We’ve just released an update to the site! After releasing calorie tracking a couple of weeks ago, we realized that those of you who use metric units (like kilometers and kilograms) might measure your food energy in calories. So just visit your settings page and choose your preference.

Facebook working much better

As many of you may have noticed, we’ve had some Facebook account issues. This mostly happened because of Facebook’s new data tools and some bugs still needed to be worked out.

Calorie calculator

We saw many calorie calculators on the web when building our calorie tracking, and decided to build our own tool! Check out FriendFit’s calorie calculator to quickly estimate energy burned in your fitness activities.

Other Updates

• Embedded routes can now have miles or kilometers chosen by default
• New Twitter landing page explaining how we share fitness activities

We’re happy to announce some new features we’ve just released!

Burned calories

A lot of you (especially personal trainers) have asked for calorie tracking and now it’s here! For each activity you do, we compute how many calories (or kJ) you burn. We calculate the calories based on the activity type, your speed (for running, biking, walking, etc), and your current weight.

To start tracking calories, save your weight information in the “Calories/kJ burned” section next time you log an activity. Once your weight is saved, we’ll use it for future actvitiy posts. Also, your weight is kept private and other users will only see the number of calories (or kJ) burned. If you need to change your weight, simply click “update”, enter the new weight, and click “save”.

If you use any social networks like Facebook or Twitter to post your fitness activities, calorie or kJ information is now shown in your post.

Heart-rate data

If you use a GPS device with a heart rate monitor, we now compute and show the average heart rate in your fitness blog post.

Here’s a sample of what your fitness blog data now looks like.

Other updates

• Route lists have been redesigned so you can see a quick preview, print, embed, or rename the route. Just click the arrow to open the extra route information.
• Once again it’s possible to rename your routes after saving them. We know this is going to make some of our users very happy!
• Fitness blog posts that use a route now let you see a route preview, route print and embed, just like the route list

We have a lot more planned for the website including planning group activities. You’ll see more fun and exciting updates in the near future. As always, please send us a message if you run into any issues or to let us know what you think of the new improvements. That’s all for now!

We’re happy to share a few new features we just released. So many of you have been asking for better leaderboards and now they’re here! You can see who’s got the most mileage or logged time, sorted by any single sport and also for all sports combined. Leaders can be viewed by week, month, year, and all-time.

Twitter auto-posting

In addition to new leaderboards, we’re now much more Twitter-friendly. When logging a new activity, you can now automatically tweet it, too! Just click “Log an Activity” and click the checkbox next to the Twitter logo. When you click the box, a new window will open to take you through the authentication process. On the Twitter site, you must click “Allow” to let us post to your account. You’ll also find twitter information in your user profile.

We also added a checkbox so you can choose which activities you want to post to Facebook.

We hope you like these improvements and they make your FriendFit experience more fun, useful and easy. Enjoy the new features and as always, we’d love to hear from you. Send us a message if you run into any issues or want to share your ideas.

We’re headed down to Google HQ for WhereCamp SF 2010 this weekend. For those who haven’t heard of WhereCamp, it’s a conference where anyone is welcomed to discuss location, maps, augmented reality, open location standards, and much more!

This is our third year, and we’re very excited for the chance to spend two days geeking out on geo-related topics. If you’re headed down to Mountain View, come over and say “Hello”!

As a RunThere user, you’ve probably seen a few hints of our re-branding process. Over the past year, we kept hearing over and over again that you wanted to share more types of fitness activities. In the next week or two, RunThere.com will transition to FriendFit.com! Don’t worry, you won’t need to create a new account, change your embedded routes, and your data is safe. Any links to the old domain name will just point to the new site.

Why the name change?

RunThere was created originally to measure running routes. Soon after, we added biking to the mix, and it became clear that other sports would follow. RunThere is now a place to share all your fitness activities, and the service has outgrown its name.

When we introduce ourselves to potential users, sometimes they say, “Well, I don’t run, but I like to bike and swim”. With FriendFit, it’ll be easier to communicate that we’re not just for runners, but that any athlete at any fitness level is welcome!

The new name needed to reflect our vision of a fitness social network, where friends and family motivate each other to get healthy. We spent a few months brainstorming names, and last month we finally decided on the FriendFit.com name. It’s easy to spell, rolls off the tongue, and most importantly, it was available! So what do you think? Send us your feedback.

Account Access

When we’re ready to flip the switch, there’s no need to do anything. We’ll point you to the right location, and you can use your same username/password information to access your account.