Hasta La Gadget!

Activity tracking devices are nothing new, but the current offerings have a sporty look, which is expected but may not suit all tastes. If you’re looking for something a bit less conspicuous, check out the Misfit Shine, a new brand of booze security camera night vision goggles wireless activity tracker with a minimalist design.

Unlike the brightly-colored bracelets of current competing devices like the Nike FuelBand or Jawbone Up, the Misfit Shine is a tiny aircraft-grade aluminum disc with a clasp (though there is a bracelet attachment provided). You can attach it to the waist of your pants and no one will notice that you’re obsessed with your exercise stats. Speaking of which, the Misfit Shine can track steps, bike pedals and swim strokes. The idea is to pair it with an iOS5.0+ or Android 4.0+ then set a daily goal from within your mobile device. You can then check how close you are to achieving your goal by tapping the Misfit Shine, which will display a number of lighted dots to provide you with a rough estimate.

Because it’s made almost entirely from metal, it doesn’t work using conventional wireless tech. Instead, you place the Misfit Shine directly on the screen of your mobile device to pair it. I wonder how the pairing system really works.

Pledge at least $79 (USD) on its Indiegogo fundraiser to reserve a Misfit Shine, along with a sports wristband. When you become a backer maybe you can convince the inventors to come up with a more descriptive name instead.

[via Fashioning Technology]

Advancements in biotechnology continue to amaze me. We’re rapidly approaching the point where human/cyborg combinations are becoming more and more plausible, as is evidenced by this recent accomplishment by the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. This past sunday, a man wearing the first “thought-controlled bionic leg” used the limb to help him ascend 103 floors of the skyscraper formerly known as the Sears Tower.

This past Sunday, 31-year-old Zac Vawter made history by climbing countless stairs inside the iconic Chicago skyscraper, all with the help of this incredible bionic leg. This mechanical and technological marvel is controlled by Vawter’s own neurons, and was developed by the Rehabilitation Institute’s Center for Bionic Medicine, and partially-funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. You can see Zac and his amazing bionic leg in action in the video clip below:

The leg actually interacts with Zac’s nerve impulses, allowing him to climb stairs much more easily than he could with an ordinary prosthetic leg. Vawter lost his leg after a motorcycle accident back in 2009, and his trial of the leg will help him and potentially many others with disabilities to walk again.

The interesting thing about research into video games is that depending on which side you listen to, video games either turn players into insanely violent criminals or video games can make you a better person. One of the latest bits of research performed using a video game comes from Boston Children’s Hospital.

In the study, researchers used traditional treatments with children ranging from age 9 to 17 that had anger control issues. The traditional treatment involved cognitive-behavioral therapy, relaxation techniques, and social skills. One group of 19 children only received the standard treatments.

A second group of 18 children received the same standard treatments and played a video game called Rage Control for the last 15 minutes of their session. The video game, which sounds rather like Space Invaders, required the children to keep their heart rate under a preset limit or lose the ability to destroy enemy spaceships. The researchers found that the group who played the video game were significantly better at keeping their heart rates down and showed clinically-significant decreases in anger scores on standardized tests.

The study appears in the October 2012 issue of Adolescent Psychiatry.

Just when I think that I could find no more weird gadgets from Japan, along comes yet another ridiculous invention that’s designed to solve a single, decidedly first-world problem – unruly men’s eyebrows.

Just place the Men’s Eyebrown Shaving Guide over the bridge of your nose, and let it grip onto your face like a headcrab. Once in place, you brush any excess eyebrow hairs to the outside of the guide and then trim them.

I had no idea that this was really a problem that was in need of a solution, but if you’re obsessed with manscaping and having perfectly symmetrical, dainty eyebrows, then whip out your credit cards and head over to the Japan Trend Shop, where you can grab the Men’s Eyebrow Shaving Guide for $33(USD).

There are a number of wearable devices on the market these days which can monitor your activity when you exercise, but they’re all pretty much glorified motion sensors, which extrapolate your activity level based on movement. Now, a team of engineers from MIT is working on a new kind of wearable sensor which could not only monitor motion, but vital health statistics.

The Amiigo wearable sensor is not only capable of detecting movements and gestures, but also your heart rate, blood oxygen levels and skin temperature. All of these data points can help you monitor the effectiveness and safety of your workout routine. In addition, the Amiigo monitor is waterproof, so it can even go in the swimming pool, making it a great gadget idea for triatheletes and winter sports buffs.

The device will come with two sensor components – one worn on the wrist, the other clipped onto the shoe. A companion smartphone app will track all of your workouts and physical activities in detail, as well as enable competition and sharing with friends. A set of proprietary discrimination and machine learning algorithms can even discern exactly what sort of activities you’re partaking in and record these automatically. For instance, it could identify the difference between a bicep curl and a pull-up.

The guys behind the Amiigo also plan on offering an SDK for the device, which would allow for the creation of custom software which could leverage the data from the sensors – whether for other fitness or health applications, or even for gaming.

The Amiigo will be launching a crowdfunding campaign at the end of October, and you can sign up to be notified about it over on their website.