This month will see an orgy of gift-giving and sloppy obsession as couples around the Costa Blanca show their appreciation for one another on Valentine’s Day, so this month I thought we would have a look at some technology you might want to buy your other half to help get them into better shape.
Of course if you really loved your partner you would have bought them a Microsoft X-Box One for Christmas like my lovely wife did! If you didn’t then don’t worry, by using the information in this article I’m sure you will be able to recover and once again ingratiate yourself with your other half.
Many of us are trying to get back into shape after the excesses of Christmas, and there is one gadget that can help track your progress – the FitBit wireless activity monitor. This little piece of tech is less than 100 euros and is the size of a small memory stick. It is worn either as a wristband or simply placed in your pocket and will track loads of things about your day i.e. the steps you have made, the distance walked and how active you have been during that distance. It also tracks the number of floors you have climbed – it is effectively a modern day pedometer. When you link it to your smart phone it also allows you to track so much more – calories in and out, weight, water intake and you can even track your food eaten and use it to help control your weight. You can find out more about Fitbit at www.fitbit.com/uk
Another gadget that you might be interested in (but whether you’re brave enough to buy it for your partner is a different thing!) are the new bathroom scales from Withings. These are no ordinary bathroom scales, as they connect to your wifi network and send your weight, body mass statistics and other information to your free online profile. This profile can be updated either from your smart phone or computer. The scales can be used by anyone in the family and they automatically detect who is standing on them and sends the information to the appropriate online profile. You can find out more about these and other gadgets that they sell at www.withings.co.uk
Finally, staying on the fitness theme, you might want some way to link these two gadgets together – so that they can share information with each other and many other fitness gadgets. I use www.runkeeper.com to track the little activity that I do. It has the ability to also share and read from both of the gadgets mentioned above so I personally find Run Keeper great. It can also be used in conjunction with your smart phone to track and draw maps of your walks for example. You can track all of your exercise activity and link that with your bathroom scales data and see whether one has an effect on the other. The great thing about Run Keeper is that once you have linked it to your fitness gadgets it automatically updates their profiles every time you do some activity. Like a lot of websites nowadays Run Keeper offers the freemium model (offering a free service for standard functionality and then a premium service if you opt to pay a little each year).