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The $1,500 smart fitness mirror now offers personal training sessions
Last year, the fitness company Mirror launched its signature $1,500 reflective LCD display meant to stream fitness classes into your home. Since then, users have been able to follow along with instructors and see themselves mimicking the moves. Today, Mirror announced a new service: personal training. Through the display's two-way audio and video, users will be able to work one-on-one with trainers in real time.
WW, formerly Weight Watchers, launches a weight loss app for kids
Last February, Weight Watchers drew criticism when it announced a free weight-loss program for teens ages 13 to 17. Skeptics feared the program would encourage obsessive eating habits in adolescents, but Weight Watchers -- since rebranded WW -- isn't backing down. Instead, it launched a free weight loss app for adolescents, Kurbo by WW.
Google may launch a smartwatch-focused AI fitness coach
Google and its partners have slowly but surely trying to revitalize Android-based smartwatches, and it looks like they may use fitness as the way to reel you in. Android Police (which has a history of accurate leaks) claims to have word of Google Coach, a Wear OS-oriented assistant that would use AI to improve your health and fitness. Rather than just track your activities and popping up an endless stream of reminders, it would "proactively" recommend changes to your activity and provide prompts that are genuinely useful.
Everlast and PIQ team up to bring data and AI to boxing
On the outside I'm a questionably healthy tech journalist. On the inside I'm a prizefighter. At least that's what I like to tell myself. So obviously my curiosity was aroused when I heard that PIQ and Everlast had teamed up to combine two of my favorite things: data and boxing. The companies are preparing to unleash what they say is the first AI-powered wearable for combat sports.
Smart headphones put an AI fitness coach in your ear
As a rule, fitness coaching from wearable devices is pretty limited when you're in mid-exercise. They'll tell you when you hit your goals, but they don't really know you and your patterns. That's where LifeBeam thinks it can help. It's crowdfunding new earphones, Vi, that combine sensors (tracking aspects like heart rate and elevation) with an app-based artificial intelligence coach. The audio gear provides real-time advice that adapts based on numerous factors, ranging from your running technique to your stress levels. It'll even do its best to minimize exhaustion and injury.
Lumo's running shorts fix your form to avoid injury
Lumo is a wearable company that's already conquered the world of bad posture, so now it's moving on to helping runners avoid injury. The company is launching the Lumo Run, a pair of shorts with a small plastic doodad on the waistband that can monitor your biomechanics as you sprint around the block. Biomechanics, if you're not a runner, is fancy talk for our cadence, stride length and pelvic rotation -- all factors that you'd otherwise have to visit a specialist running center to learn more about. It's a similar set of tools that Myontec offer with its MBody fitness shorts, although that product will cost you the better part of $1,000. By comparison, Lumo's offering will retail for just $149 when it lands in the Spring of 2016.
Badminton Player's Diary: more than a backyard game
Badminton became an Olympic sport in 1992 and is extremely popular in most of Asia. Here in the United States the game is viewed as more of a recreational activity for a summer's afternoon in the backyard or at a picnic. However thousands of people across America do participate in badminton as a competitive sport and this new app is intended for them. Badminton Player's Diary Coaching App is free and made for just your iPad. It requires iOS 6.1 or later. The app is intended to be used by a third party viewing a match and tracking one or both of the players involved. The person using the app charts each shot during the match and is able at any time to check out the statistics of each player. All strokes are recorded in real time and are separated into attacking strokes or non-attacking strokes. They each receive a different designation in the app so it is easy to tell at the end of a rally or match which player was the aggressor. The app user just taps on the screen showing where the shot ended up. When a rally ends, the user can designate whether the stroke that ended the ended it was a forced or unforced error resulting in the shuttlecock going over the line or into the net. At any time the user can look at the game and match statistics and see just where all the shots were placed, whether they were attacking or defensive, and the result, part of a rally, a winner, out of bounds, or into the net. Badminton Player's Diary also makes recommendations on how each player can improve his or her strategy during the game in terms of attacking or location of the strokes. However to get this information you need to make a $0.99 in-app purchase. It appears you would need to make this purchase for each match. If you do buy the recommendations, you will receive three actions supposed to help that player improve his game. If you tap on each recommendation you get a graphic visualization of how to implement the suggestion. The app is simple to operate. You use a drop down menu to add players and to start new matches. You can then save both the matches and players so the players can be used again and the matches for review. I have only played badminton as a diversion but I can see how Badminton Player's Diary Coaching App could assist competitive players. It would be helpful to see if all your shots were to one side or the other of the court or if all your misses were to your backhand. Since the app is free it is worth trying and maybe you can end up in the Olympics some day.
Cambridge Consultants wants to make you a better basketball player through the power of technology (video)
I am a terrible basketball player. But, that should come as no surprise: I'm relatively short and a tech journalist by trade. Cambridge Consultants is confident it can improve my game, however. The company is working on a collection of technologies that can be used to analyze your performance in a particular sport and provide data, tips and coaching to help you fully realize your physical potential. For demonstration purposes, it brought a system it's calling ArcAid to CES. It starts with three cameras mounted behind a backboard. Two of them are used to watch the ball as it flies through the air, calculating speed, angle and arc; while a third watches to see if you actually sink the shot. If we had been using an actual basketball, the cameras would have even been able to track its spin, but to avoid damaging the booth behind them Cambridge Consultants went with a blue foam ball instead. I took a few tosses and, as you'll see in the video below, things did not go so well. With each attempt, a giant screen to the right would tell me if I needed to shoot harder, aim farther to the left or lower my arc. This is, of course, just a rudimentary implementation. The system can support other sensors, like accelerometers, or track movement across a larger field. So, for instance, it could tell you where on the court you're having the most success, and even help you identify if a particular angle of attack is throwing off your aim. Obviously, the system isn't limited to basketball. You could tackle tennis, baseball or even boxing with the right combination of software and sensors. Even with a couple of years of tutelage under the ArcAid system, I'll never make the NBA, but at least maybe I'll finally beat able to beat my little sister at a game of HORSE.
Dota 2 gets new heroes, crafting, and Diretide
Last week, the folks at Valve apologized to the Dota 2 community for silently skipping the game's Halloween-themed Diretide event. In the apology, the Dota team promised that Diretide would go live with the next big update, which they hinted would include a bunch of other features the community would be happy to see. Today, Valve announced the update, titled Three Spirits. And true to the Dota team's word, it's a big one. It includes two new heroes in the form of Earth Spirit and Ember Spirit (counterparts to the existing Storm Spirit), an in-game coaching mechanic that enables teams and individuals to improve their play, and a crafting and socketing system that provides for customizing existing items or combining unneeded ones to make something better and more useful. The patch also brings a new showcase view of matches, a lane-picker, colorblind mode, new training missions and more. Oh, and yes, Diretide is coming; the event runs from November 14th to November 28th. Check out the full patch notes on the official Three Spirits site.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Divorcing skill from teaching skills in League of Legends
League of Legends is a game where skill takes many forms. Knowledge is a skill, as is mechanical execution, adaptability, decision-making, and prediction. In LoL, the emphasis is mostly on decision-making and knowledge. This doesn't mean that the other skills aren't necessary to become a great player, but being a good player mostly requires those skills. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I'm not a great player. If I were, I'd probably be trying to get on a pro team (or I'd already be on one). Even "good" is debatable. I am kind of emotional when I play, and it messes me up. I tend to surrender vote early, which sometimes brings my team down. I am not a team player. I tend to rely on my superior mechanics. Even my mechanics are bad compared to great players. I tend to think of myself as OK at best and that most people are just awful. However, I also think I'm pretty good at teaching people how to play. LoL has a lot of games-within-a-game to play, and I'm not too bad at explaining how those things work over time. I'd like to think I'm good at giving commentary (both positive and negative) to a player trying to learn. I could be a coach, and I sort of am -- I get to coach all of you guys, after all.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Getting friends to enjoy League of Legends
I find the mainstream success of League of Legends to be extremely baffling. If you break down the skills you need to be an effective player in the MOBA genre, they are daunting. The mechanical skill cap to be acceptable is unacceptably high, and the knowledge burden is enormous. Other MOBAs have dozens of characters and hundreds or thousands of matchups. League of Legends' character pool is so unbelievably large that even professionals cannot grasp the entirety of its design space. While I can't fathom how normal people find a game this hard fun, I can simply accept it. That makes it quite possible to get our friends and significant others hooked. However, because League is a hard game, it is probably best that we be careful when we try to teach our friends. It's pretty easy to scare them with the enormous difficulty in the game.
Teachers-in-training to get pointers, CIA updates via wireless headsets
Okay, so maybe there's no actual guarantee that headset-wearing teachers will be able to tune into top secret broadcasts from the nation's capitol, but once the infrastructure is in place, it's just a matter of time before everyone's moonlighting as an operative. As the story goes, a gaggle of teachers are volunteering to take part in a Teach for America campaign that puts a bug into their ear and a mentor on the other end. The idea would be to rapidly bring a teacher up to speed by correcting and shaping their technique as it happens, and the potential implications and applications are both vast and numerous. For example, PhDs in foreign nations could one day remotely tutor rural math teachers if Obama's national broadband plan takes hold, and if they're feeling a bit comical, they could throw question marks onto the end of each pointer à la Anchorman. The trial is being funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
iPhone and Exercise: What apps do you like?
For the most part, I've been disappointed with iPhone fitness applications. I'm not talking about Nike+ but rather the third party apps found in the Health & Fitness section of the App Store. Apps that track your routes tend to be battery-killers (not really their fault, more due to the way the SDK insists they work). The ones that create exercise playlists depend on time-exhausting Mac-based solutions that have to analyze your iTunes tracks for their beats-per-minutes, creating a heavy investment with a minimal payoff. Genius on the iPhone does a decent job, without that time commitment. I don't quite get the food and exercise logging apps -- I find that it's simpler to do all that on my primary Mac, using a physical notebook (you know: paper, pen, old tech) when I'm on the go. As for the stretching and exercise guides, I find them awkward. I'd rather use a DVD or a Wii-based game (I adore Gold Gym's Cardio Boxing, for example) where I don't have to keep referring to a 4-inch screen all the time and the sound is clear, and the instructions are easier to follow. So what am I missing here? What are the really good iPhone-based fitness apps? I feel like all the ones I've tried just keep missing the point: to make exercise better or funner(™ Apple). Yes, they make exercise more portable, but do they provide a better win over Nike+, a bike computer or a garmin? Please do chime in in the comments. Let me know what iPhone Apps I have been missing, and which ones will improve my exercise experience, whether in the home or on the jogging path. Surely, there have to be some winners out there, and I'd love to hear about which apps are working for you, and why.
ESRB says 'konnichiwa' to My Japanese Coach
Following the listing that was found on Gamefly, the ESRB has revealed the above listing for My Japanese Coach, yet another language coaching title. Searching for My Chinese Coach comes up empty, but at least we can all be pretty certain that My Japanese Coach will be releasing to North America. We're totally expecting to hear about it next week at E3.
V1-8CAM video analysis system helps golfers nab the right clubs
Granted, this week may be a bit too warm to walk a round of 18 in many parts of the country, but Interactive Frontiers is hoping that you can beat the heat by figuring out exactly what clubs you'll need for your next outing. The firm, which created the V1 Pro Digital Coaching System, is now introducing the V1-8CAM to "simultaneously capture eight angles of video streams" of individuals practicing their swing. Subsequently, fitters can use the data to "more precisely evaluate performance and determine optimal club and putter specifications for clients," and just in case your local pro shop isn't ready to hand over the $11,945 required to pick one up, the four-camera V1-4CAM can still help out for "just" $8,495.[Via LetsGoDigital]
