Hasta La Gadget!

Now that the Jawbone Up and Nike+ Fuelband have paved the way for wrist-worn fitness monitors in the market, Fitbit has announced their own lightweight exercise monitoring writstband.

The Fitbit Flex allows you to track your fitness with ease. The compact device will track your steps, distance traveled, calories burned, active minutes, and the quality of your sleep. All of this data syncs up with your iPhone or Android device via Bluetooth.

There’s even a vibrating alarm function that you can use to wake you up discreetly, which is perfect if you get up at a different time than your bedmate.

The Fitbit Flex will be launched this Spring in a variety of colors and will cost $99.95(USD).

[via Uncrate]

Lucky 13 comes in with a bang at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. 
While in the real world, you might catch the flu in the exhibit halls
of the Las Vegas Convention Center, in the virtual world there’s no
viruses to speak of – just a lot of chatter that’s being monitored at
high frequency by Salesforce.

Even with cheap hard drives and scanners and all this talk of moving data to the cloud, the truth is most of the world’s offices still have tons of paper documents. A company called iMicroData aims to bring the convenience of digital filesystems to physical archives with the Smart Paper Filing System.

The Smart Filing System uses RFID tags and Wi-Fi to keep tabs on physical files. iMicroData claims that their system can keep track of up to 4 billion folders, the equivalent of 40 million standard size file cabinets. The drawers in a Smart Filing System file cabinet have conductive rails on which special folders with built-in LEDs rest.

The idea is for users to enter the name of a folder on the Smart Filing System’s program, along with any relevant keywords or tags. I’m not sure if the program then automatically reserves a space in a particular filing cabinet or if the user also has to mark the folder in some way. iMicroData just says that “[t]here is a motherboard installed in the cabinet, which generates the system address of a given folder.”

But after that mysterious indexing process the user is free to forget where he placed the folder. As shown in the top picture, when a user searches from the application the drawer that houses the folder automatically unlocks while an LED on its door blinks. Inside there’s another blinking LED that points to the folder itself. There’s also another LED that shows if a folder’s tab is properly connected to the conductive rails.

Users can also tell the smart cabinets when they have moved a file by pressing a re-file button on the cabinet, which prompts the system to save the new location.

According to C|NET, iMicroData is selling a master filing cabinet for $2,000 (USD) each, while secondary linked cabinets go for $1,500 each. It sounds like a primitive version of the file system on computer operating systems doesn’t it? Plus it still leaves a lot to humans. The indexing thing is the system’s weakest link. Not only does it depend on whether the person filing a folder uses tags and titles correctly, it sounds like a massive effort for companies with lots of existing files. I can say the same thing about the whole re-filing thing. But I suppose it’s a lot better than expecting a few people to know exactly where a single document is.

[via C|NET]

There are plenty of wireless speakers on the market these days, but sometimes, you just need a small speaker to deliver the right amount of sound at the right place. While outlets might not be optimally placed, this speaker takes advantage of the fact that most wireless speakers still need to be plugged in – at least to be charged.

The Bem Outlet Speaker  just plugs into a North American 110V outlet and connects with mobile devices via Bluetooth. Once your devices are within 25-feet and paired, simply hit the play button, the music will flow. The compact speaker is only sightly bigger than a juice box, so you can hide it away pretty much anywhere. It will cover up most of the outlet, so you’ll have to watch that if you use many of yours. It’s also got a USB port and 3.5mm jack for connecting wired devices.

The Bem Outlet Speaker is available now for $99.99(USD) and it comes in either black or white case options.

[via Ubergizmo]

One of the most popular booths at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was reportedly the HAPILABS booth where its new HAPIfork
was presented to thousands of curious spectators. Well, it’s not every
day that you get to see a fork with flashing lights and vibrators at
work.