Fitness

Foley’s pivot to founding a bespoke rug startup was reported a while back, but he’s remarkably candid about what he’s been up to since leaving Peloton in this New York Post interview.

“I’m working hard so that I can try and make money again... because I don’t have much left. And so I’m hungry and humble.”

But why rugs?

“I love rugs, I love interior design.”

IEEE Spectrum’s Tekla S. Perry spoke to Fitbit founders James Park and Eric Friedman, as well as designers and engineers to get the complete story on how the company’s first clip-on fitness tracker — inspired by the Nintendo Wii’s motion-tracking capabilities — came to be.

This was announced a while back. (Along with a new Dark Mode which also recently went live.) Basically, four people can now share an annual Strava premium subscription. The caveat is everyone has to live within the same country and you’ve got to be a new subscriber. The new Family plan is available in 32 countries, and pricing will depend on where you live.

And three instructors are leaving at the end of the month: Kendall Toole, Ross Rayburn, and Kristin McGee. An official Peloton statement pegs these departures as a “normal and ongoing part of the Peloton process,” while hinting that the company may hire new talent.

Real talk, Peloton is a media company now and that means instructor salaries are a huge cost in making content. It was only a matter of time before we saw this happen.

You do need a Music Premium account, but you can download playlists for offline playback. We love to see Garmin add to the ConnectIQ store, which... let’s face it, doesn’t have the largest selection as far as third-party smartwatch app stores go. Previously, you could choose between Spotify, Amazon Music, and Deezer. (But I’ve yet to meet anyone who used the latter two with the Garmin.)

Popular Peloton instructor Kendall Toole announced today she’s leaving the platform. Earlier in April, instructor Ross Rayburn announced he was taking a break. And just last month, CEO Barry McCarthy stepped down amid another round of layoffs.

Any other company, I’d worry about customers jumping ship. But I spoke with several Peloton diehards and asked about this exact situation. They told me they’re not going anywhere.

A number of private equity firms are thinking about buying Peloton and taking it private, according to CNBC. That’s after the company’s bad quarter (and lack of strategy) led to both a 15 percent staff layoff and CEO Barry McCarthy stepping down. How will the PE vultures fix things? They have “zeroed in on cutting Peloton’s operating expenses,” of course. That’ll fix it, sure.

For runners, Strava’s Best Efforts feature has been an easy way to chase PRs (and get a dopamine hit whenever you see those little medals pop up in your activity summary.) Now Strava is expanding the feature for cyclists. It’ll include new distances, elevation gain, single climbs, power, and time at specific intervals. More good news: it applies to previous rides too!

Three years after completing its $2.1 billion acquisition of Fitbit, Google has taken another step towards integrating the fitness-tracking company into its hardware lineup with some updated branding.

Recent changes on the Fitbit website, first spotted by 9to5Google, include an updated wordmark that uses capitalized Google Sans font and ditches the dotted arrow logo, which is still featured on the brand's favicon.