May 29, 2020 — Hope and fear. These are powerful, related motivators readily available during the coronavirus pandemic. The motivations are not always clear, but many people are shoveling out claims about “game changers” for dealing with the virus that haunts us. Some of these supposed game changers turn out to be disastrous duds. So caution about coronahype is […]
May 5, 2020 — Weight talk can be hazardous to one’s mental health. Right now, we hear a lot of it in connection with the coronavirus lockdown. But perhaps it’s utterly pointless. Because the folks who make digital scales at Withings tell us they can see little evidence of excessive quarantine weight gain right now. The company released an […]
November 2, 2019 — After 12 remarkable years, it looks like the wild ride for Fitbit may be coming to an end. Maybe. Or maybe it’s on the verge of becoming a rising star in the Google universe. On Friday, the sale of Fitbit to Google for $2.1 billion emerged as a real story. Speculation about such a deal […]
February 17, 2019 — The consumer market for activity trackers is shrinking. Smartwatches have put a dent in the sales trend for Fitbit’s old bread and butter product – the fitness tracker. Of course, the company has responded with a pretty good smartwatch to compete with Apple. But a big part of its strategy is to make a buck by helping […]
April 20, 2018 — Can strapping a fitbit on a cow make that animal healthier? For that matter, can it make the dairy industry and perhaps even the planet healthier? Artificial intelligence and new tech for connecting cows to the web are dangling this possibility before us. Monitoring Health and Activity Sensor tags and collars for cows are not […]
December 1, 2017 — “What gets measured gets managed.” This bit of wisdom from Peter Drucker got its start with Lord Kelvin. By now, the whole idea of tracking has become a bit of a holy grail for weight management. We get many prompts for tracking: weight, diet, and physical activity. And generally, keeping track of what we’re doing is […]
May 27, 2017 — Is that electronic leash on your wrist really doing anything? Can you rely upon fitness trackers for good information? A pair of recent studies add to the reasons you might doubt it. Heart Rate, Yes; Calories Burned, No Researchers from Stanford tested seven fitness trackers and published their result in the Journal of Personalized Medicine. […]
March 25, 2016 — It’s hard to tell whether fitness trackers will turn out to be high tech placebos or coaches. Everything you read talks about promise and short-term outcomes — along with tech companies jostling for a competitive advantage. It’s pretty clear that physical activity monitoring technology offers plenty of promise and plenty of unfinished business. A research letter published […]
