Polar FT7 Heart Rate Watch Monitor Review

The Polar FT/ Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is designed to let you improve the efficiency with which you work out and burn calories as well as helping you track your progress as your fitness improves. It’s also handy if you want to know the time, I suppose.

Design

The watch part is sturdy, well built and contains all the features and details you could reasonably expect. It is nice on the eye without having anything particularly arresting about it, which is quite possibly the idea. Anyone who is not familiar with heart rate watches surely wouldn’t recognise it as anything other than a good quality sports watch. It is waterproof up to 50 metres, so swimmers and heavy perspirers should have no problems using it.

The chest strap is comfortable to use and the battery is easy to replace when necessary, which is not always the case with other heart rate monitors.

Notable Specifications

The key feature of the Polar FT7 Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is what the company has rather excitingly called EnergyPointer. This nimble little addition gives you the good news when you are burning fat or have improved your level of fitness. Whether it works in reverse as you sit on the couch eating chips is unclear but it is without doubt a motivational feature of interest to athletes and people looking to lose weight as part of an exercise program.

You can either program in manually the heart rate zone you want to work within or choose an automatic level. An alert goes off when you exceed the desired rate. The OwnCal feature records and stored the amount of calories burned off.

Summary

The Polar FT7 Heart Rate Watch / Monitor is a great motivational and practical tool for athletes in training. It is also a useful way for people who are doing exercise for health or weight reasons to monitor their progress and avoid letting their heart rate exceed a safe limit. The fact it can be used as a nice looking, stand alone watch means that it will not only appeal to hard core fitness fans.

Domed helmet invented to fight noisy bars

A student from Scotland has come up with a novel way to keep noise levels to an acceptable level in the pubs and bars of the UK when two people are trying to have a civil conversation: get everyone to wear helmets made from transparent material with ports for talking and, presumably, breathing.

The device was conceived by a student who was researching hearing damage and impairment. Elaine McLuskey decided to build a two person bubble helmet that enables social interaction even when the ambient noise levels would otherwise render this impossible.

There is no doubt that this invention is a bit on the wacky side and the commercial value of such an innovation might be minimal. As long as you do not mind looking as though you and a mate have taken an intimate dive into two conjoined fishbowls, then you should have no problem with sporting the bubble helmet.

Ms McLuskey said that she had found hearing impairment would be far less problematic for people than the sheer volume of external noise in their environment, which means that most people experience a form of hearing impairment on a daily basis.

In bars and pubs, the cumulative noise produced by cheery revellers, chinking glasses and loud music make it difficult to chat and share news, according to Ms McLuskey. She says that the flamboyant look and attention-grabbing use of her invention will help people to think about the value of their hearing, as well as raising awareness about impairments and aural diseases.

Shake Weight Review

It can be extremely difficult to find time in your daily routine to exercise and if we can find a gadget or gizmo that helps we just love to report it to you. Thankfully we have just been sent a new and innovative exercise product that takes as little as six minutes to use, it is called the shake weight.

6 minutes! How does it work?

The shake weight uses dynamic inertia technology which makes working out a lot more efficient. The shaking weight stimulates blood flow to the muscles and the 2.5 lb mass gently tones the arm muscles. Users have reported that some toning can be achieved if you stick to it. To help you train they also include a DVD which takes you through some exercise routines based on the six minute principle boasted by the manufacturer.

Will it help tone my arms?

We think that the shake weight will help people get into the swing of exercising and boost exercise routines. The shake weight only weighs 2.5 lbs and should be seen as an interim exercise routine to be worked in with other exercise. It is definitely designed to tone rather than build muscle (it never claims to do that). So if you are looking for firmer arms then this product certainly will help.

Summary

The shake weight is an innovative product which can help users kick start their exercise plan. It is perfect for people who are very short on time; remember the pack comes with a DVD with a series of workouts to get you started.

Withings bathroom scale review

The Connected bathroom scale is a new, high tech gadget from Withings. It provides a way of measuring your weight and keeping track of your diet progress and body composition that is in keeping with the modern focus on persona fitness. The basic concept is this: the bathroom scales tell you your weight in the normal manner and then using a WiFi connection, the results are sent to a web dashboard program which keeps track of your measurements over time, showing you clearly exactly when your weight has gone up or down. The precise tracking allows you to see how factors such as stress and many of the other elements of modern living affect your weight from day to day.

The first thing that strikes you about the Connected scale is that the design is pretty slick: soft lines and a dark, metallic colour scheme seem to have been drawn from the iPhone school of design. The ‘retro’ digital readout is large and easy to read and fits the look quite well. It turns on and off automatically and features an instant ‘weigh in’ whenever you stand on the scales. It’s also remarkably thin, being only twenty-three millimetres in depth, even with the four carpet feet attached. The device is powered by 4 AAA batteries (included with the package) and it includes free access to the web dashboard programme. All in all, for something that you stand on, it is a pretty attractive piece of kit.

This idea of using a WiFi connection to measure your weight is quite a good one. Considering that your weight can change depending on what time of day it is, having a nicely graphed progress report is likely to be far more informative than simply standing on a set of scales in the morning. The Connected scales also measures your fat mass, lean mass and body mass index, so you’ll get a good idea as to what is going on. It also features automatic user recognition, so you can have different profiles for each person in the house. All of this is automatically sent to the web dashboard programme, which you access via the Internet, or from a specially created iPhone application.

The dashboard itself is clear (both on the website and iphone app) and, as with the scale, looks pretty cool too. Since the scale is incredibly accurate itself, Withings say that the dashboard measurements are perfectly accurate and from these measurements, the system calculates your BMI and also offers you a ‘reference’ guide – a comparison of your figures to the statistics of the ‘ideal’ numbers of a healthy person of your age, height and gender. (They do of course specify that this reference point is an estimate and should not be taken as an absolute ideal.) It will also keep track of your ‘body curves’- your weight rising and falling over time. This is particularly important in the context of the so-called ‘yoyo effect’ – a possible side effect of the stresses of modern living and diet, whereby your weight continuously fluctuates. Access to the dashboard is by password, just in case you are a little embarrassed by the results and want to keep them private and it is possible to have multiple profiles if the Connected scale is to be used by more than one person.

So, now that we have established what the Connected bathroom scale does, it rather begs the question- why do we need all this? One of the most common health problems in modern Britain is obesity which, along with widespread poor nutrition, is on the increase. As all doctors will tell you, prevention is the easiest way to avoid the associated health risks with being over or under weight. Monitoring your progress in terms of not only weight, but also body fat and lean mass and on such a detailed scale, should tell you very quickly if you are doing something that is heading towards the slippery slope to obesity. Certainly, if you are on a diet and trying to loose weight, then being able to see your progress over time is a great way of encouraging yourself to keep going.

 

 

Pictured left : The withings website is easy to use and provides a innovative dashboard.

 

So to sum up, the Connected scale is nice to look at, well designed, accurate and easy to use. It is useful for keeping track of precisely what your body weight and BMI are doing. Many consumers particularly like the iPhone accessibility, which definitely ranks this a cool gadget. At 129 euros, it will probably be the most expensive gadget in many a bathroom — but then again, it may well also be the best-looking and coolest thing in there. They are available from www.withings.com

Withings scale gallery: 

The Micro Electronic Cigarette

Let’s face it, those of us that do it know we shouldn’t and those of us that don’t constantly lecture those of us that do on the perils of being one that does. Those of us that do have even been forced out of pubs, into shelters, and further underground. Could the electronic cigarette be the answer? Well, first things first, you can smoke it in pubs and presumably even at your desk when you’re at work because the smoke that is released is nothing more than a mere vapour and, of course, you have the option of removing the nicotine vapour altogether and using it to help you quit smoking.

First thing you’ll notice is that it’s different to previous attempts at weird smoking substitute pens because it does actually look like a cigarette. Of course, what you won’t have noticed yet is that it costs £50 but this does include enough nicotine to last you considerably longer than £50 worth of Regal would. The e-cigarette is rechargeable and a single charge will last you an age so you don’t have to worry about that either.

You can get light, ultra light, regular, and even tobacco free flavour refills too, and these are only £7 a pop. Both the initial kit, which includes 5 cartridges, and the refills are both available from IWOOT (I Want One Of Those) so easy to get hold of. Refills consist of 5 cartridges and each cartridge is the equivalent to 20 cigarettes so it’s certainly cheaper than smoking.

The Pheromone Attraction Ring – For A Little Extra Help Getting Lucky

The ITEP Program at NYC University is certainly earning itself a reputation for being worth every cent of the research and development budget they undoubtedly get. This time they’ve done it thanks to an attraction ring that sprays pheromones from tiny piezo tubes. What’s more, you get the choice of six different chemicals (three for each sex) in order to try and chemically induce romance with a passer by (normally a fairly illegal habit, I would have thought).

Unfortunately, while the ring itself is quite small when you consider what it does, it’s also pretty obviously not a standard ring worn by, shall we say, standard people. If you are interested then you’ll be happy to learn that all you need to do when you see a good looking female, or indeed male, about to pass you by without a second look is press the side of the ring to encourage it to squirt its love juice and attract you a possible mate.

According to geek.com there’s no news on whether the ring has been tested, either successfully or otherwise, and we can’t find any news of a potential release to the public. We’re assuming that if their had been positive results from any testing then we’d probably have heard about a lot more about it by now, but then maybe the test subjects are too busy to comment. Either way, it makes a pleasant change to read about gadgets that aren’t attempting to single handedly save the world.

Inflatable Moose Head For Animal Lovers Everywhere

Love them or hate them, why do all of these big hunters need to show off their catch?

Well, now you can be your own big game hunter with this Inflatable Moose Head which to all intense and purposes is absolutely useless but offers something different to hang on your wall. No scouring the countryside for that elusive moose, no more riding over meadows and dales, simply blow up your Inflatable Moose Head stick it on the wall and you will be everyone’s friend.

The animal lovers will love you because you are saving the wildlife and the hunters will love you because they won’t recognise it is not real!

This gizmo is 30 inches tall, 29 inches wide, 24 inches from the wall to the end of the moose’s nose and it also comes with its own wall hanger. So next time you want to show off your hunting skills without leaving the comfort of your arm chair just blow up the moose, stick it on the wall and hey presto, sorted.

However, if you think it may cause offence to any guests, simply deflate the moose’s head and stick it somewhere out of sight. When your guests have left blow it back up again and stick it back on the wall!

Online Gamers To Help Create Vaccines And Cures

Being an online gamer doesn’t hold quite the same social stigma it once did. It’s now perfectly acceptable to admit to others, even in polite and mixed company, that you play World of Warcraft until four in the morning. Games like Second Life and WoW have brought a pastime once associated with spotty, socially inept, teenagers to the masses.

It seems that thanks to the online game called FoldIt that this evolution of sorts is being taken to a whole new extreme. An extreme that, even after continued assessment and reassessment seems… odd.

Without getting too heavily involved in the baffling science behind Protein folding, FoldIt enables players to help shape the advance of medical science by simulating the protein folding process. Players compete to fold the best protein, and the software predicts just how effectively they have solved the problem. The end result could well be used to help create vaccines and make medical discoveries.

While it hints of a million monkeys with a million typewriters game developers claim that FoldIt uses humans’ inherent problem solving capabilities, thus removing the need to rely on expensive and largely time consuming computer analytical methods of discovering protein folding methods.

So if, God forbid, you’re ever diagnosed with a life threatening disease and the doctor tells you that they have a breakthrough vaccine they’d like to try, don’t be too surprised if you learn that it was developed by somebody called **FoldItN00b1972**.

Ofcom Report Findings

Ofcom has released its Tomorrow’s Wireless World report, indicating where they believe the world of wireless technology will take us in the future. The report predicts that there will be no major shifts in communication technology in the next ten years but that technology will continue to increase at a fast rate. However, health and transport sectors are predicted to face breakthroughs as well as impressive growth.

They believe that the health sector will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of improved technology and new technology breakthroughs. Home hubs could be used to monitor a person’s vital signs, administer the appropriate level of medication, and even arrange a GP appointment should it be necessary.

Bad news for drivers is that Ofcom also predicts that new technology may be used to increase occurrences of congestion charges. The report also suggests that advances will be made in areas where two or more sectors converge. Collision detection technology may be used to alert emergency services after an accident.

The overall aim of the report is to help Ofcom identify where and how changes will occur across numerous sectors. In doing so, they can also look at ways to advance the necessary infrastructures and create regulatory guidelines to manage the technology.

Prepare For A New Spate Of Wii Related Injuries

Finally, it’s here – the Wii Fit. Following a slew of software and uniquely entertaining additions to the Wii line up, the Wii Fit hit UK stores today. Bearing in mind the number of broken bones, smashed televisions, and assorted injuries already attributed to Wii gamers, this latest addition looks certain to attract a more cardiovascular range of injuries. But, it does look like it should provide a few giggles along the way.

Unfortunately, like all the latest video game fads, actually finding one might prove more difficult. Over quarter of a million unites are available throughout the country but if you haven’t already pre-ordered then you need to act quickly or face paying well over the odds on Ebay.

The Wii Fit includes the Wii Fit balance board and while the whole thing is unlikely to instantly convert anybody into an ultra-fit Adonis, combined with an hour or two of Wii Sport workout it will make an excellent introduction. What’s more you don’t have to embarrass yourself in front of the gym regulars.

The Wii has become renowned for being more accessible to a greater range of people compared to other games consoles. As well as looking certain to continue this trend, the Wii Fit board looks like being yet another popular addition to an already successful line up.

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