Hasta La Gadget!

Wahoo’s Run/Gym Pack is a great place to start for prospective fitness nerds

Fitness apps for the iPhone aren’t exactly thin on the ground. Hit up the App Store and you’ll see a confusion of GPS-enabled trackers for running, biking and probably even skipping. What is slightly less common is hardware that lets these apps do more than simply tell you how far and fast you were.

Wahoo, which sounds like something Mario might shout in his more recent outings, is a “run/gym pack” which includes a heart-rate belt and companion dongle that slots into the dock port. It works with Wahoo’s own free app, but will also play nice with most any other fitness app or measuring device on the market thanks to its industry standard ANT+ integration.

The best thing about heart-rate monitor (apart from letting you go all “bondage chic” in the summer as you strap it around your naked chest) is that you can more accurately determine calories burned. Plain GPS trackers guess at this, but they’re often horribly inaccurate. With a heart-rate monitor, you can correctly determine the exact amount of donuts needed to redress your energy inbalance.

The new run pack costs $110-$130, and is available now.

Run/Gym Pack [Wahoo. Thanks, Brad!]

See Also:

• ANT+
• 2012 Bicycling Bling Goes Big
• Power Brain Connects Bikes to iPhone, Web
• Four Fitness Gadgets You Probably Already Own
• Watch-Like Pulse-Rate Monitor Talks to Your iPhone

SE Bikes’ Draft Coaster offers fixed-gear style with beach-cruiser control

The coaster brake, found on beach cruisers and Dutch-style city bikes, has come to the track bike in the form of the Draft Coaster from SE bikes.

Or should I say “track bike style“? For the Draft Coaster is anything but track ready. It is heavy (26 pounds or 12 kilos), has a hi-ten steel frame and comes with a riser bar, not drops. But no matter, as this is really about having a simple, clean looking bike to get around town.

When thought about like this, the design makes more sense. There are no visible brakes, and no cables, but there are fender mounts and platform pedals (or “peddles” as it says in the product blurb). The crankset is steel, the seat has a built-in bottle opener, and with the coaster brake you just push back on the pedals to stop.

At just $330, it’s hard to argue with this as a cheap beater for city riding. And despite that hi-ten frame, its still a lot lighter than a fully-specced commuter bike.

Draft Coaster product page [SE Bikes via Urban Velo]

See Also:

• Create Bikes v2.0: The Cheap Fixed-Gear Grows Up
• Felt Track Bike is Unashamedly Retro
• Second Walmart Fixed-Gear Bike Looks Pretty Sweet
• 5 Inexplicable Fixie Fashions

ThinkGeek’s IRIS 9000 turns your iPhone 4S into HAL

I don’t know how they keep doing it, but noveltyware purveyors ThinkGeek have just knocked another one out of the park. And I for one welcome the new IRIS 9000 voice control module for Siri, which pretty much turns your iPhone 4S into HAL 9000.

The module consists of a dock with speaker, microphone and ominous glowing red eye. It also comes with a small remote. Hit the button on the remote and Siri is triggered from afar, allowing you to ask her to set a timer for your broiling steak without greasing up your iPhone with beef fat and bacteria.

The IRIS (Siri backwards) speaker then amplifies Siri’s answer, and the red LED flickers along with her voice.

At just $60, it’s hard to come up with a reason not to buy this. However, there is bad news. Don’t worry — the pod bay doors are still open. The problem is that these won’t be shipping until 2012, although you can pre-order today.

IRIS 9000 voice control module for iPhone & Siri [ThinkGeek]

See Also:

• HAL 9000
• Happy Birthday, HAL – Wired
• Siri Is Stuffed With Hilarious Easter Eggs

The Lumia 800 (left) and 710 both run Windows Phone Mango, but only one does it in style

Nokia has announced “the first real Windows Phone” at a special event in London today. The Lumia 800 looks almost identical to the Nokia N9, apart from the fact that it’s running Windows Phone Mango and not the short-lived MeeGo OS.

The Finnish company also introduced the second, slightly lower-specced Lumia 710, also running Windows Phone, along with a smattering of Series 40 handsets — dubbed Asha — which are dumb (“feature”) phones pretending to be smartphones.

We know by now what Windows Phone Mango looks like, and we’ve been impressed by its simple, modern good looks and truly original tile-based UI. But until now, there really hasn’t been a handset to get people excited. And so, the hot-looking Lumia 800 might actually be “the first real Windows Phone.”

Both the 800 and 710 share a 1.4 GHz Qualcomm chip and a 3.7-inch, 480 x 800 capacitive screen. The 800 has an AMOLED display, whilst the 710 gets by with TFT.

The 800 boasts 16 GB storage and an 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics (ƒ2.2), whilst the 710 has a respectable 5 MP camera (ƒ2.4) and 8 GB storage, but only the lower-end 710 has a microSD card slot for expansion. Both have 512 MB RAM.

So the handsets are pretty much state-of-the-art for today’s smartphone market, and the prices are also pretty competitive. The 800 is shipping now to stores in the U.K., France, Spain, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands and will cost €420 ($585). The 710 will cost €270 ($376) and ship to Hong Kong, India, Russia, and Taiwan this year. Next year (2012) will see it reaching further abroad, presumably to wash up on U.S shores at some point.

The Lumia 800 has the potential to be huge, a throwback to the times of the Nokia 3210 and 3310. And it should certainly please the mass market more than Android handsets, with their inconsistent and ugly UIs, their terrible battery life and their laggy touch response. Good luck, Nokia!

Lumia 800 product page [Nokia]

Lumia 710 product page [Nokia]

See Also:

• Leaked Pics of Three New Nokia Windows Phones Surface
• Mango Is a Fresh New Flavor for Windows Phones

The following is an exerpt from CScout’s global blog the Trendpool.

Between the economic troubles, company scandals and natural disasters “Brand Japan” has taken a pretty serious hit. Unfortunately however the response has been less than impressive, the newest logo and slogan “Japan Next” about as inspiring as watching paint dry. It may work for brands such as Uniqlo, with Kashiwa Sato behind both images, where it represents their stripped back value, but for a country with such a rich and unique culture it is somewhat lacking.

When crusty bureaucrats intervene with campaigns that are aimed at highlighting the cool side of a country to encourage tourism, it’s rarely a pretty ending. Particularly not in Japan, where politics is famed for being populated by octogenarians who are about as up to date with the times as your grandparents’ old broken antique clock. Their idea of “Cool Japan”—androgynous boy bands or barely legal schoolgirl idols—promotes an image of Japan that is outdated and laughable more than it is appealing. So what should Japan be promoting to ignite interest in Brand Japan?

Continue reading the full story “Uncovering The Real Cool Japan- Part One” in full on the global blog…