For the past few months Weight Watchers has been quietly working with Philips to offer its members a way to track their own activity, which can earn them points that can be swapped for additional food points. Catherine Ulrich, SVP of WeightWatchers.com, took the stage at the Health 2.0 conference here in San Francisco with Philips DirectLife General Manager Gopi Koteeswaran to demo ActiveLink....
Silicon Valley-based startup Striiv announced plans for its dedicated portable fitness device -- of the same name -- which encourages users to exercise with virtual worlds and real-world fund raising.
The Striiv device is a standalone pedometer (no mobile phone required) that can hang on a keychain or attach to a belt. Its sensors are able to differentiate between walking, running, climbing...
This week Jawbone officially announced plans to launch a connected fitness device -- UP -- which the company has been working on for the past two years. As we reported earlier, the company's as-yet unreleased UP device will have plenty of competition from other dedicated or peripheral connected fitness devices.
By our count there are 10 other devices like UP either in the market today or coming...
Popular Bluetooth headset maker Jawbone announced two things today: $70 million in new funding and plans to launch a new fitness device, called UP, later this year.
The wristband will monitor users movement and sleep patterns and pairs with a smartphone app that analyzes the data and provides users with challenges and social recommendations. Jawbone calls it "functional jewelry."
While Jawbone's...
Maybe the translation is off on this one, but Hitachi's contender for the growing fitness monitor device market is called "Life Microscope." It's a watch-like device the user wears around the wrist. Like most of the other offerings on the market it makes use of accelerometers to detect the user's activity levels. Hitachi unveiled the new device at an exhibit in Tokyo this week, according to a...
The recent health reform legislation has not provided any short term cost relievers for employers, according to a BusinessWeek report that highlights the growing importance of employee wellness programs to bend the so-called cost curve for healthcare. Unfortunately, the report fails to live up to its subtitle: "Companies are targeting employee fitness to contain health-care costs, creating...
