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Yes, I was happy that Nike (finally) released desktop widgets for tracking Nike+iPod workouts and challenge stats, but honestly, no one but me ever sees my desktop. I can’t for the life of me figure out why there isn’t an official Nike+ plugin or widget for popular blogging platforms. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit seems to be catching fire within the tech-savvy blogging community, so it’s a shame that there’s no simple way to share your running accomplishments with your friends. Crusty Bugger has taken matters into his own hands and written a widget that displays cumulative Nike+ stats in a Wordpress blog’s sidebar.

Crusty’s Nike+iPod Widget doesn’t display any of the fancy-schmancy graphics or animations that you get on the Nikeplus.com site itself, but it does give your friends and readers a quick snapshot of your running progress. In future versions I would love to see an option to display “most recent workout” stats in addition to, or instead of, the cumulative totals, but overall this widget is a great first step.

For the uninitiated, Wordpress widgets are small software plugins which add specific functions or information to a page’s sidebar. They are easy to install, activate, and customize right from the Wordpress control panel, and generally don’t require any coding skills. For example, all of the sidebar boxes on Podophile.com are individual widgets… one for translation, one for categories, one for YouTube video, etc.

So why don’t I have the Nike+iPod widget displayed in my sidebar? I guess the appeal of the Nike+iPod system for me is more about personal challenges and goals than public competition and recognition. I’ve managed to maintain a pretty good running groove since well before the Nike+iPod system was released, and I don’t want to screw it up by adding the pressure putting my progress up for public scrutiny. For some people that would be motivation… but for me, I think it would take my running out of the realm of being “private time.”

However, being the nerdy geek from Dorkland that I am, I anxiously await further developments from the Nike+iPod plugin world.

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