Let’s start with the Nike+ FuelBand, a sleek, rubber-and-metal wristband that displays fitness information on an attractive, durable color-dot screen.
Nike made a hard push for the $150 device in March at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas. Nike reworked an entire downtown music venue to resemble the FuelBand’s digital look. And it’s indeed eye-catching. What appears to be a simple black-rubber band lights up to display calories burned, steps taken, the time and “Nike+ Fuel,” a unit of activity that will mean absolutely nothing to anyone who doesn’t own shoes or FuelBands that use the sweat currency.
What the band does is connect wirelessly via BlueTooth with Apple iOS devices to update fitness data to a very nicely designed, colorful app. A built-in USB connector on the FuelBand can also connect directly to a computer to upload information to nikeplus.com, which keeps track of activity and can compare it with, say, Facebook friends who also generate Fuel points.
The FuelBand is gorgeous in design, the rare gadget that you’d wear without feeling self-conscious. It has a long battery life.
For $150, it seems overpriced for its maddeningly vague functionality.
Swivl
Swivl, an oddball product that also vied for attention at SXSW.
Swivl is a sturdy, attractive disc-shaped device that can hold a camera phone or small point-and-shoot camera and, as the name implies, swivels to track whatever’s being filmed.
This is one of those products that works best with an iPhone or iPod Touch (sorry, no iPads fit it, and there’s no Android app yet). The remote can make the app start shooting video, and wherever the remote goes, the Swivl rotates to train its view.
If you’re a teacher who wants to film your own lectures or a would-be YouTube star who wants to do some funny monologues without worrying about adjusting the camera’s view, then this can be a very useful device.
Perhaps it’s a niche product at $179, but it’s one that works beautifully.
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