The Ionic is Fitbit’s first real effort at a “true” smartwatch, and there’s plenty riding on the $300 device. Not only is the activity tracker company late to the smartwatch game, its market share in wearables has shrunk because of increasingly sophisticated rival devices from the likes Apple and Xiaomi.
To have a hope of reviving its fortunes, Fitbit sought out a new creative direction and subsequently bought Pebble late last year. The wearable technology that Fitbit inherited as part of the acquisition now powers the new Ionic operating system, called Fitbit OS.
In the world of running, endurance training, and triathlons, some of the best training watches come from Garmin.
Their Forerunner series constantly pumps out top of the line watches for everyone’s needs and budget, with more features being added or improved upon with every model.
Due to their extensive product line, it can be challenging to figure out which watch is worth spending your money on based on what you will actually be using it for. Lucky for you, this article goes through each watch in the series so you have all the information in one place, making it much easier to make your final decision.
… The jurors selected Boston based start-up Humon, a wearable targeted towards endurance athletes, as the winner of the global competition. The concept was born while the founder studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The brand was recognized for their product, the Humon Hex, that helps athletes train smarter by monitoring the oxygen levels in their muscles throughout an activity. The device is able to provide both real-time feedback and post-workout analytics using AI. The biometric information is collected through a sensor attached to the athlete’s quad muscle. The measurements taken allow the device to provide personalized insights to guide warm-ups, indicate limits, and properly recover to optimize an athlete’s training.
“We’re so thrilled by this great opportunity,” said Alessandro Babini, co-founder of Humon. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with ASICS and learning from one of the top research and development teams in the industry.”
Athletes need to be fitted with microchips, in a similar way that dogs are, in the fight against drug cheats in sport, according to a leading representative of international sports people.
Mike Miller, the World Olympians Association chief executive, claimed that radical anti-doping methods – including implants to recognise the effects of banned substances – are needed to protect clean sport.
“Some people say we shouldn’t do this to people,” Miller said. “Well, we’re a nation of dog lovers, we’re prepared to chip our dogs and it doesn’t seem to harm them, so why aren’t we prepared to chip ourselves?”
Amsterdam Collaboration on Health & Safety in Sports from
Athletes can only perform at their best level when in full health. The library of evidence on this notion has increased considerably over the past decade and health monitoring of health athletes has gained a lot of ground recently. With contemporary technologies and methodologies we are now able to monitor athlete’s health continuously, by which we are better equipped to protect their health and aid athletes to gain their performance goals. We wondered though, what are the acceptability and the perceptions of athletes and staff members (ie, end-users) towards such online sports-health surveillance systems. In our latest paper we sought an answer to this question.
The longer (and much more interesting answer) is that breakfast cereals in general, and Trix in particular, are representative examples of a larger issue that vexes thousands of brands: How do you design and market your product if the person who buys it isn’t the person who uses it?
In this post, we will look at the consumer vs. purchaser question (which we’ve dubbed “The Breakfast Cereal Problem”) through the lens of social media data, specifically focusing on three industry segments — cereal, school supplies and jewelry — to demonstrate how social listening can help brands.
Smartphones have transformed how we listen to music, chat with friends, read the news, pay our bills, and more. Now they’re poised to revolutionize health care.
Maybe you already use your phone to count your steps or remind you to take your meds. But just wait: Apps and plug-in accessories are turning the basic smartphone into what some have likened to a “doctor in a pocket” — a single device that one day could perform basic lab tests and reliably diagnose health problems ranging from simple infections to cancer.
“The smartphone is becoming the central hub for medicine,” Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California and a noted expert on digital medicine, told the Financial Times. “Most routine medical tests are about to be smartphone-mediated.”
As a University of Michigan doctoral student, Olivia Walch got a lot of attention for developing the Entrain app, which reads the body’s circadian rhythms to help people overcome jet lag quickly.
Now, as a postdoc, she’s branching out to sell her algorithms as an application programming interface, or API, that would be embedded in other pieces of software apps to serve various audiences such as shift workers, cancer patients and athletes.
Strava, the leading social platform for athletes, announced today a new feature called Posts that reinforces Strava’s position as athletes’ go-to networking tool. Strava users now have the ability to communicate information beyond the run with other users: they can upload photos, questions, comments and tips in the form of posts, which will be visible in a larger posting feed. This networking strategy works similar to that of Facebook in its early days: registered users can communicate freely within their networks, sharing content of their own and responding to that of others.
Under the direction of the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP, an in-house Fraunhofer project for development of biodegradable electronics was begun last year. The Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nano Systems ENAS, the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT, the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC, and the Fraunhofer Resource Recycling and Strategy Project Group IWKS are working together on the project. Electronic components that are completely broken down in a biological environment after a pre-defined operating life open up novel applications as well as ways for reducing their ecological footprint.
In an increasingly digital world, we’re finding more and more uses for heart rate sensors in wearable devices. These devices have endless applications and provide insights on everything from personal activity and fitness levels to healthcare. We know accurate biometric sensor data can lead to accurate fitness and health assessments, but what exactly can we do with these assessments?
… The hip strap study was fairly straightforward. Pigman had 15 men carry a 53-pound ALICE pack on a treadmill for 10 minutes at a self-selected pace, with and without the hip strap done up. Sure enough, oxygen consumption and subjective perceived effort were both slightly lower by the end of the walk with the hip strap. While the differences after 10 minutes were subtle, they add up quickly when you’re walking for hours or days. “If the reduced energy expenditure is great enough,” Hosick says, “it could allow people to walk longer, or faster, or even reduce how much food they have to pack.”
What caught my attention most, though, was all the gaps and uncertainties in the existing literature on backpacks. To support the seemingly obvious claim that it takes more energy to carry a heavier pack, Pigman and Hosick cited a relatively recent paper from 2014. When I looked up that paper, its first sentence was: “Although humans clearly expend more energy to walk with an extra load, it is unclear what biomechanical mechanisms contribute to that increase.”
Nothing warms quite like down. For decades birds’ feathers showcase nature’s most comforting material, but when it comes to making the warmest coats for active environments, companies have started to offer a new generation of synthetic insulation that enhances the natural properties of down with hydrophobic properties, breathability, and additional technologies for lightweight performance.