#noomteam

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Breaking Down Walls ... Noom Style

The afternoon of August 23, we finally broke through. But that’s not where it began. Our office had been feeling a bit tight as of late. Chairs bumping into the backs of other chairs; folks rolling over Oggie’s tail (he's a dog...we swear); desks pushed up against our only functioning printer, rendering it pretty unfunctional; and the pungent smell of stinky cheese wafting from the mini fridge. We’ve been growing rapidly this year with two new additions in February, another in April, and eight more team members since the summer began (including our four interns from Waterloo and another from Monterrey). Luckily, at the same time, we were hard at work on the office space next door in our Chelsea, NYC building. Although we were paying rent for the space beyond the wall, we couldn’t actually expand into it because sand blasters were stripping the white paint from the once-exposed brick (to be exposed once more), green paint was being strategically placed, and walls were being added to construct an extra conference room. Oh yeah, and there was a wall was blocking our entry into this space. After three months of renovations, it was finally hammer time. Sure, we could have let the contractor take care of that, but hey, we like to get our hands dirty. We christened our sledgehammer with Noom stickers, projected Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and went to town. Everyone on the team got a couple of good whacks in, and with Mark leading the way, we all broke through. We're already loving the breathing room and awesome, bright sunlight in the new space. Plus, we've now got a designated chill area, and room to hire even more awesome people!

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Why Noom Food Logging Works

Eating healthy is essential for weight loss. We're pretty sure just about everyone can get on-board with that. However, a lot of our users struggle with the fact that Noom doesn't expect you to track every single calorie using precise measurements. The reality is complicated calorie trackers are not necessary. They take way too much typing, too much searching, and too many calculations — all for just an approximate calorie count. That's why we tried to make something better!

Why we approximate: It's extremely difficult to estimate exact measurements. Simply try it some time. Make yourself a plate of food, estimate how much you have in front of you, and then measure it. Even if you've mastered the art of estimating food sizes, everyone's body is actually very different, and you may not burn the exact same number of calories as someone else eating the same food. Sounds easy, but does it work? The amazing thing is, study after study shows that simple logging does work better! That's because you can actually keep it going long enough to see results. Not to mention, this type of logging teaches you to be more independent instead of always relying on that calorie counter. Over time, you'll learn more about Noom's food categories and start to eat better without even thinking about it.

Sources:

British Journal of Nutrition Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics Scientific American

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Company Outing: Brooklyn Kitchen

A Warm Welcome

We’re all about healthy eating here at the office, but it usually requires little more effort than just filling a plate with the delicious food Chef Jane has prepped for us. This week, though, we decided to challenge ourselves and head to Brooklyn Kitchen for a cooking class. From the “What’s that oven thing for?” types — ahem, you know who you are — to those of us who are actually pretty proficient in the kitchen, our BK outing was sure to be an adventure … if only because it was some people’s first time on the L-train. The class turned out to be a smashing success. Our teacher, Kat Randazzo (an experienced restaurant chef-turned-Mom/personal chef/teacher), was super-fun to work with, and made the class totally accessible for all of us. So of course, we couldn’t keep her awesome insights to ourselves. Check out some of our favorite general cooking tips followed by a kick-a$ recipe for gnocchi (on a bed of greens, to keep it healthy!). Chef Kat’s Tips and Pointers:

When sauteeing or pan-frying, place the meat into the pan presentation-side-down, so that it gets the prettiest, brown sear on the side you’ll see when it’s served.

Let pieces of meat warm to room temperature before sticking them in the oven. They’ll caramelize nicely on the outside and cook more evenly that way.

Cook a whole chicken in the oven with its legs toward the back. That’s where the heat comes from and the legs take the longest to cook.

Black Pepper Gnocchi with Butter Wilted Greens Ingredients: 2 large Russett potatoes 2 egg yolks 1 cup flour Salt & pepper 4 tbsp. butter 8 oz. arugula 4 oz. Pecorino cheese Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375. Coat the potatoes in salt (this helps draw moisture out of the potato for a better texture in the final gnocchi) and bake.

Peel the potatoes while still hot and mash them with a fork or potato ricer. (Eat the potato skins, they’re so good!)

Add the egg yolks and work into the potatoes with the fork. Knead in a cup of flour until just combined (it may take 1 ½ cups, but add only a cup at first). Season with salt and a liberal amount of pepper.

Divide the dough into four parts on a lightly floured workspace. Roll each piece into a snake-like log the diameter of a nickel, then use a knife or bench scraper to cut the log into ½-inch pieces.

Use a fork to gently roll ridges into each gnocchi then transfer to a lightly floured cookie sheet.

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the gnocchi to the water in four batches. They’re done when they float to the top — this should take no more than a couple minutes. Scoop out each gnocchi when it floats.

When all gnocchi are cooked, melt the butter in a large sautee pan. Add the gnocchi and toss until lightly browned. Add the arugula and more salt to taste, and toss until just wilted.

Transfer to a serving dish and top with grated Pecorino. Enjoy!

[gallery] p.s. If you like this recipe, check out Brooklyn Kitchen’s blog for more seasonal recipes.

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We are hiring!

We've built an excellent foundation for a fitness technology start-up, and now we are looking for amazing and driven engineers to help us grow faster and share the rewards. We are looking for full-time engineers for our New York office. Please e-mail me at [email protected] or pass this on to friends who might be interested. About our start-up The WorkSmart Labs mission is to use technology to make fitness more fun and effective. Existing fitness companies have dropped the ball on this (ever have a blast on a treadmill?), and technology companies with top talent have largely ignored the area. We are building WorkSmart Labs to fill the gap. For example, imagine a video version of Google Street View, but on a treadmill and with image analysis that allows you to embed virtual opponents and motivational mileposts. Then instead of watching CNN, users can run through the streets of Paris or the Alps, while we optimize their workout for maximum fat-burn or endurance. Imagine also the gym of the future, where every exercise you do is monitored by a mobile cyber trainer, virtually following and instructing you. And if you don't do what you should, it can post this fact on your Facebook feed, or even donate money to an organization you dislike. These are the types of ideas that drive us, and we are building and testing many of these and other ideas. What makes us different

We are small and early-stage! We have many helpers and advisers, but we still have just 6 full-time employees. Additionally, we've prudently kept costs low and financed our company with our own and angel funds, not taking VC money, which means we've kept a lot of equity to share with highly-talented early employees (that's you!). If you join, I guarantee you will have a big impact and will be generously rewarded for it with equity.

We are changing and improving the world! We're focusing on the largely unexplored area of "fitness and wellness technology", where improvements can have a big and hugely beneficial impact. Unlike say .com's, not enough smart people are looking at this problem -- and we can change that together. We already get many e-mails from users thanking us for helping them lose weight or exercise. Imagine doing that on a global scale.

We make decisions together! Whether its how much to pay an advisor, what features to add, how to negotiate an investment, or even if we should get a new couch. You will be an equal partner in these discussions, and you will learn how to make such decisions (in a data-driven way and beyond!). Instead of working on just one area, we believe that every employee should be able to think like a CEO. The biggest thing I underestimated in joining a start-up is how much I would learn from this process: every day something different comes up, and every time it's a life-long lesson for business and life.

We are building the kind of company we want to work for! We've worked for and admire great engineering companies (such as Fog Creek and Google), and are obsessed with creating a great work environment and a rewarding atmosphere. No obstacle is too great on this quest, and you will be able to help us improve it. We've had an amazing chef from day one (we love her!) and a fun office with frequent visitors.

We build amazing & diverse technologies! At our core, we are a team of great engineers. As such, right from the beginning, we have worked hard to build a great engineering environment -- with code reviews, automatic unit tests, bug reports, the works. We take great pride in our tools and our code, and this lets us build cool stuff quickly. We build everything from Android mobile software, to C++ image analysis, to web UI, to pedometer data analysis. Because we are small, you will become skilled in many more technologies, and build more diverse ones.

We are multi-disciplinary! We see fitness technology as multi-disciplinary at its core -- we need the input of fitness advisors, designers, doctors, psychologists, and researchers. Already, we have trainers and researchers (who'd normally not cross paths!) that advise us on these subjects, and we dream of a day when we have all of these people working together in one place, having fun, and then going down to our own demo gym to use our own products! From the start, we've also built this company to attract a great variety of people, so you will get to interact with a much more diverse set of people than in a typical engineering company.

We are making great progress! Our business accomplishments so far include releasing the most popular dedicated fitness application on the Android Market (CardioTrainer), securing angel capital from Korea as well as from a senior Google Product Manager, winning a technology development grant from the Korean Ministry of Knowledge, and most importantly, building an amazing foundation for our company and finding an awesome team.

Candidates We are looking for excellent engineers that are smart and get things done. This means of course great software design skills, a lot of software engineering experience (5 years minimum, and we don't care if it was at Apple or in your mom's basement), excellent communication skills, and a driven personality. We will compensate with a base salary combined with generous equity, so you need to be interested in future growth rather than immediate riches. You know who you are. Contact Information We have a [email protected] e-mail and this goes directly to me (and only to me), so it's completely confidential. You can use this to ask questions or send your resume. Fancy resumes are not required! Artem Petakov, Co-Founder/CTO of WorkSmart Labs

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It's alive!

We finally have a real corporate website! Don't worry, we're still the same friendly family, but now you can learn a little bit about our team & vision. Check it out and tell us what you think: [email protected]

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CardioTrainer & WorkSmart Labs are growing up

With your terrific support, CardioTrainer is slowly growing up. This means ever more users, more features, and an ever-growing responsibility to reliability from us. I'd like to share an important lesson we received recently, and what we learned from it. An Important Lesson & CardioTrainer version 0.9.3 On January 26th, we updated the CardioTrainer website to include several new features: remembering your access code (a long-time request!), a CardioTrainer Help/Tutorial page, and many other fixes. Please check out the improved website. That was the good news. Unfortunately, because of an error in the Website update process, there was a temporary problem uploading tracks to the website between Jan 26 16:50:26 EST and Jan 27 13:30 EST (18 hours). The G1 believed it was uploading the tracks, but the website had a problem receiving them. At our scale, this meant missing some 4000 miles of tracks from our users, a very serious problem! Read on, all is not lost! Once we learned about the problem, the whole team took emergency measures: working around the clock, we released CardioTrainer 0.9.3, just 20 hours later. This release includes code to auto-retransmit the tracks that were not sent successfully, as well as code that lets you manually retransmit any track from the history. This version also includes some other bug fixes, so there is an upside for you as well. For the best experience, please head over to the Market and install the latest version, CardioTrainer 0.9.3. All of your data will be saved. If you have any problems, please write back to us. Since then, we have done a lot to make sure this kind of error will not happen again: improved our server stability, created many additional automatic notifications systems, and new diagnostic and repair tools. We are very sorry for the inconvenience to you, but are also very happy to learn such a valuable lesson. Thank you for your patience, and for continuing to support us on this journey. The features ahead We are working very hard to add new features to CardioTrainer. They include simple things like calorie counting, pace measurement, and website improvements, but we are also working on some much bigger ideas. We'd like to keep them a surprise, but we have a feeling you will like them. We need your help! We are spending all of our resources on features, so we are really counting on you to get the word out. CardioTrainer is already getting some press coverage. We think we can do much better -- if you have any time, please post about us to your favorite blog, or tell that tech columnist friend of yours about CardioTrainer. If you'd like to help even more, please get in touch with us and tell us your ideas.

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Happy New Year!

On behalf of the whole WorkSmart Labs family, I would like to wish you a very Happy New Year! We've been keeping very busy, and I wanted to update you briefly on the Christmas presents we have gotten you. As some of you already noticed, on Christmas day we posted a new version of CardioTrainer - v0.9.2. Because of a small bug in the way it was uploaded, the Market still says v0.9.1, but it is indeed a new version. If you haven't tried it yet, check it out -- it adds: (drumroll please)

Voice Output -- CardioTrainer now has a voice! It can tell you how far you've gone, and how long it took to get there. In the settings screen, you can customize how often you get notified -- either based on distance or time, or even completely disable it if you'd rather tune out and enjoy your music. For those of you that exercise with music, CardioTrainer will turn down the music when it talks to you, and then turn it back up when it's done. A lot more exciting developments coming for this feature!

Statistics Screen -- you can access this either by going to the Statistics menu when you are exercising or by simply clicking on the map. We are going to add more here soon. Look for calories and pace information in the next update!

Advanced GPS Settings -- some of you exercise in areas with dense vegetation or skyscrapers, where the GPS sensitivity level prevents you from getting any GPS points. If so, head over to the Advanced GPS settings screen (reachable from the Settings screen) and adjust the filter level there. Or maybe you'd like to save power for those 20-hour hikes you do. We have a setting for you as well.

We have also fixed a few bugs on the website -- KML/GPX export should now export correct timestamps and elevations, and you can now zoom in all the way on your track without it disappearing. We also have a lot more features planned for the website. Please try them out, let us know what you think of the new features, and if you have a second, jot down a comment in the Market. We can't thank you enough for your continued support of CardioTrainer. Your feedback, ideas, comments is what keeps us motivated and allows us to build an amazing product. We are always listening. And we will keep listening in 2009 and beyond.

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Viva la data!

I am VERY happy to announce that the CardioTrainer website now allows you to export individual tracks in KML and GPX formats. Since this was one of the top web feature requests, I wanted to make sure all of you found out about it as soon as possible, and gave us any feedback that you have, or tell us about any problems you encounter. To see the feature, just log-in on the website and select a track. In the top-right corner, right next to delete, you should see an export to KML and GPX links. If you don't see them or something doesn't work, tell us please! Rest assured, this is only one of many steps on the way to sharing your data with the rest of the world. We are listening very carefully to your feedback, and you have given us great ideas and I am sure will give us many more! At WorkSmart, we never believe in restricting users and their data, or in any other kind of vendor lock-in. We will always be dedicated to being the best, and we hope to earn your trust, but we will make it as easy as possible to export to any platform or program of your choice. Viva the data!  Happy running, biking, walking, and whatever else makes you happier and more fit!