gym
Latest
Communication-enabled exercise equipment in the works
While we've seen a number of individuals turning to Nintendo's Wii to shed a few pounds, the next wave of exercise equipment seems to be filtering in. Just weeks after seeing Motivatrix's MX9 Workout Master, five companies have come together in an effort to "develop a communications protocol to establish a connection between home healthcare devices from different manufacturers so that they can exchange information with one another." Mitsubishi, Citizen, Sharp, Tanita, and Hitachi have jointly designed the standard as part of a Japanese healthcare project, which will be "used when interconnecting healthcare equipment such as blood pressure meters, weight scales, and blood glucose meters with home gateway devices." Notably, the protocol can applied to both wired and wireless configurations, and if all goes as planned, it should be rolled out en masse to manufacturers in the Spring of 2008.[Via DigitalWorldTokyo]
Overtime Fitness gym for teens includes video games
One day in the future, we're sure that everyone will be strong, good-looking and above-average. But today, given that 16 percent of American children aged 12-19 are overweight according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have to be ways to get kids into more healthful habits. As we all know, everyone's supposed to be exercising regularly in order to stay well and fit -- thankfully, kids have a new type of fitness center in Mountain View, California (home of Google!) which aims to appeal to the children of Silicon Valley reared on a steady diet of gadgets. Overtime Fitness, which opens tomorrow (and restricts membership to kids 13-18) includes a regular workout equipment area, a "study center" with PCs, Macs and free WiFi (for the Linux laptop-toting set?), a DDR-clone called "In The Groove 2" and the Cybex Trazer, a virtual reality-type game that maps physical movements to the on-screen action. If all that gear wasn't enough, there's always the Xbox hooked up to something called a Kilowatt Sport, which includes a "resistance rod" to merge the real world with the virtual, or as Ars Technica puts it: "if you're playing Madden '06 and want to run a fullback dive, you're going to have to lean hard against the resistance rod to break through the defensive line." Our only question is this: exactly how are parents going to react when they find out that the $60 monthly fee is being spent so that their kids can play even more video games?[Via Ars Technica]
Quite possibly the best internet skit ever
I love Olde English. Apart from the fact that 40% of the homepage's area is dedicated to images of beer, their funny videos are a perfect blend of student humor and stupidity. Probably the best video on the site is their Gym Class skit, a clever satire of multiplayer first person shooters. Watch as a group of friends proceed to mercilessly shoot each other with imaginary machine guns, rifles and handguns, just like a FPS. Then laugh as the winner claps and says "good game", just like a FPS.If you liked that then check out Hello? Fuck! otherwise known as "waking up with a hangover and trying to find the phone." Before you ridicule me for its lack of relation to gaming hear this! At least two game consoles have some screen time in this video, so as Phoenix Wright would say, "TAKE THAT!"Also, as you've probably already guessed, these videos are NSFW.[Thanks, Greg Gant]
