Today in TechNew wristband tracks your every move in the name of health
Personal trainers are great, especially robotic ones, but what happens after you leave the gym and hit the couch can be another story altogether. Jawbone, traditionally a manufacturer of bluetooth headsets, is branching out with the Up, a lightweight bracelet that will track your daily physical activity (or lack thereof) with the use of built-in motion and vibration sensors.
The small piece of health-conscious wristwear, due out later this year, will tie into a clever smartphone app. On the app you'll be able to log your eating habits by snapping shots of your food (just like the app Meal Snap, we presume). The Up app crunches the numbers, giving you a data-rich portrait of your lifestyle, complete with motivational nudges to improve upon your existing health habits.
In the vast realm of technology, consumer health tech remains largely unexplored. With the advent of the Wii, exercise and gaming suddenly made sense in combination, and Microsoft's Kinect has improved on the formula since. Jawbone's Up also takes its cues from devices like the Nike+, a small exercise sensor with a companion app. But rather than just focusing on the kind of stats runners care about, the Up wants to paint a comprehensive portrait of health, from what we eat to how we sleep.
Both devices employ sensors to passively monitor our activities, zapping a wealth of personal data to the web where we can analyze and make sense of it. While we're arguably not quite cyborgs yet, more feedback technology on and in our bodies is just over the horizon.
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