FuelBand by Nike+

This wristband by sports brand Nike tracks your movement throughout the day and gives you points for being more active.

The FuelBand uses an accelerometer to measure activity plus algorithms to allow for different types of movement, resulting in an index of points called NikeFuel that everyone can earn regardless of what exercise they do.

The LED display counts NikeFuel in realtime and can also display calories, steps or the time. A strip of 20 LEDS along the edge change from red to green as the wearer approaches their daily goal. The band can sync by UBS with the Nike+ website or wirelessly with a mobile phone app so users can analyse their progress, compare scores with others regardless of what sport they do and share via social networks.

Electronics brand Jawbone launched a similar product last year but theirs was criticised because it didn’t give feedback in realtime and had to be plugged in before users could access the data it was collecting. The curved lithium batteries in Nike’s design allow it to power the LEDs for instant feedback but it can still only register activities that involve arm movements.

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Here are some more details from Nike:

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NIKE ANNOUNCES NEW NIKE+ FUELBAND
Measuring Movement to Make Life A Sport

NIKE, Inc. announced today the NIKE+ FuelBand, an innovative wristband that tracks and measures everyday movement to motivate and inspire people to be more active. Activities can now be measured through a new metric called NikeFuel: the more active you are, the more NikeFuel you earn.

NIKE, Inc. President & CEO Mark Parker unveiled NIKE+ FuelBand at an event in New York attended by seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, Oklahoma City scoring champion and all-star Kevin Durant and 2011 IAAF women’s 100-meter World Champion Carmelita Jeter.

“The NIKE+ FuelBand is a way for Nike to further evolve the exciting possibilities of merging the physical and digital worlds,” said Parker. “Nike has always been about inspiring athletes, and the NIKE+ FuelBand will help motivate them in a simple, fun and intuitive way.”

Designed to be worn throughout the day, the ergonomic, user-friendly NIKE+ FuelBand uses accelerometry to provide information about different activities through movement of the wrist via a LED dot matrix display. Four metrics are available: Time, Calories, Steps and NikeFuel. Unlike calorie counts, which vary based on someone’s gender and body type, NikeFuel is a normalized score that awards equal points for the same activity regardless of physical makeup.

Users set a daily goal of how active they want to be, and how much NikeFuel they want to achieve. The NIKE+ FuelBand displays a series of 20 LED lights that go from red-to-green as the user gets closer to their goal. The FuelBand syncs with the Nike+ website through a built-in USB, or wirelessly through Bluetooth to a free iPhone app, to record activity and track progress every day. The app interface also provides encouragement and motivation as goals are achieved.

Armstrong said, “What’s great about the idea of NikeFuel and the FuelBand is the way it provides real information and numbers to show how much people are doing all day, every day. That’s what will get people challenging themselves to do more and better their own scores. It’s a tool to get people more active.”

“NikeFuel means everyone can get recognition for activities they do,” said Durant. “It provides a scoreboard for your day and gets everyone moving.”

 Jeter said, “You don’t have to be an elite athlete to appreciate how NikeFuel can motivate you. It’s an easy way to get credit for activities and compare how you do with others, even if you take part in different sports.

simple solutions…

One of the most memorable case studies on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one

of Japan‘s biggest cosmetics companies. The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high- resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a workman was posed with the same problem, he did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Simplicity!

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(Moral of the story: Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. So, learn to focus on solutions not on problems. “If you look at what you do not have in life, you don’t have anything; if you look at what you have in life, you have everything”)

Starbucks Builds a Drive-Through Out of Shipping Containers

 

Even industrial shipping containers wear out eventually. But rather than scrap them, Starbucks’ in-house architects upcycled the containers into a unique drive-through cafe.

The new cargotecture structure is located in Tukwila, Washington. Stacked as they are, the four containers provide about 450 square feet of interior space. It’s a cozy fit, sure, but one large enough to accommodate three baristas in roughly the same area that they would occupy in a conventional coffee shop.

The LEED-certified storefront is part of Starbucks’ efforts to increase the sustainability of its stores while reducing environmental and operating costs. If it proves successful, expect to see lots of other companies rolling out similarly-built stores across the country as well.

Wikipedia, Reddit plan blackout in SOPA protest

A handful of large websites will go dark on Wednesday to protest an anti-piracy bill that critics say will wreck the Internet as we know it.

Wikipedia, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites all plan to participate in the blackout. The protest is their response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through Congress.

Introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, the bill aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that fuel it. Its targets include “rogue” overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which essentially operates as a trading ground for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content.

A similar bill called the Protect IP Act was approved by a Senate committee in May and is now pending before the full Senate.

The controversial legislation has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of it, while tech’s power players are throwing their might into opposing it.

If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. Search engines and other providers would have to block rogue sites when ordered to do so by a judge. Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content in the first place — and Internet companies are worried that they could be held liable for users’ actions.

As BoingBoing wrote: “Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits.”

Hearing canceled after White House jumps in: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was supposed to hold a hearing with industry experts on Wednesday, which is why sites targeted that day for a blackout. But Alexis Ohanian, a Reddit founder who was scheduled to testify, told CNNMoney that the hearing has been canceled.

Representatives for hearing organizer Rep. Darrell Issa did not immediately return calls for comment on Monday, a federal holiday on which most government offices are closed. Issa, a Republican from California, opposes SOPA.

The hearing’s cancellation won’t stop the site blackouts. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, told CNNMoney that his site will feature “a letter from the community and a call to action — to call and write Congress. My goal is to melt switchboards!”

Instead of testifying in Washington, Ohanian said he will attend a protest rally in New York City organized by the group NY Tech Meetup. They plan to assemble outside the offices of New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Wednesday’s hearing was likely canceled because of a statement the White House released on Saturday. The Obama administration wrote that it would not support legislation that mandates “tamper[ing] with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS).”

As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet access providers and other companies to block access to targeted sites in ways that were rife with potential unintended consequences. The White House said its analysis of the original legislation’s technical provisions “suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity.”

The White House’s statement came shortly after one of SOPA’s lead sponsors, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, agreed to remove SOPA’s DNS blocking provisions.

The controversial bill, once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House, is now being extensively reworked before it comes up for a commitee vote.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp. (NWS), voiced his frustration with the White House’s stance in a series of tweets over the weekend.

“Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery,” Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

In addition to Murdoch, SOPA has drawn support from groups including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses by depriving content creators of income.

Proponents of the bill dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn’t adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA’s critics say that say that the bill’s backers don’t understand the Internet, and therefore don’t appreciate the implications of the legislation they’re considering.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of House members has proposed an alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN).

This legislation would allow rights holders to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to enforce current laws by targeting the actual content pirates. OPEN’s backers have posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn’t have the resources for such enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive.

The Zen Of Steve Jobs: A Closer Look

I heard the biography was phenomenal, but I think this would be interesting too. The graphic novel, The Zen of Steve Jobs, shows just a small glimpse into Jobs’ life in the 80s when he was soul-searching after being kicked out of Apple. Although partly fictionalized, the authors show you the relationship Jobs developed with Japanese Zen Buddhist priest Kobun Chino.