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Apple may launch a rugged Watch for extreme sports
Apple is reportedly planning to make a Watch version with a rugged casing designed for extreme sports and weather.
Logitech and Herman Miller team up to design ergonomic gaming furniture
Plenty of gaming chairs look cool, but whether or not they're actually good for your back is another question. Furniture company Herman Miller and Logitech's gaming hardware brand Logitech G want to change that. They're teaming up to create a line of ergonomic furniture for gamers, starting with a gaming chair that could arrive as soon as this spring.
Amazon and the NFL team up to create a 'Digital Athlete' simulation
Amazon's AWS and the NFL plan to use AI and machine learning to protect players. The partners announced today that they'll co-develop a "Digital Athlete" platform, which will create a computer simulation model of an NFL player. Using the computer simulation, they'll be able to test different game scenarios without putting actual players at risk.
Instagram lets you buy what Kim Kardashian wears right from the app
With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram sees a major opportunity to disrupt online shopping. And, over the past year or so, the company has been working hard to make shopping a cornerstone feature of its app. Just last month, it started allowing users buy products from a select group of brands without leaving the application, and now it's taking that one step further by opening up these features to celebrities, athletes and influencers. Starting next week, Instagram will make it easy for you to shop looks from your favorite creators: They'll now be able to tag products in their posts, giving you the ability to buy whatever they may be wearing (from apparel to cosmetics) directly from the app.
NFL players can track and sell their own health data
Professional athletes know that it's not just the matches and training sessions that matter: it's what you do in your downtime too. Whoop's wearable straps specialise in this area, tracking your movement, heart rate, and ambient temperature to better understand your health and recovery rate. Now, it's being adopted by the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), which means straps will be handed out to every current and incoming player in the US. Whether they'll wear them is a mystery, but the hope is that they'll be used to track and optimize their training schedules, reducing injuries and improving in-game performance.
ICYMI: Raining tiny satellites and the laundry-folding machine
Today on In Case You Missed It: A company called FoldiMate is selling a standalone machine to sit alongside a washing and dryer and fold about 20 garments at a time for $850. Cornell University engineers are sending tiny interstellar computers to the ISS this summer, there they will act as satellites and, eventually, collect information from our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. We also round up the week in our TL; DR segment. If you grew up playing The Sims, this piece of news might interest you. We're also very interested in the Visa payment ring the Olympic athletes can wear in Rio. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Super Bowl 50 athletes tell us about their favorite tech
Super Bowl 50 will take place this Sunday in Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and as a result, both the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers are already on the ground in the Bay Area prepping for the big day. On Monday evening, we took the opportunity to head on over to Super Bowl Opening Night to meet and greet players from both teams and ask them -- including Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton -- about their favorite tech gadgets. Check out our video above to find out what they have to say.
Hexoskin's new wearable is a smart shirt for exercise buffs
The wearable craze isn't only about fashionable watches and savvy glasses. After all, remember how tech giant Intel's vision for the space included a shirt? Hexoskin, a Canada-based startup, has similar beliefs, and that's why it recently introduced its biometric smart tee -- Ralph Lauren's doing it too. The newly developed shirt, aimed at people who are fond of exercising regularly, is equipped with sensors capable of tracking over 42,000 data points every minute. Naturally, given that Hexoskin designed its product with athletes in mind, the shirt's bread and butter is to gather stats during physical training sessions, although it can also track daily activities such as sleep. Unfortunately, Hexoskin's wearable is only available in the US at the moment, where the starting kit sells for a cool $399.
EA Sports UFC footage details fighter likeness
If there's one major selling point for EA Sports UFC, it's the detailed likeness of its fighters. The publisher touted as much in its latest trailer for the PS4 and Xbox One MMA game, which is due out this spring.
Former NFL player looks to unite athletes and gamers with 'OverDog'
Hunter Hillenmeyer spent eight years in the NFL as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. For five of those years, he served as a player rep, which he describes as a "liaison between players and everything else that goes on, whether that's labor relations or off-the-field opportunities."Aside from public appearances and social media, fans don't have many ways to interact with their favorite athletes on a personal level. Hillenmeyer argues there are "better, more fun, more efficient ways to connect athletes with fans." He sees an opportunity for video games to fill that role, and that's where his new service called OverDog comes in.Teaming up with a number of developers and gathering advice from fellow professional athletes, Hillenmeyer's plan is to launch the beta version of a mobile app for iOS in April and deploying to Android users later. Athletes looking for some competition in their favorite games can challenge fans through the app, and one lucky fan will have the chance to battle against sports stars on the athlete's game and platform of choice.
Adidas Social Media Barricade shoe concept moves tweets to the track (video)
Adidas is known for making connected shoes -- but never quite as linked-up as a Nash Money concept making its appearance late into the London Olympics. The Social Media Barricade weaves the guts of a phone and a basic two-line LCD into a running shoe, letting the footwear take Twitter updates very literally on the run through a public account. Even the signature Adidas stripes change their hue through remote control. Before anyone gets visions of athletes checking congratulatory tweets after the 100-meter sprint, just remember that it's an idea rather than a production blueprint: although Adidas is quick to call the Social Media Barricade the "future of athlete connectivity," the only athletes putting eyes on a pair right now are those swinging by the Olympics' media lounge for interviews. Knowing this, we can still imagine some future shoes padding runners' egos at the finish line during the 2016 Rio games.
Former NCAA athletes' lawsuit against EA is so on
EA's request to dismiss a class action lawsuit from former NCAA athletes has been denied, meaning the trial will movie forward and EA stands to lose more than $1 billion if found at fault.The former NCAA athletes claim EA conspired with the NCAA and the CLC to have players sign away their likenesses and names to be used in video games without compensation. The players allege that in order to participate in NCAA sports they were required to sign a form allowing EA their likenesses in games, even after their college sports careers ended.The federal judge previously dismissed other claims in the lawsuit, but denied EA's attempt to have an antitrust claim thrown out.EA is facing more than a few lawsuits at the moment, but it did recently settle a two-year-old lawsuit with Activision, with as-yet undisclosed concessions from either side.
Sportiiiis: a heads up display for the athletically inclined
When we're not blogging, we're training for marathons, triathlons and the like, and we're constantly looking for ways to maximize our athletic performance. Ok, not really, but there are plenty of folks who are athletes looking for an extra edge, and 4iiii wants to give it to them with a heads up display called Sportiiiis. It's a small plastic boom that attaches to your shades and provides information to the wearer via multicolored LEDs programmed to your liking with its companion software. It can pull data from up to eight ANT+ devices at once to provide Ironmen with heart rate, speed, power, pace, and cadence information. There's also a built-in speaker that provides audible cues, and users can switch between visual and audio output by simply tapping the side of the boom. It's available now on the company's website for $199, and you can read more in the PR below.
Adidas miCoach Speed_Cell measures your dunking prowess and serving skills
When it comes to sports gadgets, runners seem to get all the good stuff: the Nike+, the Motoactv and even the FitBit. For all the footballers, basketball players and aspiring tennis stars out there, Adidas is spreading the love with the introduction of its miCoach Speed_Cell -- a $69.99 device that measures motion and performance in every direction whether you're into tackling, serving or shooting. The gadget fits on the bottom side of compatible shoes to capture seven hours of stats including average and max speed, number of sprints, distance at high intensity levels, steps and strides. The coolest part? Your personal bests will transfer wirelessly to a smartphone, tablet, PC or Mac for post-practice critique, Sports Center style. The soccer-centric company has already released a compatible pair of cleats and has plans to put out more miCoach-friendly footwear, as well as a series of sport-specific apps allowing athletes to virtually monitor their performance. Jump, skip or dribble over to the PR after the break for the full deets.
Cricket bowling machine masters spin and swing, but not spitballs
With America almost done fielding its entire robotic baseball team (so far we've got a hitter, shortstop, and a catcher), researchers over in Britain knew that they'd better "get on the ball" and start working on some improved cricketbots in order to keep up in this roboathlete arms race. After two years of hard work and many frail scientists getting pegged by errant cricket balls, professors and students at Loughborough University have finally perfected the latest automated bowler (that's cricket's version of the pitcher) which is able to put any combination of spin and swing on the ball. The machine achieves this human-like feat through a two-part system composed of spinning wheels and corkscrew rifling down the barrel, and is so adept at mimicking professional bowlers that it can recreate the so-called "ball of the century," a 1993 delivery by Shane Warne that made nearly a 90-degree turn between the leg stump and the batter's off-stump (we don't really understand it either, but apparently it was quite an achievement). Up next for the Loughborough team is adding a visual element to their bot, wherein the projection of a human bowler would appear in front of the machine in order to make training sessions that much more realistic. When asked what it thought it about the latest and greatest in automated English projectile hurling, the robotic welly-wanger we recently featured paused for a second, took a sip from its pint of Guinness Boddington's, and slurred, "Bollocks to that bloody twit -- I'll load up a welly and kick its arse."
