Fitness Tracker in a Shirt

http://youtu.be/ZftB2hs4VMg

GeekBeat Edition UpDesk Survey Results

Wow! You, my lovely friends, have surprised me! Last week, we asked for your opinion. As you know, UpDesk is such an awesome company that they’re donating motorized sit-stand desks to our new GeekHouse! And they’re letting us customize the desks that we get! So we asked you… if you were going to buy a Geek Beat UpDesk… and you WILL have the opportunity to do so… what would you like on it? The results are in!

44% of you want a black desk with the blue and orange Geek Beat logo silkscreened on it. Both John and I thought for sure most of you were going to choose the White Dry Erase surface with the logo on it. But only 29% of you wanted that one. 21% of you said a cable management system under the desk would be important. 20% of you wanted USB charging ports on the desk. 16% want lots of grommet holes for your cables and only 13% of you wanted AC outlets on the desk.

So… UpDesk said, why not make everyone happy and offer BOTH the Black Desk AND the Whiteboard desk with the Geek Beat logo on it. This is why we ask YOU guys for your opinion. The UpDesk guys are working hard on having us the desks by the time we get to move into the new building, and we’ll let you know when the desks are available for sale if you want one of your own!

OmSignal Shirts Track Your Fitness

Something you can pre-order right now is the OmSignal fitness shirts. The What?! Yep! OmSignal sells Biometric Smartwear. It’s a fancy term that basically means… throw your old fitness tracker out the window and get one of these! I haven’t tried it yet – I’m trying to get my hands on one for review – but they promise to track your activity more accurately. I want to wear this when following My Yoga Teacher Vinyasa Classes. They track heart rate, breathing rate, breathing depth, activity intensity, your steps, calories burned and heart rate variability. The shirt itself has sensors built in and must be worn directly against your skin to get the most accurate measurements. So they have workout shirts, but also undershirts to be worn under your button up dress shirt or whatever! The other piece to the tracking system is getting information OUT of your shirt, right? So for that, there’s a Bluetooth module you attach to the shirt and it feeds the information to the app. Unfortunately it’s iOS only for right now, and women’s shirts are coming later in the year. But men, you get yours this summer!

UC Davis Gets a Laser Harp

You remember when I was in London and showed you Steve Thompson’s Laser Harp? That thing was so spectacular and you all loved it! Well, turns out the University of California Davis wanted to build one themselves! Steve’s laser harp was played in the open air and had no boundaries, which I thought was really cool! UC Davis’ is actually built into a box, kind of like how a real harp has a structure. It’s five feet tall and four feet wide. Texas Instruments donated a Tiva C Series LaunchPad Evaluation board, a Linear Regulator and a Fixed 3.3 Positive Voltage Regulator to make the project happen. They’re using 10 red lasers, and just like with Steve’s harp, it makes music when you break the laser beam with your hand. You can play it in Free Play – where it’s all you, baby! Or Teach mode where you learn to play a specific song. Or Listen mode where it plays by itself. I can’t find it for sale just yet, but I’ll let you know if I do!

GoPlug Bag Gives You an AC Outlet To Go

John and I love our Tylt backpacks. You know… the one with a battery in it that lets you charge your devices on the go? A new Kickstarter project just launched that takes it to the next level. It’s called the GoPlug Bag and adds an AC outlet in addition to two USB ports so you can charge ANY device, including your laptop, not just USB devices. Brilliant! They say it’s water resistant and the outlets rotate so you have full flexibility. AND they’re making the outlets Universal so it doesn’t matter if you’re in the US or the UK! There are a variety of bag options, including backpacks and camera roller bags. The one thing I can’t find on their page is the size of the battery, though they say it’ll charge your phone 6 times and double the battery life of your laptop.

Sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Administration

It takes just 3 seconds to buckle your seatbelt and save your life! You can never predict what might happen on the road, because other driver’s actions aren’t in your control! But buckling up IS. Cops will be out in force looking for those of you who aren’t buckled in, so take those 3 seconds and buckle up. Remember… Click it or ticket.