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The Garmin Forerunner 610 features a weather-proof touch display for training in any conditions

For serious runners who want to track their progress, a GPS sports watch can be indispensible.

Garmin has outed a number of wrist-mounted trainers over the years, but the new Forerunner 610 is its first touchscreen model. It’s also a bit more attractive than previous members of the Forerunner line.

The 610 can keep track of pace, distance and, with an optional heart monitor, heart rate. It will deliver vibration alerts for when audible ones can’t be heard. Its slim black form also houses “Training Effect” and “Virtual Racer” features, for tracking workout intensity and beating your own personal bests. The Garmin Connect online service provides access to additional functions, including an online fitness community and tools for logging run metrics and plotting them in charts and illustrations.

For those who prefer alternating between running and walking, Auto Lap and Auto Pause help keep track of this type of training session.

You don’t need to buy a GPS watch. Tools like the Nike+ GPS app, which run on your smartphone, can do many of the same things. But a watch is less cumbersome than carrying your phone on every run.

We recently took a look at the Nike+ SportWatch GPS, which offers similar run-tracking features. It has a large, bold-numbered display that’s operated by three buttons and an easy to use, intuitive interface.

The Forerunner 610 functions with a combination of buttons and touchscreen taps, which looks like it could potentially be more complicated and less user friendly than Nike’s answer to the GPS watch.

The Garmin Forerunner 610 is definitely designed for the fitness buff, with a price of $350. No word on when it will be officially available for purchase.

Forerunner 610 [Garmin via Crunchgear]

The Circuit Board Tie is the tie I would have loved to wear in school

When a man dons a novelty necktie, that man is telling the world that he has given up, that he is removing his lineage from the gene-pool, and that — far from being a wacky, fun-loving guy — he is in fact crying on the inside. He is the modern-day equivalent of the sad clown: creepy, and to be kept away from children at all costs.

Even knowing this incontrovertible fact, I am still tempted by the Circuit Board tie. The design is screen-printed by hand in metallic copper and silver inks. The tie itself is made from green or black microfiber, which makes it ideal for cleaning phone screens or spectacles, and can be had in normal, narrow or skinny widths.

Perhaps it is the fact that the design is more like a piece of art than the ker-azy novelty pictures normally found on this genus of apparel that draws me so? Perhaps this isn’t a novelty tie at all. Or am I wrong? If I wear it, am I doomed to forever eat alone, with only my Tweety Bird and Sylvester tie to keep me company?

The Circuit Board tie is currently sold out.

Circuit Board Tie [Etsy via @Arikia]

See Also:

• Playable Neckties Made From Old Audio Tape
• Solar Powered Tie Charges Cellphones
• USB Cufflinks, For the Man Who Has Everything (Except Taste …

Casio’s low-power Bluetooth watch runs for two years on a button cell

Casio has put Bluetooth into a wristwatch. By itself, that’s not so much to talk about. But this is the low energy variant of Bluetooth 4, which means that the watch will run for two years on a coin-cell, just like any other wristwatch.

The G-Shock Bluetooth looks a lot like you’d expect — a chunky plastic sports watch, with added Bluetooth logos. The main schtick is that the watch will sync its clock with your cellphone. Because your phone updates its clock with network time, this should mean the watch is always accurate.

You’ll also get notifications of incoming calls, SMS and email, and if you lose your phone you can use the watch to activate an alarm or make it vibrate. This may not be as useful as it sounds, though, as the maximum range of low-energy Bluetooth is just 5 meters, which means you’ll still be wandering from room to room to find it.

The biggest problem, though, will be finding a Bluetooth 4 phone to pair it with. Once these become more common, though, who wouldn’t want a watch that could do all this and run for two years on a CR2032 battery? The super low power consumption alone means that Bluetooth notifications just got a whole lot more useful.

The watch should be in stores soon, for an unknown price.

Casio G-Shock Bluetooth Watch Revealed [A Blog to Read via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Casio Makes Your Eyes Water with G-Shock Man-Box
• Crazy-Rugged Casio Is a Titan Among Tough Timepieces
• $200 Watch-Phone Is a Fun, Affordable Accessory
• World's 'Most Feature-Packed Watch' is Also its Ugliest
• Why Wristwatches Are Still Worth Watching

Rickshaw Bagworks, the San Francisco maker of messenger bags, computer sleeves and the Dodo Murse, has come out with its iPad 2 bag. It is much like Rickshaw’s Zero Messenger, only it has a padded sleeve at the front into which you can slip a naked or clothed iPad 2 (or iPad 1).

I have used the Zero Messenger in Performance Tweed fabric, so let me describe it. The Tweed is a dual-layer fabric made from recycled polyester, and it is quite ridiculously light. The fabric is thing and flexible enough to form itself to your shape, making in comfortable to wear right up until you stuff it far too full, and the bag is pretty much one big sack with a couple pockets at the front (one full length pocket divided vertically by stitching).

Closure is by velcro, and there are horizontal velcro strips running inside for attaching accessories (pockets and so on). The shoulder strap is somewhere in feel between soft seatbelt webbing and the too-stiff material used by Tumbuk2, and can be cinched up for cycling with a cam clamp. There are D-rings for attaching a cross strap.

I stand over six feet tall, and I’d appreciate a little extra length in the strap, but otherwise the light weight, comfy strap and generous interior make this a good everyday bag.

The iPad version is almost exactly the same, but is narrower, taller and has the padded section behind the front pockets.

The 10 x 11.25 x 3.75 inch bag weighs one pound, and costs $75. The medium messenger is $60 and weighs 1.25 pounds (and you can always just toss in an iPad in its own case). Available now.

Messenger Bag for iPad 2 [Rickshaw Bagworks]

See Also:

• Dodobag, a Murse to Hold Your Dodocase

Toilets, cows, and Germans have all been tagged by RFIDs, but according to a new study, it’s footwear and fashion that top the demand for radio-enabled tracking. In a report released yesterday, ABI Research said more than three-quarters of a billion RFID tags will be used in global apparel markets in 2011, with retailers like Walmart, Macy’s, and JC Penney leading the way. Item-level tracking isn’t new — in fact we saw something similar in 2006 — but with the likes of Walmart on board, the system is expected to grow as much as 60 percent in the next three years. The study suggests inventory and security as driving factors in the adoption of RFIDs, but we’ve got our suspicions. And anyway, we don’t want anyone to know how much we spent on that Material Girl leopard print shrug — not even a machine.

Item-level RFIDs get support from big retailers, track your every purchase originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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