fitbit

At the Technosensual exhibition in Vienna earlier this year, models sashayed down the runway in clothing rigged with sensors, speakers, and LEDs. Fashion of the future? Maybe, but hitting the street decked out in wearable tech has never been more today.

Some of the technology -- like the fleece with embedded video player that just went on sale at Macy's -- aims for fashion, while much of it aims for function.

Been noticing more jogging stats and maps running through your Facebook and Twitter feeds? Pedometer-style devices like the Fitbit Zip and Nike FuelBand kicked up the social this … Read more

Spring has sprung and that means summer is right around the corner. If you still haven't worked off those extra winter pounds, it's high time to start before swimsuit and tank top weather cruelly arrives. Luckily, there are new mobile accessories that harness wireless technology, competitive behavior, social media, and other online tools to help couch potatoes catch the exercise bug.… Read more

Bluetooth, once trumpeted as the ultimate convenience, quickly proved a headache with plenty of pairing problems and inexplicable connection snafus. Bluetooth 4.0, the newest version of the technology, is about to change all that. … Read more

Fitbit, a maker of a digital health and fitness devices, announced today it has raised $12 million in Series C funding.

The round of funding, which will be used to fund growth, was led by existing partners Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC, and Felicis Ventures.

"This funding will help us accelerate the hiring of the best hardware and software engineers, designers, product managers and marketers," Fitbit CEO and co-founder James Park said in a statement. "This is the perfect time for passionate and smart people to join us as we create devices and services that improve … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Fitbit, maker of a wireless clip-on activity tracker, is adding the Aria Wi-Fi scale to its lineup this April due, according to the company, to user requests.

The Aria has competition in the "smart" scale department, with the Withings booth and its very similar scales for adults and yes, even babies, just a few yards away.

But Fitbit has introduced a multiple-user feature that recognizes--out of as many as eight different users--who is standing on the scale. Think large households, dorm quads, sports teams, etc.

Priced at $129.99, Fitbit's first Wi-Fi scale can tally weight, body fat, and body mass index, and automatically uploads that info with every step on the scale to an online tool with graphs that perhaps too-handily track one's progress (or lack thereof). The online and mobile tools are free and also include weight goals and a food and exercise log.… Read more

The Fitbit electronic pedometer is for people taking baby steps into a fitness.

Since launching the company at a 2008 TechCrunch event, founder James Park says, he has discovered that while Nike and Garmin sell their fitness monitoring products to health and activity nuts, the Fitbit has ended up winning market share with the broad middle of the population, so to speak. "We don't have a very athletic user base," Park says.

The new $99 Fitbit Ultra, launching today, is much the same as the previous product, with one key hardware difference: it has a pressure altimeter, so it can determine when you're climbing stairs (or, in my town, hills).

This is a key metric to track for those trying to improve fitness by walking around, and Park hopes that the Fitbit Ultra will encourage people to climb the equivalent of 10 flights of stairs a day as they're racking up their standard 10,000 steps. The device also measures sleep quality.… Read more

Some people are simply obsessed with monitoring every part of their lives. I don't know if it's sheer ego or sheer paranoia.

But when trackers like Fitbit come along, they tap into this need like Justin Bieber taps into the need for little girls to have boyfriends with hair like theirs.

Fitbit is a fitness tracker that enables people to log all of their moods and calorie intakes and usages. However, it seems to have one characteristic that will be entertaining for some and perplexing for others: it seems to let the world know, among other things, when … Read more

Philips' DirectLife fitness tracker, which monitors one's daily activity levels by tracking the duration and intensity of movements, has been doing so well since its release in October 2009, according to a company representative, that it is about to be released in Germany and the U.K. Moreover, Philips has just announced a companion gadget that might actually rival the iPod.

The "program" associated with DirectLife, which costs $99, plus a $12.50 monthly membership fee, is three-pronged: wear the small, waterproof monitor with 3D accelerometer technology (think Wii) to track your movements; go online to get … Read more