A new take on the Nike Plus (Nike +) physical tracking device has finally gone into fulfillment on its pre-orders. I am playing with confirming my pre-order within the week - right in time for CES, but had to wait a very long while for the pre-order to commit.
As a media + lifestyle company, New Medici tracks innovation that crosses between media consumption and lifestyle products, so when we put in our pre-order a year ago, we - like many others - were not impressed that they ran nearly a year late on deployment without reaching out to the interested buying audience.
Now the pre-order confirmation has arrived, but that confirmation hiatus makes the transaction seem a little risky, even for a startup competing with Nike/Apple and Philips.
However, the Fitbit dashboard, the sleep-tracking and exercise analytics - we like that one of the reviews below called it “Google Analytics for the body” - make it something new and entrepreneurial, plus the product design and wireless connections are pretty unique.
A screenshot, but if this truly tracks our every step, bite and snore it will be worth the c-note ($100) price tag amortized over your health across several years.
The much-anticipated Fitbit has a triaxial accelerometer that doesn’t just track your steps; it calculates the intensity level of your movement, the distance you traveled and the calories you burned. All you have to do is surrender details on your weight, height, age, sex and meals to the Fitbit website, plug the gadget in, and start walking.
via Fitbit Fitness and Sleep Tracker | Wired.com Product Reviews
[Engadget had the most negative review] The Fitbit is basically just an accelerometer packaged in a clip-shaped body that looks a lot like a Bluetooth headset. Slap it onto your person somewhere and it begins to track your motions. Walk around and it counts your steps; sit still and it calls you lethargic; go to sleep and it monitors how well you rested — or tries to, at least. In reality it’s not so accurate; we found that if we threw it in our pocket and bounced our leg while rocking out to Faith No More’s classic Epic the thing determined we were out running around the building. Not quite.
Fitbit’s tale of expectation and delay is a classic start-up story: a couple of entrepreneurs with a hot idea generate excitement, then run into a range of real-world problems in actually trying to make their product and get it to customers. With bigger companies like Nike and Philips Electronics making similar fitness devices, Fitbit runs the risk of getting stomped by competitors before it can really get going.
via Hamstrung by Delays, Fitbit Explains and Tries to Deliver - NYTimes.com
A button on the Fitbit shuffles through four blue screens that show calories, distance (in miles), steps, and a Tamagotchi-like flower that grows when your activity increases and shrinks when it decreases. This flower learns your behavior over time, so if you start working out heavily, it raises its standards and won’t grow as quickly.
Here’s the really innovative part—the device is wireless so all data gets automatically synchronized to your computer and then the web through a wireless base station, so you don’t even have to plug it in. If you are within 10 feet of the device (it plugs into your computer via a USB cord), the station will sync with your device. In order for the wireless functionality to work you need to install a syncing software that runs on both Macs and PCs. Once synced, you can view your health dashboard online.
via It Took A Year, But Fitness Gadget Fitbit Will Finally Launch
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