Map My Walk app

I recently asked my Facebook friends what their favorite apps were. I discovered a number of goodies in the batch, but one in particular was mentioned several times: Map My Walk. It's a free app available for iOS and Android devices. It's available for Blackberry with limited support and Windows phones as Map My Run. I decided to check it out because I've been looking for a pedometer-type app to use to motivate me to move more at home. Here's what I found.

With this app, you can track your route, pace, distance, time and calories burned while you're on a walk. In addition to those features, you can also track your food and weight information. The app features real-time stats during your workout and uses voice prompts to update you on your progress as you walk. With sensors from manufacturers like Polar and Garmin, you can also use the app to track your heart rate. This will probably give you a more accurate picture of calories burned, too.

The app works in the background, so you can still listen to music, take calls or anything else while you're walking. And, of course, what's the point of working out if you can't brag about it to your Facebook friends? It connects to Facebook and Twitter so you can make everyone else feel inadequate about sleeping in that morning.  

While the app is free, it is ad supported, but not annoyingly so. The MVP version removes ads and gives you additional features like live tracking your friends (for the stalkers among us), interval training and advanced analytics for your workout. You can use it for many other activities like cycling, golf, walking on the treadmill, dancing and more.

As it turns out, as great as the app is, it wasn't really what I was looking for. I'm keeping it for when I do go for walks, but just to track (and increase) my movement while doing everyday activities, I chose an app called Pedometer FREE. I turned off the GPS function and just use my phone's accelerometer to track my steps. So far, it's worked out great and given me an incentive to move around more.

Photo courtesy myahya, via Flickr.