This weekend is the Tokyo Marathon, which looks like a serious race despite experiments with race-ready wearable bananas and tomatoes. Yes, you read that right. Dole, the world's largest supplier of fruits and vegetables, has apparently been a long-time sponsor of the race. This year, besides handing out bananas to runners, the company is tricking out a couple of bananas … [Read more...]
Health Wearables Face Big Challenges With Big Data
Pam Baker is one of our favorite writers about big data and health tech, and she pulls the two strands together nicely in an article that talks about how hard it is to get meaningful healthcare data out of wearables. The problem, she argues, isn't so much one of use case as it is one of data standards. Every database has its own needs and expectations, and they in turn … [Read more...]
Congress Being Pushed to Limit FDA on Wearable Med Tech
We wrote last week about the FDA taking comments on its regulations regarding wearable health technology. The excellent Politico weighs in today with a story about how Congress is being pressed to limit -- by law -- what the FDA is allowed to regulate. Politico traces some of the money, noting that Intel spent $1.5 million last year lobbying on "telehealth wearables, remote … [Read more...]
Android Wear Has 5 Percent of the Smartband Market, Less Than Pebble, Says Canalys
Remember when Android Wear was going to take over the smart band market? Hasn't happened yet, according to market research firm Canalys. The company says 740,000 Android Wear devices shipped in 2014, out of a total 4.6 million smart bands. (Keep in mind that Wear-based devices only were available in the second half of the year, though.) Pebble alone shipped 1 million units … [Read more...]
Engadget Review of Healbe GoBe: Not a Fraud, but Not a Winner Either
The first in-depth review of an early production model of the Healbe GoBe is out from Engadget, and it's ... well, it's not as bad as a lot of people expected. The GoBe is likely the most controversial wearable to come down the pike. It had a hugely over-subscribed crowdfunding campaign, based on its claim that it could monitor caloric intake and glucose levels … [Read more...]
JAMA Says Fitbit Makes The Most Accurate Fitness Tracker, But It’s Not The One You Think
The apparent inaccuracy of wearable fitness trackers has long bugged us, but we had been unable to put real scientific numbers to it. Fortunately, there are real researchers in the world, and they've established scientifically that most of the step-counting data you get from trackers is pretty bad. A letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association -- as mainstream … [Read more...]
The Search for a New Battery
Software is easy, hardware is hard, and batteries are damned near impossible. There's no Moore's Law for batteries. That's why whispers of improvements in battery tech are so interesting and important. We bet you've never heard the name John Bannister Goodenough, although your life without his work would be a whole lot different without him. Goodenough invented the LiIon … [Read more...]
IoS: The Internet of Sheep
The kind of connectivity that makes wearable tech happy is easy to get in urban centers. It's harder in rural areas, although agriculture is certainly an industry that could (and does) benefit from being connected. In that vein, we saw an article the other day proposing that sheep not only be tagged, but be equipped as actual wireless hotspots. There's a lot of good … [Read more...]
Swatch to Sell Smartwatch Within Three Months, Says Bloomberg
Remember when Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek said smartwatches would never catch on? He's changed his tune, and now tells Bloomberg that he'll be selling a smartwatch, complete with an NFC chip for payments, within the next three months. Why the turnaround? Because Hayek did not get to be the boss of the world's biggest watch company by being stupid. It's clear that people want … [Read more...]
Wirecard Wearable Wallet Reportedly Targets Summer Launch
There's a German company called Wirecard that's active in the payment business, similar to PayPal. It has its own payment network, issues cards, and is active in mobile payments. GigaOM is reporting that Wirecard is planning this summer to release its own smart band to act as a credit card replacement. It's a segment that's starting to get crowded. Apple Pay has made the … [Read more...]