PATREONItems tagged with fitness
Last November, Strava Labs launched a Global Heat Map for its fitness tracking app, which works in conjunction with fitness devices such as the Fitbit. It is billed as being the "largest, riches, and most beautiful dataset of its kind," but it's also proving a little too revealing for some military personnel. In can be deemed a security oversight, the heatmap is inadvertently revealing location data of soldiers at U.S. military bases. Strava's heatmap uses GPS tracking and satellite information to pinpoint a subscriber's location and movements. It is not a live map, but an accumulation of activity recorded between 2015 and September 2017. In maps of densely populated places like the United States...
Read more...
While college basketball teams around the country are gearing up for conference tournaments, which then lead into March Madness, the folks at Nike are working on technology that would make it easier for teams to keep track of athletes’ performance metrics in real-time, record stats and make informed decisions about player substitutions. As beneficial as this tech could be for teams monitors their multi-million dollar franchise players, it could be also be an [entertainment value] boon for fans to get an even more nuanced look at their favorite players. This information is provided to us courtesy of two Nike patent filings that describe a wireless vitals tracking system that would incorporated...
Read more...
The first day of summer is just around the bend and if you're wanting to shed a few pounds before hitting the beach, a fitness band is a good way to turn that motivation into action. But which of the many different ones available should you go with? One of our favorites is the Microsoft Band 2, especially when it's marked down for sale like it is right now. Every so often, Microsoft and its partners slash the price of its wearables. Back in February, Dell was selling the Band 2 for $199 and tossing in a free $75 e-gift card to sweeten the pot. Not long after, Microsoft and Best Buy were offering the Band 2 for $175, though the sale ended before Easter Sunday in March. Now two months later, it's...
Read more...
Update: We have reviewed the final, shipping version of Hykso's Punch Trackers. You can see the newer, shipping version here.We promise, this is going to be a review of some upcoming wearable technology from Hykso, designed specifically for punch tracking, but before we dig into the product a bit of backstory is in order. There are reasons why this particular product is so interesting to us, and we want to lay some groundwork to help you all better understand where we're coming from... Hykso Punch Tracking Sensors The fact that I’ve been working at HotHardware for close to two decades should be evidence enough to prove that I’m a technology enthusiast. Whether it’s a brand new processor,...
Read more...
If you have a Benjamin burning a hole in your pocket, you can bring it to Best Buy and walk out of the store with a Microsoft Band (plus tax, of course). That's right, Best Buy has marked down the price of Microsoft's fitness wearable to just $100, which is half off the device's regular price and $50 less than the lowest discount we've seen previously.It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Best Buy is selling Microsoft's wearable at such a hefty and attractive discount. Microsoft has made it known that it's holding a Windows 10 hardware event in New York City on October 6, and rumor has it one of the new products on tap is a second generation fitness band.We've even seen some supposed...
Read more...
Target is offering a 25 percent discount on the Microsoft Band, a fitness wearable that just saw a $20 discount at the Microsoft Store last week. The deal at Target is much better, as it slashes $50 off the $200 retail cost, bringing the tally to $150 instead of $180. However, it's an in-store only deal through Target's Cartwheel mobile savings app.You can download Cartwheel from Google Play for Android devices or the Apple Store for iOS gadgets. The app offers hundreds of discounts ranging from 5 percent to 50 percent off, which you can add to your virtual cart. Then when you shop a brick-and-mortar Target location, you scan your barcode at checkout for any applicable discounts you saved.In...
Read more...
The emerging wearables category is one that is fast changing and, quite frankly, a bit confusing if you haven't been paying attention to every little development. And honestly, who has time for that? Unfortunately, these devices aren't cheap, so if you want to make the jump, you're almost taking a leap of faith that your choice will pan out. Alternately, you could take advantage of a new try-before-you-buy program. Enter Lumoid and its new wearables rental service. The way it works is rather simple -- you select up to five devices from Lumoid's website that you're interested in trying out, and you'll get 7 days to evaluate them all. If you like one (or more), you can pay the retail...
Read more...
In case you haven't noticed, companies small and large seem to believe that health -- and in particular, connected health -- is the next major cash cow. As fitness slots into the mainstream attention, it's an ideal time for the likes of Apple, Google, LG, Samsung, Fitbit, and now Microsoft to make a splash in both health and wearables. Microsoft is joining the war this week with a new platform called Microsoft Health. According to the company, it sees an opportunity to bring devices and services together to allow end users to "combine the information they collect and use the power of the cloud to turn that data in to something more valuable." The Microsoft Health platform includes a cloud service...
Read more...
If you assumed the wearables war had all of its players set, think again. As we march ever closer to CES (as well as the holiday shopping season), we're seeing yet another major player announce that it too will be rivaling LG, Samsung, Motorola, Apple, and more. The name? Lenovo. The company has quietly hosted up a product page for the Smartband SW-B100, which is being detailed as a fitness tracker that sports a rectangular display and a few amenities that aren't readily found on competing devices. As you might expect, it'll track things like steps taken, distance moved, calories burned, and current heart rate, and it'll graph all of those statistics for monthly/yearly log viewing. If you choose...
Read more...
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs left this world far too early, and during his waning moments at the company he built into an empire, his declining health due to pancreatic cancer and subsequent complications was painfully obvious. Ironically enough, his final contribution to Apple and consumers around the world may not be one of the company's many physical products, but a HealthKit platform that could be integrated into future devices. There's an interesting article in PCMag describing how several of Steve Jobs' creations were the result of his personal life experience -- in other words, if a product that fit his needs didn't exist or fell short of expectations, he'd build it and then sell the world...
Read more...
When you consider the microprocessor industry, it's safe to say that things have changed in dramatic fashion over the past five to ten years. Intel's lead in the desktop sector has become increasingly less potent as laptops and tablets usurp desktop sales, and the next obvious frontier is an even smaller footprint. Intel has chimed in here and there, noting that it's fully onboard the wearables bandwagon, eager to produce chips that power whatever computing products end up on our faces, our wrists, and our bodies. But don't just take Intel's word for it -- there's plenty of action to back it all up. This week, the chip giant announced that it had finalized an acquisition of BASIS Science. The...
Read more...
It can feel like the growing cadre of wearable fitness tech is just so much noise, but some of these products will inevitably rise to the top. The Moov fitness tracker, a compact, cleanly designed wrist-mounted fitness device, might just be one of those wearables. The Moov team is comprised of former Apple and Microsoft engineers, and that Apple design influence is apparent. Moov is is a slim disc that straps onto your wrist, ankle--or anywhere, really--and tracks a surprising number of different aspects of your workout. For instance, it can tell you if your running stride is off, or if your swimming stroke is inefficient, or if your punches need more power, and so on. The little device has no...
Read more...
Samsung’s Galaxy Gear smartwatch was the company’s big foray into wearable tech, but Samsung isn’t satisfied; it may be invading the fitness market, too, impinging upon territory currently occupied by the likes of Nike’s FuelBand and FitBit. According to Korean site DDaily, Samsung is planning to roll out a wrist-mounted device called the Galaxy Band in Q4 2014. The Galaxy Band will have a number of sensors to detect movement, pressure, humidity, route guidance, and so on. The rumored Galaxy Band would compete with the likes of the FitBit Force, shown above The device should connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth, although if the Galaxy Gear rollout is any indication,...
Read more...
Product manufacturers far and wide and trying to bring the wrist watch back into style by integrating smart features into them and charging a premium. We have the usual candidates, like Sony and Samsung, and then some unusual participants, including Adidas, which is best known for its line of athletic apparel. Adidas announced a new smartwatch for runners at GigaOM's Mobilize 2013 conference in San Francisco today. Unlike most other smartwatches, which focus on syncing up with smartphones, the one from Adidas won't have the ability to communicate with your handset, but it will provide information on your location, speed, and heart rate. From sneakers to smartwatches, Adidas has you covered. It...
Read more...
Not sure if you've noticed, but Spring is here. Which means that you have a crazy short amount of time before your beach body needs to be in tip-top shape. So let us introduce you to a new gadget designed to help you get there: Runtastic's new GPS watch + fitness monitor. One of the best-known names in the fitness app world has just launched new fitness hardware on Amazon for U.S. users. This announcement comes as the Runtastic fitness community surpasses 25 million mobile users, 10 million registered users on Runtastic.com and averages one app download per second. Runtastic's proprietary hardware has been designed to work with Runtastic apps to provide users with the most comprehensive set of...
Read more...
Bluetooth devices have been playing an increasingly important role in our lives, and with BT 3.0 and BT 4.0, low-energy devices are getting in on the fun as well. Now, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is announcing the creation of the Sports and Fitness Working Group, and members are being accepted as we speak. This group will work together to enhance interoperability between Bluetooth enabled sports and fitness sensor products and training computers (Bluetooth Smart devices) and hub devices such as smartphones, PCs, TVs (Bluetooth Smart Ready devices), gym equipment, watches and more to allow a new generation of functionality. Fitness devices have exploded in recent years, with even...
Read more...
Fitness-related gadgets seems to be everywhere these days. The revised iPod nano has enhanced support for Nike + iPod, Motorola just unveiled a similar gadget of their own, and now Adidas is jumping into the ring. The company has just revealed the miCoach SPEED_CELL, an interestingly named product that is claimed to be the first device to capture information from motion in every direction and measures key performance metrics including speed, distance and time during practice and competition. The miCoach SPEED_CELL is designed to monitor, evaluate and increase performance of athletes across multiple sports including soccer, football, basketball, tennis and running. The miCoach SPEED_CELL sits...
Read more...
Nintendo has always marketed their Wii console as the one to get if you're looking to get up off of the sofa and start moving. Indeed, many have been inclined to move about somewhat with the wildly popular Wii Sports title that Nintendo (smartly) includes in the bundle, but if you're looking for so much movement that you'll shed a few pounds, you may be looking in the wrong direction. A not-so-shiny research report from the halls of Ole Miss found that the Wii Fit title--a game that lets users select a workout regimen and then do those exercises by interacting with the Wii controller and Wii Balance Board--doesn't actually encourage families to exercise nearly as much as previously expected....
Read more...
