Do you go through your day thinking, “Wait! What just happened”? Want to preserve baby’s unexpected first word? Something amazing your friend just said? Something you overheard a stranger saying? Take a look at Kapture, a wristband that continuously records your audible world in 60-second loops. A tap on the band and the last loop is saved. Send it to your smartphone and, … [Read more...]
Updated: The LeapBand Hopes to Gamify Kids’ Play. (What?)
The LeapBand, from the folks who make the popular LeapPad kids' e-book, is a gadget that straps onto the wrist of a 3-to-7-year-old and encourages them to move around. Our experience with kids that age is that it's far harder to get them to not move around, but we understand that people's mileage on that may differ. There are some 50 different activities that the LeapBand … [Read more...]
CNET: Nike Lays Off Most Fuelband Hardware Staff (Update)
CNet's Nick Statt reports that Nike has laid off as many as 55 people in its Digital Sport hardware team, essentially ending development of the Fuelband and Nike+ sportswatch. Sales of the Fuelband will continue, as will development of software, CNet saod. With the increasing sophistication of motion sensors built into phones themselves -- particularly the iPhone 5S -- Nike … [Read more...]
Gassée on Smartwatches: Oh Please
In his weekly Monday Note, former top Apple exec Jean-Louis Gassée says the smartwatch market has bubbled even before it gets rolling -- just like the tablet market in its earliest days: ... the vernal equinox seems to have triggered a bout of Wearables Fever the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Tablet Fever of January, 2011, when 76 tablets were announced at the … [Read more...]
What if the iWatch is … a Ring?
Artisans have been making watches for about 200 years, argues Craig Hockenberry. (Actually, he says they've been making them since the 15th century, but he's wrong.) Does Apple really want to compete with them? Or does it have something else in mind? Of course, there have been billions of bits spilled speculating on what the iWatch is going to look like and when it's going … [Read more...]
FiveThirtyEight Takes On Fitness Trackers
Some months ago, we reported that different brands of fitness trackers appear to count steps in fundamentally different ways from each other -- and that called their accuracy into question. Yesterday, Nate Silver's ESPN-owned data journalism site FiveThirtyEight.com launched, and there was a wonderful piece about just that topic. Reporter Carl Bialik counted his own steps … [Read more...]
Healbe GoBe Claims to Read Glucose Levels Through Skin
Most fitness tracker wrist bands show a (bad) estimate of calories expended, based on how much you move. Healby's GoBe, an IndieGoGo project, does that, but also claims to track caloric intake and expenditure by monitoring your glucose levels through your skin. The GoBe's wristband is admittedly not svelte, but it does a lot: monitor movement, track blood pressure and heart … [Read more...]
TechCrunch Says Basis is Selling to Intel. We Have Our Doubts. (Update)
Late last night, TechCrunch posted a story saying that Basis -- the heart monitor wristwear company -- was selling itself to Intel for $100 million. We suspect that the reality is a bit more complicated. At Mobile World Congress last week, we heard and spoke to a bunch of high-ranking Intel execs. We had the opportunity to ask Intel president Renee James about upcoming Intel … [Read more...]
Omate Shows Off the Million-Dollar TrueSmart Wristwear
We caught up Sunday with Laurent LePen, the CEO of Omate, at Mobile World Congress. He was showing off the first production models of the million-dollar Kickstarter project TrueSmart watch. Omate raised a million dollars for the TrueSmart on KickStarter, and the plan is to ship within a couple of months. The watch looks pretty chunky, about the size of one of those old … [Read more...]
Samsung Updates Its Little-Loved Gear to Gear 2
The Samsung Gear was one of the most derided pieces of wearable tech of 2013. So the Korean tech giant went back to the drawing board with the wristwear and revised it to be pretty much more of the same. We need to say this up front: we haven't clapped eyes or even hands on the Gear 2 or the more plastic Gear 2 Neo. It was introduced Sunday in the run-up to Mobile World … [Read more...]