Adidas has detailed its fitness smartwatch, revealed earlier today, the miCoach SMART RUN, ahead of the Android-powered wearable‘s launch on November 1st. Designed to operate as a standalone fitness accessory, rather than demanding a permanent link to a smartphone, the miCoach SMART RUN runs Android Jelly Bean 4.1.1 with a custom interface on a 1.45-inch […]
The world needs another fitness wearable, at least that’s what Adidas believes, showing off its new Adidas Smart Watch, the miCoach SMART RUN, for the first time today. Hitting shelves – and athletes’ wrists – from November 1st, the Adidas wearable takes things a little more seriously than rivals like Nike’s recently announced Nike+ FuelBand […]
IBM’s Watson
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Nike is revealing a new version of its FuelBand today at an event in New York City. Dubbed the FuelBand SE, the new fitness tracker sports a variety of color accents and represents the sporting goods maker’s first non-cosmetic update to its activity tracking wearable since the gadget’s introduction.
The FuelBand, for those who aren’t familiar, is a wearable wristband that provides users with a visual readout of their steps taken during the course of a day, and also offers up a ‘Fuel’ tally, which is a metric made up by Nike that calculates based on your activity level through things like walking, running, paying basketball and more. They don’t share much about how they come up with that number, but it’s likely not terribly scientific and meant primarily as a motivation device to get people moving more frequently.
This new second-generation product has a similar design to the original version (but with red, pink or yellow accents), with a rubberized band that fits snugly around the wrist available in different sizes. This edition is intended to be better at encouraging users to move, and harder to cheat with. Nike reports that doing things like punching your fist in the air to game your score won’t up your Fuel score, according to CNET. It also looks to offer up better ability to differentiate between different types of activity, like cycling, spinning and rowing.
Nike’s new hardware is sealed and waterproofed, making it usable in the shower, and it’s got a highly refined motion detection algorithm. There are regular reminders (once hourly) to prompt you to get up and stop being so lazy, and there’s a new shortcut to let you double tap the button to access time. It uses Bluetooth 4.0, too, which should make it easier to sync data and provide a bit of a battery boost. There’s also a brand new app redesign to do along with it, with more granular and informative charts and graphs related to activity data. A new Fuel-per-minute metric offers a look at your average intensity, rather than just cumulative activity totals.
Finally, there’s sleep tracking, which the first generation device lacked entirely. Sleep tracking is available to users of the Fitbit Flex, and the Jawbone Up, so that’s a huge addition in terms of playing catchup with the competition. The FuelBand SE is still iOS only, however, so don’t expect an Android app anytime soon. Users not in the Apple flock can still use the website, however. Nike has also launched “Fuel Lab,” a 12-week program designed to help companies launch integrations of its Nike+ and NikeFuel APIs and SDKs, which offers $50,000 to each of 10 companies chosen to take part.
The FuelBand SE will be available on November 6, along with the updated iPhone app and the Nike Move app debuted at the iPhone 5s reveal. The FuelBand will cost $149, and ship initially in the U.S., UK, Canada, France Germany and Japan, with pre-orders kicking off today.
Developing…
While Obama might be having a hell of a time trying to reform healthcare, we perhaps shouldn’t worry too much—because IBM’s supercomputer Watson is now being used to fix America’s shortage of doctors.
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At the end of World War I, tens of millions of people died in just a few short years. But these deaths had nothing to do with the bullets and bayonets that had taken so many lives in battle. It was, instead, the Spanish Flu, which killed off about 5% of the world’s population from 1918 until 1920. Were a similar pandemic to hit today, one of the things we’d need to rethink is how we use our phones.
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Everything makes you fat! Gluten-free food is the key to eternal youth! You need to poop ten times a day or you’ll die! You’ll find tons of equally ridiculous health claims around the internet, and you’ll actually believe some of them. Today we’re taking a look at 10 common myths and uncovering the truth.
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Say hello to Todd. Todd, on the far left, is literally Mr Average: the most typical of American men based on averages from CDC anthropometric data. How do you compare?
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Google didn’t spill much on Calico, the Google Ventures founded biotech company that made headlines last month by taking on human mortality and challenging aging, but that hasn’t stopped new tidbits about the well-financed health startup from leaking out. Described as the brainchild of Google Ventures’ managing partner Bill Maris, Calico’s pitch to investors was […]
Toronto-based startup PUSH is hoping to add some professionalism to an essentially amateur space with its fitness tracker aimed specifically at pros and demanding athletes who want data, not vague metrics, about general activity levels. The PUSH can provide solid data about reps, sets, force, power, balance, velocity, max weight, tempo and more to athletes who depend on informed workouts to push themselves further, and it’s nearly halfway to the $80,000 funding goal on Indiegogo it needs to make that happen.
The PUSH is a device that pairs with an elastic armband for wearing while you work out, which incorporates a motion sensor, orientation sensor, Bluetooth 2.1, a rechargeable battery good for between 6 to 8 hours of continual use (or around a week of exercising), as well as a physical button and LEDs for basic input and display. It pairs with a companion app that features an exercise database, motion analysis, sharing and trend tracking as well as visual reporting of the data it collects.
I spoke with Mike Lovas, Chief Designer of PUSH hardware and co-founder of the company. He explained that, while the activity-tracking segment is well-covered now, there’s still a huge gap when it comes to professional-caliber devices – and a strong appetite and willingness among organizations and users to spend on such hardware.
“One of the big things we’ve been really interested in is the pro-level interest,” he said. “A lot of guys from the NHL, NFL, MLB, pro soccer in Europe, rugby and those kinds of high-end users are loving what we’re doing, so that’s been super encouraging.”
PUSH is seeing a lot of that interest being driven at the organization level by coaching staff and trainers who want to help their athletes train more effectively and efficiently; a truly quantified workout routine has the advantage of being able to provide the tools needed for athletes to work out smarter and safer. You’ll have less chance of injuring yourself if professionals have access to more data, and you won’t waste time with exercises that aren’t really adding anything to your existing workouts.
“Sports science is big. Pros are using high-end, expensive research equipment and pay through the nose for that stuff,” Lovas explained, describing how it differs from what’s already out there. “We had this product that we could offer at a fraction of the price, give them similar metrics and also have it so that every athlete could wear this every time they work out, so it’s not just once a month that they could get this data, but every time they hit the gym.”
Individual users can pre-order the device for a one-time fee of $139, but for coaches and teams there’s going to be a subscription software and service product that provides them with a dashboard where they can monitor and compare all their athletes on an ongoing basis. Obviously, the hope is that this becomes a competitive advantage that teams are climbing over themselves to get at.
Lovas also says that PUSH is looking at expanding the types of activity it can monitor with different types of mounts for the PUSH, and could even get into specialized hardware and software for individual sports down the road, depending on how things go. Judging by the progress they’ve made so far toward their funding goal, there’s strong demand out there for this type of thing.
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