Personal informatics, quantified self, living by numbers… the more you know about yourself, the theory goes, the better you can tweak and change your life to improve things. Add in gamification and social and you've got a geek-friendly way to get in shape.I loved the Fitbit, but kept losing and destroying them. The Jawbone Up looked cool, but it was a disaster. So apart from RunKeeper on my iPhone, which I always have on me, I've not been collecting much personal data lately. Now the Nike+ FuelBand is coming. Will it catch on?
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Argh. Now I want one + they're sold out on the pre-order. I blame you!
I had a fitbit and found the software just too buggy for a Mac user and too difficult to update its firmware unless you had a Windows machine so I ended up selling it. Only lost out on a few bucks since it was still backordered for most folks at the time.
I had been interested in the Jawbone Up — what issues were there with it?
The Jawbone Up launch was marred by bad hardware:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/09/tech/gaming-gadgets/jawbone-explains-up-failures/index.html
http://allthingsd.com/20111208/up-means-having-to-say-youre-sorry/
But they haven't given up:
http://allthingsd.com/20120110/and-you-thought-jawbone-up-was-going-to-miss-the-ces-party/
It's cool. But, isn't it $250? Kind of pricy.
I think it's only $150
i keep looking for tech that'll incentivize me to work out… nike+ and iphone isnt doing it. treadmill+xbox isnt doing enough. will this do it? =p
How about a device that rolls all these gizmos into one that costs $1,000. And it measures your BMI at the start, if you hit certain goals you get rebate amounts. At the end of a year you can get back up to $900 back if you hit your BMI goal.
And you can form a fitness group that checks into doctor's offices certified with the program and you can possibly win some group money from non-weight losers so you could possibly increase your money.
The FitBit was nice- I liked the statistics on the web site, they got detailed enough to be useful- but it was a little hard to wear at night for tracking sleep and eventually I lost it (on a long bike ride- guess the clip kind of slid out of the top of my shorts).
The Jawbone Up is easier to wear and keep from losing but it is more bulky than I imagined. The statistics on the iPhone are okay but not as nice as the FitBit site. Mine did not have battery issues but after a while I stopped using it (plus I can't wear it playing volleyball anyway). I recently started wearing it again just to give it another try.
As a fan of all things Nike, and user of the Nike+ system and community, I plan to get a fuel. I've noticed that it doesn't track sleep and I won't wear it for volleyball (don't want a pass to go awry because it hit it on my wrist) but the fact that it has a watch feature is nice and if it syncs up with the Nike+ account then that is a benefit. I am curious to see more about the stats it generates but if it is like the Nike+ site, that will improve over time too. If you are on Nike+ and want to connect, I am TheDadddyCast there.
The FitBit was the closest to the ideal for me, were I only not so much of a klutz. The sleep tracking was an especially interesting feature. The Fuel looks nice but I wasn't crazy about the online Nike+ interface and the price is a bit steep.