wearables - page 4

Sensor-laden smart socks will turn you into a better runner

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Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
These smart socks will fix your heel-striking woes. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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LAS VEGAS — Tons of wearables at International CES promise to help you get better at everything from brushing your teeth to perfecting your golf swing, but the last place we expected someone to toss a sensor was into our socks.

Cult_of_Mac_CES_2015 Sensoria’s Fitness Socks are aimed at transforming you into a better, injury-free runner by embedding three sensor pads into the bottom of the sock that track your stride, cadence and speed while you’re running. Coupled with the Sensoria mobile app, runners can now get direct feedback on their running style to correct things like heel striking to help them dominate their next 10k.

Skulpt Aim takes the pain out of measuring body fat

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Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Going for great guns? Skulpt Aim measures and tracks your muscle mass and body fat. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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LAS VEGAS — If shedding some body fat is one of your New Year’s resolutions, you’re probably like me and looking for all the high-tech help you can get.

Cult_of_Mac_CES_2015 Activity trackers are great at logging exercise, but if you want to measure the actual progress your muscles are making, check out the Skulpt Aim — an iPod-size device that measures your body fat percentage.

The Skulpt Aim uses electroanalysis to not only determine how much excess fat you’re carrying around, but also your muscle quality. Just spritz a little water on the muscle you want to test, press the device firmly against your muscle, and within a few seconds, Aim spits out your score.

Tiny wearable could keep your kids from getting brain damage

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Concussion headware. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of  Mac
Wearables are now taking on concussions. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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LAS VEGAS — Football in America is under attack after the revelation that concussions cause serious brain damage rocked the NFL. Youth participation has plummeted in the last two years but the folks at Linx have a new solution that will help parents keep track of when their kids are getting pounded too hard on the field.

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The Linx IAS sports monitor is a tiny Bluetooth sensor athletes can wear in a skull cap or headband to keep track of every impact on the field, no matter if they’re playing football, lacrosse, soccer, hockey or pretty much any other contact sport.

VERT sensor wants to do the impossible — teach white men how to jump

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Vertclip. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The VERT fitness sensor could be your secret weapon on the court.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

LAS VEGAS — I love basketball, but I have a weakness — I can’t jump.

Cult_of_Mac_CES_2015I’ve hit the gym. I’ve tried jumping exercises.

None of it has worked, but a new fitness sensor called VERT might be the first wearable that finally helps me get above the rim, thanks to its workouts, which are designed to help you improve your leaping ability, while also preventing injuries on the court.

Why I love Microsoft’s fitness band, and what it means for the Apple Watch

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The Microsoft Band. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
The Microsoft Band is an awesome gadget. Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
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I’m really digging the Microsoft Band. I’ve worn various fitness trackers for a couple of years now, starting with the original Jawbone UP and most recently the new Fitbit Charge.

I’ve had mixed results with them, and none have became indispensable. The Microsoft Band, on the other hand, is rapidly becoming a fixture on my wrist. It’s a great omen for the Apple Watch, which is due in early 2015. The Apple Watch will be like the Microsoft Band on steroids, and if it works as well, it’s going to be awesome.

Jawbone’s UP Move is the best entry-level fitness tracker yet

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One of the neatest things about Jawbone's UP Move is just how versatile it is. You can clip it on anywhere.  Photo: Jawbone
One of the neatest things about Jawbone's UP Move is just how versatile it is. You can clip it anywhere. Photo: Jawbone

One of the great things about the world of fitness trackers post-Apple Watch (or, at least, post-Apple Watch announcement) is that we’re seeing how different companies are trying to insure themselves against Cupertino’s high-end luxury lifestyle tracker.

Jawbone recently answered this question by launching its UP Move: It’s an entry-level fitness wearable that may lack the bells and whistles of the Apple Watch, but is also, at $49.99, shy a couple of zeroes in the price tag department.

3-D-printed wearables hit whole new level of weird

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Photo: Neri Oxman
Is that brain tissue on your dress? Photo: Neri Oxman

We’re still waiting to slap our wrist with Apple’s first wearable, but MIT Media Lab professor Neri Oxman has taken the wearables movement to a freaky new level by designing a new line of wearable structures that “grow” organically.

The project was a collaboration with the Mediated Matter Group and created four grown and 3-D-printed dresses that look like freakishly large organs growing outside the wearer’s body. To create the shape of the wearables, the team used a computational growth process inspired by natural growth behaviors. Each item starts as just a seed and then expands and refines its shape.

Take a look at these hypnotic growth variations MIT created:

This hot wearable turns you into the Human Torch

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The PYRO Fireshooter puts shooting fireballs in the palm of your hand. Screen grab from ellusionist.com
The PYRO Fireshooter puts fireballs in the palm of your hand. Screengrab: Ellusionist

Smartwatches may have a lot of firepower, but what about a wearable that lets you shoot actual flames from your hands?

The PYRO Fireshooter puts fireballs right up your sleeve. It attaches to the underside of the wrist and contains four individually triggered barrels, each able to launch a fireball 10 feet.

Intel wants to out-fashion Apple with its smart bracelet

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Photo: Reuters
Photo: Reuters

Cupertino has its chic Apple Watch, Redmond has its Microsoft Band, and now Intel has unveiled its own female-friendly take on the wearable phenomenon with a $495 smart bracelet — which will allow users to receive and respond to text messages, emails and other notifications.

Called the MICA, the fashion-conscious bracelet boasts a sapphire 1.6-inch, 256 x 160 OLED curved screen on the inside of the wrist. As with the Apple Watch there are multiple styles available — ranging from black and white water snake skin, Chinese pearls, Madagascan lapis stones, South African tiger’s eye, and Russian obsidian.

Apple Watch could lead to 7x increase in wearables market

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Apple Watch supply is finally catching up with demand.
The Apple Watch could trigger a drastic increase in wearable tech sales. Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac

Apple’s great at hopping into new markets just as they’re set to explode, and it seems that the upcoming Apple Watch is no different.

Despite mixed reports about consumer interest, research firm IHS thinks demand for sensor-equipped wearable tech devices is going to see a major acceleration starting next year — largely thanks to Cupertino. Just how much of an increase are we talking about? Try 7x the size of the existing market by 2019, according to analysts.

“Similar to the iPhone and iPad, IHS expects the Apple Watch will set a de facto standard for sensor specifications in smartwatches,” says Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst, MEMS & Sensors. “Most other wearable [original equipment manufacturers] will follow Apple’s lead in [incorporating multiple sensors into devices] — or will add even more sensors to differentiate.”

Samsung has created a flexible, rollable battery for wearables

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Although we’ve yet to see a truly mass-market wearable device sweep the world, most people working in high tech believe that devices like smartwatches represent the next big frontier.

With that in mind, Samsung has debuted a potentially transformative creation at the ongoing InterBattery 2014 exhibition being held in Seoul, Korea: a rollable, flexible battery.

Although not too many details are known yet about the exact materials and structural design advances used to create it, it is reported that the battery can function even when bent in half, or rolled up into the shape of a paper cup.

Apple Watch mass-production might not start until January

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Apple is still trying to work out the last few details of its first wearable, but with an early 2015 launch just months away, plans to manufacture and assemble the Apple Watch are being finalized. But AppleDaily reports production isn’t scheduled to ramp into high gear until January 2015.

To manufacture its first wearable, Apple has turned to its old partner Quanta Computer to churn out the first units, and they’re already hiring an army of assemblers for the hyped release.

How Cupertino’s rivals plan to survive the Apple Watch

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How does a wearables company survive being Sherlocked? Jawbone has some ideas.
How does a wearables company survive being Sherlocked? Jawbone has some ideas.

In the business world, Apple entering your product category is a little bit like a tsunami crashing into a home aquarium. What had previously seemed like a nice, small and self-contained ecosystem suddenly runs the risk of being obliterated by a giant wave-maker.

When Tim Cook announced the Apple Watch at Apple’s recent media event, the crowd went wild. But exciting as it was for consumers, it represents a seismic shift for the currently $330 million wearable tech industry.

Devices that can serve up smartphone notifications, track fitness goals and even advise us on health matters have the potential to be huge — but they’re not yet. That’s about to change, according to Juniper Research, which forecasts that wearable devices like smartwatches could hit sales of $19 billion by 2018.

What happens to Apple’s marketplace rivals as this sea change takes place? Cult of Mac did some digging to find out how companies like Jawbone and Fitbit plan to survive Apple’s smartwatch revolution.

Stealth clothing collection stops your devices spilling your secrets

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Zoltan Csaki's high-tech clothing line is inspired by George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. (Picture: Kickstarter)

Particularly on the back of the recent iCloud account hacking scandal, smartphone security is something a lot of people are paying more attention to.

With that in mind, a London-based designer recently launched an intriguing Kickstarter campaign, to create a clothing label aimed at raising awareness about high-tech security.

The clothes are all cleverly constructed around a removable waterproof stealth pocket, made from police-grade shielding fabrics, designed to securely block all Cell, WiFi, GPS and RFID signals to ~100 dB.

Apple is assembling a wearables and fashion dream team

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For a company as secretive as Apple, one of the few ways you can learn anything about what it has planned next is to see who it has been hiring. High-profile hires say a lot about where Apple’s priorities are for the future.

Looking back at the hires Apple has brought on over the last year reveals something pretty obvious: it’s assembling a wearables and fashion dream team.

Crystal Baller: iWatch leaks overclock the rumor mill

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No one has seen a single hardware leak of the iWatch but that didn't stopped the rumor mill from going ape-shit crazy for Apple's future wearable device this week. We saw whispers of sweat sensors, problems with the feds, and even celebrity athletes testing Apple's future fitness device.
Once again, we're taking the black cloth off our crystal ball and shining it up to see if we can spot what Tim Cook really has in store for the future of Apple. Come see which rumors are guaranteed to materialize and which are about to vanish like ghosts.
Stare into our crystal ball to see past the rumors and into the future...

No one has seen a single hardware leak of the iWatch but that didn't stopped the rumor mill from going ape-shit crazy for Apple's future wearable device this week. We saw whispers of sweat sensors, problems with the feds, and even celebrity athletes testing Apple's future fitness device.

Once again, we're taking the black cloth off our crystal ball and shining it up to see if we can spot what Tim Cook really has in store for the future of Apple. Come see which rumors are guaranteed to materialize and which are about to vanish like ghosts.

Stare into our crystal ball to see past the rumors and into the future...


In the future, your car will tell you to walk instead

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Brandon Nee, an engineer at Automatic, designed an app to get people out of their cars, even though he doesn't have one to get into. Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Brendan Nee, an engineer at Automatic Labs, designed an app to get people out of their cars, even though he doesn't have one to get into. Photos: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

SAN FRANCISCO —  Brendan Nee is a walking contradiction. He’s car guru who doesn’t own one, a 21st-century geek with an 18th-century mustache who has come up with a novel bit of nagware that could help Americans get off their spreading behinds.

An engineer working on “smart car assistant” Automatic, he spends many of his weekends at hackathons and has a coder’s physique to show for it. In January, he won the Clinton Foundation Code4Health Codeathon by developing a working prototype of an app called Walkoff in just a weekend. A few months later, Nee and team rolled out a more polished version that mashes up the data Automatic pulls from cars with info gathered by a Jawbone Up fitness tracker, showing a user how much time they’re spending behind the wheel versus walking.

“Clearly, without an actual car, I’m not the ideal tester,” admits Nee. The closest he comes to owning a set of wheels is a retired public bus dubbed the PlayaPillar that he only rolls out for Burning Man.

Why Apple wants Dre’s Beats, this week on The CultCast

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If the reports ring true, Apple is about to embark on their largest acquisition ever, and the ramifications could be massive. On this episode of The CultCast, we dissect the Apple/Beats merger, and ask the questions: what could Apple possibly have planned for the world’s most popular headphone brand? Is new wearable headphone tech a part of Apple’s future? And most importantly, could the Doctor D-R-E be Apple’s next CEO? Strap on ya gats, ya’ll…

Have a few chuckles whilst we catch you up on each week’s best Apple stories! Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below and let the audio adventure begin!

And thanks to Lynda.com for sponsoring this episode! Learn at your own pace from expert-taught video tutorials at Lynda.com.


Click on for the show notes.

Automatic partners with Jawbone to whip drivers into shape

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As the nation grows more obese yet car culture still rules, here’s the nudge of the hour: your car and your fitness app talking to each other, reminding you that you’re not moving enough.

Automatic’s smart driving assistant can turn your old hunk of junk into a smart car, but the company announced today that it’s teamed up with Jawbone to whip your belly rolls into shape by giving drivers more insight into how your physical activity and driving patterns are connected.

With Beats, Apple buys the unobtainable: street cred

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If and when Apple enters the wearables market, its biggest problem will be persuading people to wear the technology. A big part of that will be attracting the right early-adopters.
If Apple enters the wearables market, the biggest challenge will be persuading people to wear the technology. Attracting the right early adopters will be key to Apple's success.

If the rumors are true, Apple’s forthcoming purchase of Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion is all about one thing — making wearable technology fashionable.

Apple is poised to introduce a line of wearables that likely goes beyond the long-rumored iWatch. While the technology Tim Cook’s team is cooking up might be amazing, getting people to wear it — especially cracking the crucial mass market — will be one of the biggest challenges Cupertino has ever faced.

Injecting style into wearable tech notoriously difficult. Even Nike got flustered and discontinued its FuelBand fitness tracker. So far, no company has really cracked the code and turned gear into a fashion statement for the cool kids, with one giant exception: Beats, a phenomenally successful wearable technology brand that dwarfs the rest of the industry because it’s pulled off the hardest trick in the book.

Pre-WWDC health event shows that Samsung even copies Apple’s conference dates

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In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”

Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?

Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.

Kinda Serious, Hardcore Or Crazy Fitness Maniac: Wahoo’s Trio Of New TICKR Bluetooth Heart-Rate Straps [CES 2014]

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The little dots on the sensor's face are lights that tell you whether the sensor is connected, or if the battery is low. Photo: Eli Milchman

Cult _of_Mac_CES_2014_80x80 LAS VEGAS — Rather than come out with a more casual-oriented wearable fitness tracker like everyone (and we mean everyone) else, Wahoo stuck to its athletic roots and took the more serious route of improving the heart-rate monitor strap and accompanying training software the company introduced a few years ago.

In fact, Wahoo has created three new versions of its Bluetooth HR strap. The company even tried to restructure the way athletes think about training with the new “burn or burst” approach for the Wahoo iOS app.

Garmin’s Sophisticated Vivofit Fitness Band Is Goal-Focused, Never Needs Recharging [CES 2014]

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I think fuchsia is your color. Photo: Eli Milchman

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LAS VEGAS — It was only a matter of time before the behemoths of the fitness world jumped into the fitness-band fight; although considering Garmin has been making wrist-borne fitness gadgets for ages (in the guise of their Forerunner line) one might have expected their new Vivofit to have arrived much sooner.