be http://192.168.1.109/My%20Logs/MyLog.dat (using the Windows example).
Once a web server is running, you can proceed. In the Settings application, the Download Base URL contains the URL (without the "http://" part) where the file you wish to download is located (192.168.1.109/~yourname or 192.168.1.109 using the examples above), and Download File contains the name of that file (which can also be changed within The Athlete's Diary software itself, as we'll see in a minute, to allow downloading different files at different times).
Note that for downloading data from your desktop to your iPhone to work, your iPhone and desktop will need to be on the same internal network, which will typically be the case if you have a WiFi (Airport) setup in your home or office. Alternatively, your desktop will have on a network accessible to the outside world.
If you want to first try the program with some sample data, before entering your own, you can set the Download Base URL to "www.stevenscreek.com/iPhone" (note the upper-case "P", and don't include the quotation marks), and Download File to "SampleLog.tad". Downloading your own file from a website of your own is identical, with obvious changes.
Uploading data can be done by two different methods: email, or ftp. The simplest method for uploading data to your desktop is via email. Set the Upload Base URL to an email address (as shown in the example above), ignore the User Name and Password fields), and the data will be emailed to you (with a "From" address of tad@stevenscreek.com, so make sure that address is on your "whitelist") as an attached text file. The file should have the proper extension (.tad for Mac, .dat for Windows), but you can always change it on the desktop after it arrives by email if you make a mistake. The Athlete's Diary for Macintosh will let you Merge data from a text file with any extension whasoever (or no extension at all), but The Athlete's Diary for Windows will require that the file have a .dat extension of you intend to open it with the software or merge it into an existing log.
Uploading data can also be done directly using the FTP protocol, which can be trickier to set up on some systems (and you can't verify that you have done so correctly with Safari). With a Macintosh, for example, if you bought a new computer with OS 10.5 or 10.6 installed, you only need to go the Sharing portion of System Preferences, turn on File Sharing, click the Options button after selected File Sharing, and make sure Share Files and Folders Using FTP is checked. If your computer's OS was upgraded, there is a bug which prevents this from working; this page describes what you need to do to make your system work. On Windows, there are various free and paid FTP servers you can install; FileZilla is one such program.
If you decide to use FTP for file upload, and get things configured properly, here's how to proceed with The Athlete's Diary: enter an Upload Base URL, a User Name and Password, as well as the Upload File name. On a Macintosh desktop, the subtle confusion is that the "base" for this URL is different than it was for the download (sigh!). Pointing to the same directory requires you to enter 192.168.1.109/Sites into the Upload Base URL (You don't need the ~yourname portion because the Macintosh assumes that from the User Name, but you do need the Sites because the base location for ftp transfer is your home directory itself, not the Sites sub-directory).
Now that we've discussed setting up the transfers, here's what you'll see when you tab the File tab in the software:
To download data, make sure the Filename on top is correct, and tap Download to iPhone. When you upload (or email) the file back to your desktop, you have two options. All will transfer the entire file, and New will transfer only those entries added or modified since the last time you uploaded (or emailed) the data.
Clear all entries (yes, you will be warned and given a chance to change your mind) does what it says and clears all the entries you have made in your log. When you download data to the iPhone, previous data is automatically cleared, so for most normal circumstances, you will not need to use this button. Clear picture cache clears all the pictures you have downloaded into the iPhone.
Tapping the information ("i") icon on the upper-right of the screen gives you two options. One is to read this online manual on your iPhone, and the second is to register your copy of the software with Stevens Creek Software. Doing so makes you eligible for a discount on the desktop versions of The Athlete's Diary.
Pasting data into The Athlete's Diary
Starting with version 1.1, a new button to the right of the Download to iPhone button, showing a standard "paste" icon, can be used to add data into your log, either an entire log including informaton about sports, keywords, and routes (in which case, the previous log and information will be replaced), or just one or more individual entries which will be added into the existing log. There are two basic methods you might use to copy data onto the clipboard to prepare for this "paste" operation:
Emailing data to your iPhone: The iPhone has a standard Mail application that can receive mail, and you can also use Safari to access various webmail sites such as Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. There are two complications when using email to send Athlete's Diary logs from your desktop to the iPhone. First, The Athlete's Diary uses tabs to separate the different fields in each entry, and many email applications will convert these into spaces. This can be a problem at either end, that is, either the sending email software you are using, or the software you are using to receive email on the iPhone. Second, some email programs will "line-wrap" lines after, say, 72 characters. This will quite frequently introduce a new line right in the middle of your Route or Comment description and make for all kinds of trouble (the first line, from which the software will construct the entry, will be truncated, and the second line will be meaningless to the software since it doesn't have a date, a sport, etc.).
The Athlete's Diary deals with the tab problem as best it can. It is programmed to recognize the common ways in which different software replaces the tab character, and it can reconstruct the proper tabs in most situations. However, in order to allow you to verify this is being done properly, when you go to paste data into your log, the software will show you the first 2000 characters of what is on the clipboard, and ask you if it "looks ok" before it proceeds to insert that data into your log. In doing so, it shows tabs as "—>", so you'll be able to judge if it has recognized the tabs properly.
In general, both the tab and the line-wrap problem are best dealt with by emailing your desktop log as an attachment to the iPhone. At the moment this only seems to work with the Mail application; using Safari to view Hotmail (and possibly other webmail) doesn't allow you to view attachments. The Mail application has its own problem, which is that if you email a file with extension ".tad" or ".dat", it won't let you view it, so you need to rename the file as ".txt" before you email it; then it will come through fine. If you don't have Mail set up to receive on your iPhone, but do use Safari to view, e.g., Hotmail, send the log from Hotmail as well, in the body of the email.
Once you have the email in question, in the Mail app, you hold your finger down on the text, tap on Select All when it appears, and then Copy, then go to The Athlete's Diary, select the File tab, and tap the Clipboard (paste) icon. Safari seems to be implemented differently, in that Select All does not appear when you hold your finger down on the text. Instead, just one word is selected, and the word Copy appears. You then have to drag the left selection bar to the "top" of the log, and, sometimes, a "right" selection dot to the right, which seems to then select all the way to the bottom. This may seem confusing, but once you've figured it out, it should become routine.
Using the "Notes" application to sync data into your iPhone: As we understand it, if and only if you have a Mac desktop (i.e., not Windows), you can sync data into the Notes application on the iPhone. There is no separate Notes application on the desktop, rather, it is a part of the desktop Mail application which, incidentally, you do not have to be actually using to use its notes feature. So open the Mail application, open your desktop log with a text editor like TextEdit, and copy and paste the log (or just a few entries) into a new note. Now, assuming you have checked the correct box in iTunes so that Notes will sync, do a sync of the iPhone. We have noticed that sometimes it seems to take two such syncs before the new note shows up on the iPhone, so if you don't see the note appear on the iPhone, try syncing again. Now on the iPhone you'll be able to go to the Notes app, do a Select All and then Copy on the log (or the entries), and then go paste them into The Athlete's Diary using the clipboard button on the File tab. As with email, we think you'll find this easier in practice than it is to say. You can also use the Note field on a Calendar entry or a Contacts entry in lieu of using the Notes application; this should work on Windows as well.
Interfacing with other versions of The Athlete's Diary
If you have been using the Windows or Macintosh versions of The Athlete's Diary (any version, not just the latest), you will have a file on your desktop named XXX.tad (for Mac version 4.x), XXX.dat (for Windows versions), or just XXX (for Mac version 1.x-3.x). When you first purchase The Athlete's Diary for iPhone, you'll be able to download that file directly into your iPhone using the instructions in the previous section. This will not only install your log into the iPhone, but also your sports, memorized routes, and keywords.
If you have been using the Palm version of The Athlete's Diary without using the desktop version of the software, there are two possibilities. If you installed the Athlete's Diary conduit, whether or not you were using it in conjunction with the desktop version, and you have it set to "Handheld overwrites Desktop," then on your desktop (in an appropriate folder, as shown in The Athlete's Diary for Palm manual), you'll have a file entitled Palm Log (Macintosh) or PalmLog.dat (if you had the conduit set to something else, like "Do Nothing," then set it to "Handheld overwrites Desktop" now and do a HotSync to create that file. That file can be directly downloaded into your iPhone version as described in the previous section. If, on the other hand, you never installed the Athlete's Diary conduit, your Palm data has been backed up on the desktop but only in a "Palm-internal" format which is of no use to us. You'll need to now install the Athlete's Diary conduit (if you have lost it, you can download it from our download page), set it to "Handheld overwrites Desktop," do a HotSync, and then proceed as above.
Moving data back to the desktop requires more thought. Of course if you are only using the iPhone version for data review, and not data entry, this isn't a problem. A perhaps more common case is that you use your iPhone version for review in most cases, but use it for data entry while on vacation or a business trip, so that when you return you have five new entries. In this case, the simplest option is to select New on the Upload section (bottom half) of the File tab, and upload (via FTP) or email yourself a file which will contain just those five new entries. Now you can use the File->Merge feature of the desktop versions to import those new workouts into your desktop log. If you use this technique, the upload filename should not be the same as your desktop log, but something suggestive of what it is (e.g., iPhoneEntries.tad).
The alternative is to upload (or email) the entire log. This is fine too, and will work best if you do so using the same name you are using on the desktop, and upload the file (or save the email attachment) to the same place as your desktop log, thus overwriting your old log with the new, updated log.
If most of your data entry is done on the desktop, as is true for most users, then one good habit is to do a download of that log into your iPhone each day, or each week, or each time you make a new entry. For sure, if you use the technique of uploading the entire log from the iPhone, then you will definitely need to make sure that you download into the iPhone each time you add to your desktop log.
A note on date formats The iPhone version of The Athlete's Diary displays dates in the "native format" of the iPhone (depending on the localization of your particular phone as chosen in the "Settings" application), with the exception that it for screen space reasons, years are only displayed as the last two digits. The desktop versions work differently - there, the user can select between "American" (mm/dd/yy) format and "Rest-of-the-world" (dd/mm/yy) format. When you maintain a log on the iPhone only, and then upload it to the desktop, the format of the upload takes the format from the iPhone format, but modified to use The Athlete's Diary desktop formats (for example, on the iPhone, the different elements of the date might be separated by dashes, but on the desktop, the only separator used is the slash). If you start your iPhone log by downloading an existing log from the desktop, then the date format is taken from that log, and subsequent uploads will be done using the same format. |
Automerging on the desktop
As described in the manual for the desktop (Macintosh or Windows) version of The Athlete's Diary, the desktop version includes an "automerge" feature for files of new workouts which have been uploaded the Palm or iPhone versions of the software. The way this works is that the uploaded file containing the new entries must have a specific name: Palm Log on Macintosh, or PalmLog.dat on Windows. Now in the desktop version, you use the Configure->Set Palm Folder menu to select the folder in which you will save the file uploaded from the iPhone, either directly by FTP or indirectly by saving the attachment you email to yourself into that folder. Now with that folder configured, any time you start the desktop version, it will look in that folder, and if it finds a file named Palm Log (Mac) or PalmLog.dat (Windows), it will merge the workout(s) in that file into your desktop log. As it does so, it will rename the file so that it won't be merged twice. Note that this technique only allows for a single file to be merged, which means that if you do upload a file of new workouts from the iPhone, you must run the desktop version before uploading another file of new workouts from the iPhone, or else the previous file will be overwritten. Of course you could change the name of the file to be uploaded, but then the automerge feature won't work.
One subtle note: yes, you can upload a file named Palm Log via FTP, even though it has a space in the name.
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