Saturday, July 12, 2014

This Fitness Watch Doesn't Have A Lot Of Bells And Whistles But It Works Extremely Well

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/lifetrak-zone-c410-2014-7

LifeTrack C410

Salutron's LifeTrak Zone C410 is a simple fitness-tracking watch. 

It doesn't have any bells and whistles. It simply tracks your steps, sleep, distance traveled, calories, heart rate, and it tells the time. All for a very affordable $99. 

The best part about it? You can forget about adding another charger to your collection: The C410 runs off a regular battery and you won't have to replace it more than once a year.

The Design

The watch has a pretty basic design. There are two buttons on the side that allow you to do things like scroll through menu items, start and stop the tracking, light up the display, and sync the watch to your phone (more on that later). 

lifetrak2.PNG

There's also a button underneath the display that allows you to scroll through all the various tracking modes. When you hold it down, it tracks your heart rate. It even tells you the percentage of your maximum heart rate, which is an added bonus. 

The watch and band are waterproof up to 90 feet. The band is reversible (blue and black), but you can buy different watch bands for around $14 from LifeTrak's site. It fits securely on the wrist and overall looks pretty unassuming. 

The Watch

You can set goals on the watch, like how many steps you'd like to take per day. This is pretty straightforward; you scroll through your options with the top-right button. It also has an iOS and Android app that allows you to change the settings. 

There's a bar at the top on the watch face that shows you how close you are to reaching your daily goals. 

The coolest feature is the automatic sleep mode. I've used fitness bands in the past that required you to put it in sleep mode before it would t! rack how much shut eye you're getting. But it's hard to remember to press a button when you're halfway to dreamland. 

lifetrak1.PNG

But luckily, the C410 senses it automatically. Once the device hasn't moved for a little bit, it goes into sleep mode and starts tracking your Zzzzs.

The problem is, it works a little too well. The watch would sometimes go into sleep mode even when I just took it off for a little while, like before a shower. But overall, that didn't seem to overly affect the overall sleep it thought I was getting.  

The watch can also sync with third-party health-tracking apps like as MapMyFitness. Syncing is easy; you just press and hold the bottom-right button, and all your information is pulled into the app via Bluetooth. 

Conclusion

The C410 is a basic fitness watch that performs well. It even offers more features than some of the competition.

All the information you need is right there on the watch. You don't have to take out your phone or use an app, if you don't want to. 

It doesn't vibrate. You can't track your food calories. It doesn't even have an alarm function.

But for $99, you get a straightforward fitness tracker, with the added bonus of a heart-rate monitor and automatic sleep detection. And it's super accurate.

In a world of Galaxy Gears and Pebbles, it's nice to have an option on the opposite end of the spectrum. And the Zone C410 performs exactly as advertised, with very little fuss. 

SEE ALSO: I tried out a standing desk for all the health benefits — here's why I quit

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

Demand For Light Beer Is Collapsing

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/demand-for-light-beer-is-collapsing-2014-7

bud light

American beer drinkers are becoming more discerning. 

Thanks to the booming popularity of the craft beer business, light beer sales will hit a 10-year low in 2015, writes Devin Leonard at Bloomberg Businessweek

Sales of once-popular staples like Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite are on the decline, Leonard writes. 

Craft beer has become so popular that there's now a black market for rare brews. 

Anheuser-Busch executives told Businessweek that it was pushing light beer sales through flavored beverages such as the Bud Light Lime Straw-Ber-Rita. 

The cocktail-beer hybrid appeals to women who don't want to drink heavy craft beer. 

Sales of the so-called 'Ritas hit $462 million last year, according to IRI, a research company in Chicago. 

Bud Light is also working to develop seasonal flavors, such as apple for the fall, writes Venessa Wong the magazine.

The brand is also expected to step up marketing in the near future, executives told Businessweek. 

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 29 Most American Foods Of All Time

Follow Us: On Facebook

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

âBreach is a completely modular, hackable and open source web browser

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/12/breach-is-a-completely-modular-hackable-and-open-source-web-br/

When it comes to surfing the web, our options are limited: the market is dominated by three or four mainstream web browsers, all of which share major similarities in design and function. Unless you want to build your own browsing program, you're stuck with their modern browsing paradigms. For San Francisco programmer Stanislas Polu, that wasn't good enough, so, he created Breach -- an open source modular web browser designed to allow anybody to tweak and modify it on a whim.

Breach wants to be a different kind of web browser, one that's not only a tool for browsing the internet, but one that is built of the technologies that power it. Using the Chromium Content API as a base layer, Polu built a browser with a UI coded entirely in JavaScript and HTML5 -- each element of the experience existing as its own individual webapp with access to Breach's deeper API. In fact, when the browser first boots up, it doesn't even have the ability to navigate the internet. "You don't have any modules running yet," it warns. "Let's add 'mod_strip', a module that provides a basic tab strip and URL box support." Install a module, and your browser suddenly has features. Neglect to, and it won't be able to do much at all.

The new browser only launched its public Alpha release this week, and doesn't have many modules to call its own. The basic strip and data components are active, but an official bookmarks module and other functions aren't yet done. Still, that's not the point: Breach is designed so any user with an idea for any feature can create it themselves in JavaScript or CSS. It's a barebones experience now, but one that's created so you can add any meat you fancy. We can't say it's likely to replace Chrome or Firefox in our hearts yet, but it's a neat take on an old technology we all use every single day. Check it out at the source link below.

Filed under:

Comments

Via: Aaron Draczynski (Twitter)

Source: Breach

Read More...

Dropbox Stays Ahead Of Amazon With Big File-Syncing Upgrade

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-file-transfer-speed-boost-2014-7

Drew HoustonDropbox’s seamless file-sync technology is perhaps what keeps the fledgling startup alive in the increasingly competitive cloud storage market.

In fact, some people think Dropbox's file-syncing technology is exactly what will prevent Amazon from destroying the company with its own streaming service.

Today Dropbox just made their file-sync speed even faster. 

Dropbox rolled out a new service called Streaming Sync, which, according to the company, will speed up the sync time by as much as 2X. With Streaming Sync, users no longer have to wait for the entire file to be uploaded before accessing it, because it now “streams” data simultaneously from its servers to user devices. The service only works on files over 16MB, so large-file transfers will benefit the most from it.

Following Thursday’s launch of Zocalo, Amazon’s own file-sharing and collaboration service, Dropbox is in position to find a way to further distinguish itself from other competitors. Streaming Sync could be one of the features that make users want to stick to Dropbox’s service.

You can download the latest Dropbox desktop client here.

Here’s the how the sync times break down:

Dropbox_SteamingSync

SEE ALSO: Amazon just launched a Box and Dropbox killer

Join the conversation about this story »








Read More...

Friday, July 11, 2014

Mix beats and loop vocals with Propellerhead's Take for iOS

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/11/propellerhead-take/

If you saw Reggie Watts' musical set at Engadget Expand (don't worry, there's video after the break), then you probably noticed the table full of gear he needs to construct his loops. Propellerhead -- the Swedish software company behind Reason, not the electronica duo -- is hoping to lighten this load with Take, a creative vocal loop recorder that's being given away free to iPhone users. The interface is reasonably simple, offering you a wide variety of pre-made backing loops as well as three tracks that you can rap, sing or otherwise make noise on. It's tremendously easy to use, but it won't compensate for your lack of musical talent, which is why we won't be sharing our ham-fisted efforts with you.


Filed under: , , ,

Comments

Source: Take (App Store)

Read More...