Basis fitness tracker gets an Android app, to be available in Q1; iOS version still in the works

Basis fitness tracker gets an Android app, to be available in Q1; iOS version still in the works

We’ll say this about Basis: no one can accuse it of rushing products to market. It was a whole year ago back at CES 2012 that the company first announced its fitness band, which only just went on sale six weeks ago. It’s a pretty promising device, actually, with sensors that track sweat output, heat dissipation, blood flow and heart rate. Unlike other fitness trackers, too, it can automatically detect when you’re asleep or working out, so that you don’t have to log that information manually. The problem is, there aren’t yet any mobile apps, meaning you have to view all your data through a web console. Well, we have some good news: the company just released screenshots of its Android app, which fortunately has the same clean UI as the website. The bad news: it won’t actually be available to download until later in Q1, and the iOS version is still in development.

For now, here’s a little preview of what you can expect. The “Insights” feature gives you a daily summary, with everything from sleep quality to resting heart rate to calories burned. If you like, you can scroll through the days or view your progress in one-week increments, though a Basis rep hinted monthly and yearly views might be added later. Additionally, you can page through so-called habit cards, which keep tabs on how well you’re sticking to a healthy routine, doing things like getting up from your desk and moving around. As we said, the app will be available on Android by the end of Q1, following a period of beta testing. If we can catch a demo here at CES, we’ll update this post with a short hands-on video but for now, help yourself to some screenshots below.

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Source: Basis

Live from LG’s CES 2013 press event

Live from LG's CES 2013 press event

Smartphones, HDTVs and appliances galore. All will almost certainly be present at this year’s LG press conference today in fabulous Las Vegas. Also, it’s at the Mandalay Bay casino, so, you know, sharks, too. All that and more after the break.

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Fitbit Flex takes on Jawbone UP with Bluetooth activity tracker

Fitbit has revealed its latest take on the activity tracker, the Fitbit Flex, a new challenger to the Jawbone UP complete with Bluetooth 4.0 for real-time sync with a nearby iPhone, iPad, or Android device. The tracker slots neatly into a waterproof wristband, or can be removed and clipped on elsewhere, tracking steps taken, distance travelled, calories burned, and even sleep, and giving at-a-glance feedback on the wearer’s performance using LEDs.

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Those lights show 20-percent increments of the daily goal, which is set by the individual wearer. However, the low-power Bluetooth 4.0 is used to ping more complex data over to Fitbit’s Flex app, with various graphs and graphics to show how close you are to your targets for steps, calorie burn, and other factors, as well as how long you’ve been sleeping, how many times you woke up, and how efficient your sleep was.

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The Flex can also wake the wearer up with a silent alarm, using its sleep tracking abilities to automatically figure out what the best time to vibrate is, based on how fresh you’ll be feeling at any point. The new Flex app – which also works with the Fitbit One and Zip, and is available for Android for the first time – has social integration too, with activity badges, and support for challenges between friends and family.

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There’s also support for a food log, allowing the wearer’s diet to be recorded each day, and compared with activity and overall health. However, Flex can also integrate with third-party apps, such as Endomondo, LoseIt, MapMyFitness, MyFitnessPal, and Sparkpeople.

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Fitbit Flex is up for preorder now, priced at $99.95, and is expected to ship in the spring of this year. The Android Flex app will arrive by the end of February.

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Fitbit Flex takes on Jawbone UP with Bluetooth activity tracker is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

AcerCloud expands support to iOS with new features

It was at last year’s CES that Acer was seen touting the features of AcerCloud, but this year, the company has more to talk about. Acer has announced that AcerCloud will soon be expanding to iOS, meaning consumers will be able to share files between Apple’s mobile OS, Android, and Windows. This platform expansion wasn’t the only thing Acer announced today, though, as AcerCloud will also be getting a few interesting new features.

AcerCloud

Chief among these new features is perhaps the Remote Files app, which will allow users to access their Windows-based PCs from any of their devices. With Acer Cloud Docs, users will be able to push their Microsoft Office documents to their other devices, making them downloadable and readable on iOS or Android. Acer will make these documents available for 30 days after they were last modified, and unlike AcerCloud as a whole, there isn’t any storage limit when you’re working with AcerCloud Docs.

Of course, your AcerCloud storage limit is determined by how much free space you have on your PC’s hard drive, which potentially means that you can far exceed the storage capacity offered by many other cloud services. Considering that AcerCloud is a free service for Acer PC owners, that sounds like a pretty great deal, though you are essentially still paying for the service in terms of additional hard drive space.

Other features announced today include PicStream, which is a lot like AcerCloud Docs in that it will push pictures taken with one device to all of your machines (which then remain available for 30 days), and AcerCloud clear.fi, a feature that will let you sync your media libraries – music included – between all of your devices. This AcerCloud update will be available for download sometime this month, and Acer says that the new version of AcerCloud will be bundled with all of the company’s PCs starting in Q2 2013.


AcerCloud expands support to iOS with new features is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Toshiba Qosmio X875 Laptop Announced

X875 Q7280 OPEN FRNT LT45 Toshiba Qosmio X875 Laptop Announced

[CES 2013] If Ultrabooks aren’t your thing and you’re looking for something a little more powerful in the graphics department, Toshiba has announced the Qosmio X875 laptop, a 17.3” laptop with an optional 3D-ready display along with a decent discrete graphics card that should allow you to play some of today’s newer games, although we expect that maybe more hardcore gamers will want to stick to a full desktop system. The X875 will sport a TruBrite display and like we said earlier, there is an option where users can configure the laptop to come with a 3D display but we expect that should cost you a bit more.

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Asus Transformer Book TX300CA, ASUS Transformer AiO Merges Desktop And Tablet,

Acer Iconia B1-A71 budget tablet announced to challenge Nexus 7

Just as the prophecies foretold, Acer has revealed the Iconia B1-A71, a new budget tablet that seems to serve as the company’s answer to the wildly popular Nexus 7. We’ve been hearing for a while that Acer was working on an inexpensive 7-inch tablet, and today that device was officially revealed. As you might expect, the Iconia B1-A71 isn’t the most powerful tablet on the block, but its decent hardware and budget price might be enough to bring consumers flocking.

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Just as we heard prior to this announcement, the Iconia B1-A71 will come equipped with a dual-core MediaTek processor (MTK 8317T) clocked at 1.2GHz, which is working in tandem with just 512MB of RAM. The tablet sports a 7-inch WSVGA touchscreen that’s displaying at 1,024×600 resolution, so we’re getting a bump down in resolution as compared to the Nexus 7′s 1280×800 display.

If there’s one thing particularly exciting about the Iconia B1-A71, it’s the fact that it has a microSD slot, so you’ll be able to add more memory if the 8GB that’s on board out of the box isn’t quite enough. The Nexus 7 quite famously doesn’t have a microSD slot, so users are stuck with whatever internal memory their tablet ships with. The Iconia B1-A71 will also be running Android Jelly Bean (Acer didn’t specify the exact version), which is another plus.

Users will have a relatively beefy 2,710mAh battery to power their Iconia B1-A71, along with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS making the list of wireless connectivity options. Acer hasn’t announced when its new tablet will be launching, but it does say that the B1-A71 will be available at a starting price that comes in under $150. We’ll have to wait for more details, but for now, just know that Acer’s budget 7-inch tablet is real. Stay tuned.


Acer Iconia B1-A71 budget tablet announced to challenge Nexus 7 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Toshiba Satellite U845T 14” Ultrabook Unveiled

U845t OPEN FRNT LT45  Toshiba Satellite U845T 14” Ultrabook Unveiled

[CES 2013] For those shopping about for a new Ultrabook, Toshiba has unveiled the Satellite U845T, a 14” Ultrabook with a touchscreen display which is starting to become commonplace with computers running Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows 8. The display will be a TruBrite display and will feature a resolution of 1366×768 and will be powered by a 3rd gen Intel processor. Customers will be able to choose between either an i3 or i5 configuration depending on their needs, but we expect that the i5 model will cost a bit more than the i3.

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Asus Announced a Whole Slew of New Windows 8 PCs Today, Asus Transformer Book Hands-On! ,

Toshiba Cloud TV

Toshiba demonstrated what the company calls its “Cloud TV” at an event in Las Vegas tonight, and I was curious to know how this technology is different from the regular “Connected TV” that we all know. A Toshiba representative told me that the Toshiba Cloud solution makes the TVs “smarter” than the regular connected TV. The terms “Smart” and “Cloud” are so overused in technology marketing, that we do not know what it exactly means any more.

Basically, Toshiba’s Cloud TV allows people to share files in the cloud such as photos, or share calendars or play multiplayer games using tablets, smartphones and the TV. I saw a demo of a poker game played by four people on different Android devices, each of them viewing its own cards, the TV acted as the poker table. Other connected TVs do not allows such interactions.

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By Ubergizmo. Related articles: VIZIO 80-inch Razor LED Smart TV Leads CES Lineup, EnGenius Announces Wireless AC Home Entertainment And Media Pods,

The Emergency Phone With Crazy Battery Life Now Has Audio Feedback and Location Data

If you’ve kept a SpareOne cell phone in your car for emergencies since Xpal announced them at CES last year, congratulations! You still have 14 years of power left on that one AA Energizer battery. More »

HGST launches the $99 Travelstar 1TB 2.5-inch HDD, crams it inside its Touro, G-Drive and G-Raid units

HGST launches the $99 Travelstar 1TB 25inch HDD, crams it inside its Touro, GDrive and GRaid units

Henry Ford may have felt that your Model T could come in any color “as long as it is black,” but HGST feels differently about consumer choice. It’s announcing its latest hard drive, the 1TB, 2.5-inch Travelstar HDD, which goes toe-to-toe with other 7,200 RPM drives like the Constellation.2 and Scorpio Blue. If you want to sling one of the new units inside your current machine, the vanilla model, available later in Q1, will set you back $99.99, but HGST is also offering a swathe of external drives to suit your needs. If you’d call yourself a consumer, then you can snag the Touro Mobile Pro, which offers a bonus 3GB of cloud storage space for (£99.99) while professionals can pick up the 1TB G-DRIVE Mini for £149.99 or the 2TB G-RAID Mini, which can be yours in exchange for £339.99 of your earth currency. Wanna know more? Drive your jalopy down after the break.

Continue reading HGST launches the $99 Travelstar 1TB 2.5-inch HDD, crams it inside its Touro, G-Drive and G-Raid units

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