Posts Tagged ‘Bluetooth’

If it is one thing we’ve learned from the social network boom, it is that people are fascinated by numbers: Number of followers on Twitter. Number of check-ins on Foursquare. Number of people in Google+ Circles. The ultimate in numbers is, of course, numbers about yourself. I’ve been using a Fitbit wireless activity tracking device for over a year now.

Fitbit Wireless Activity Tracker Initial Impressions (May 2010)

The Fitbit, which already has a number of competing products, is about to get another one from a company best known for its Bluetooth headsets.

Jawbone Takes on Health Market With New Sensor Wristband (ReadWriteWeb)

The marketing slogan used for this Jawbone UP wristband is: A revolutionaary new system that tracks your movement, sleep patterns, and eating habts and puts that information in the palm of your hand.

Here’s what I know about this unreleased product based on the meta-tags on the product’s website:

1. It uses Bluetooth
2. It will work with the iPhone
3. It will work with Android phones

Other key words in the tag set are: Jawbone, Up, Health, Wellness, Lifestyle, eat, Food, Nutrition, Sleep, Move, JAMBOX, headset, band, live, life, bracelet, weight lost.

If the Jawbone UP is able to transmit information from the wristband directly to an iPhone or Android device, it will have a big advantage over the Fitbit which requires wireless sync to a Mac or PC desktop or notebook.

The Fitbit has an active community of users who can compare their activity both anonymously and identified with social groups. It would not be surprising if the Jawbone UP develops a similiar social network.

The common wisdom is that most people, especially young people, do not wear or use wrist watches. However, regardless of where you stand on this issue, I would gamble that the inPulse Bluetooth wristwatch will interest almost any gadget fan. This watch not only communicates wirelessly with phones using Bluetooth, it can also be programmed by its owner. I’ve been following the product for a while now. You can find two recent (2011) blog posts about it here.

inPulse: Programmable (C/Python) Bluetooth Watch

Check-in to Facebook Places using inPulse Bluetooth Watch & a Smartphone

If this programmable wrist watch interests you and you will be anywhere near Mountain View in California this weekend, you might want to spent some time at the Hackathon sponsored by inPulse.

inPulse Hackathon April 17 – Hacker Dojo in Mountain View

You can download the inPulse simulator (free) to get your wrist watch app development started.

Looxcie debuted a gadget that has “journalists’ tool” written all over it, even if the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company never touched on that idea in its press release: a Bluetooth-enabled headset with an always-on camcorder that captures everything its user sees, with an instant-clip button that stores the last 30 seconds on the device. When users “long press” the instant-clip button, the clip is automatically forwarded to a preselected email address.

The Looxcie camcorder certainly sounds like something that might be useful for anyone covering a trade show or convention.

The device also boasts an application that turns smart phones into viewfinders, remote controls, and editing tools, enabling the creation of clips of up to 30 minutes.

Looxcie is compatible with most smart phones running Android 2.0 or higher, with additional systems coming soon, and the company said files can be uploaded to Macs or PCs via a USB connector for archiving, viewing, editing, or sharing.

The device will be available later Wednesday via Amazon.com for $199.

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