Stir desk uses Fitbit to give you credit for standing
Connecting to Fitbit devices the Stir Kinetic Desk tracks how much you stand and what that means in calories burned.
It's no secret that standing is better for you than sitting. The trouble is it's tricky to know just how much. With new support for Fitbit fitness tracking technology, the Stir Kinetic Desk aims to solve this problem.
You may not have heard of Stir, makers of the intelligent and motorized Kinetic Desk. Even so, with freshly announced abilities to talk to Fitbit fitness trackers, its innovative and pricey piece of furniture is sure to make waves. Blurring the lines between the smart connected home, wearable technology, and the quantified self (all hot techno buzz phrases), the $3,890 Kinetic Desk certainly doesn't come cheap.
The gizmo is however packed to the gills with an impressive array of sophisticated gear including a Wi-Fi radio, 4.3-inch touchscreen, and a thermal sensor to detect when you're standing or sitting. Additionally the desk boasts twin motors for raising and lowering its stance from standing to sitting positions. The Kinetic also features multiple AC power extensions and USB ports to keep laptops, phones, and monitors happy and humming along.
The wildest function though is that the Kinetic now links to your Fitbit account to feed it with the number of calories the desk estimates you've burned in real time. This paired with steps logged by other Fitbit trackers such as the Fitbit Flex and Fitbit Zip will hopefully provide a more accurate picture of personal activity.
So what is all that standing likely to translate into? According to Stir, standing for half the work day (about four hours) has the calorie-torching equivalent of completing a two-mile run. Of course these estimates are general and individual numbers could vary greatly.