GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

LAS VEGAS — TomTom and Nike have teamed up to make the Nike+ SportWatch GPS, a smart-looking wrist-mounted running computer that also doubles as a watch.

The SportWatch has built in GPS, of course, which offers much better distance accuracy than a pedometer (although it will also pair with a shoe-based Nike+ Sensor) and also lets you see your routes later after uploading to the Nike+ site. As you run, you can choose between various customizable data views. The high-contrast display will show time, distance, pace, and calories burned. You can also access a history of your previous runs, import your personal records from Nike+ and even hook up a heart monitor.

When you plug the SportWatch into a Mac or PC (via USB) it will automatically upload your data and you have access to the new TomTom-powered maps, showing elevation details as well as the route and distance. The watch also has a few rather odd “motivational” features that could prove more annoying than inspiring. For intance, there is “recognition (or Attaboys) for personal records”, and “Post-run acknowledgement and encouragement”. The thought of a watch giving me a virtual pat-on-the back is embarrassing more than anything.

The SportWatch will go on sale April 1st, price to be decided.

Nike and TomTom Unveil Game-Changing Nike+ Sportwatch GPS [Nike]

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Gadget Lab’s speed-loving editor Dylan Tweney likes to run barefoot. Or at least he did, until the problems of loping shoeless around the trash strewn streets of San Francisco became obvious. The foot-shaped, glove-like Five Fingers shoes from Vibram are one option, but an even more minimal concept comes from designer Frieke Severs.

The Footsticker is a flexible plastic membrane that sticks to your skin like a, well, like a second-skin. There are three designs, each conceived for a different activity. The cream-colored yoga skins, for example, offer high-grip protection for the heel, big-toe and the pad immediately behind the big toe.

Other shapes stick on to protect your feet during dancing or “combat cardio”, stopping injury to the most used spots of the feet but letting the muscles and bones move over each other without restriction, one of the attractions of doing sports barefoot.

You probably wouldn’t want to stick these on for a jaunt downtown, though – a Tenderloin junkie’s discarded needle still has plenty of flesh to aim for, but for indoor sports they look great. An added bonus is that your feet stay cool, and you won’t stink the place up like you do with those old rotting sneakers of yours.

Footstickers – Independent graduation at Nike EMEA [Behance]

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Magnestick will stop your child from slipping out of ski chairlifts and hurtling down the mountainside to certain rocky doom. It will do this even if the lazy lift attendant forgets to lower the safety bar because he’s goofing off and chatting up girls instead of doing his damn job.

Chairlifts at participating resorts are equipped with electromagnets in the seat-backs. These are activated throughout the whole journey, and stick to a lightweight 200-gram (0.44-pound) back-protector which has a metal plate on its surface. At the top of the ride, the magnets are deactivated and the kids can ski safely away.

I have been skiing precisely once, on a school ski trip when I was a kid. I was terrified on the chair-lifts, as the instructors would often leave the bars up, presumably to impress the 12-year-old girls in my class. I can also say that I’d love to sit down in the lift and feel a sharp tug and a “clunk” as the magnet clicked into place. That back protector has got to be a good idea, too.

There are a few resorts that currently use the Magnestick, spread across the world from Alpine Meadows in California to Arcalis in Andorra, which is just up the road from me. If you really want to try them out, your best bet right now is in France, where there are seven participating resorts. Also, great cheese.

Operation Magnestick [Magnestick]

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You may soon be able to watch live pro football on your tablet, but unless it’s on Verizon’s network, maybe not the tablet you might like.

NFL VP and media strategist Brian Rolapp told the Wall Street Journal that the league is currently in talks with Verizon about distributing live and rebroadcast games and other content to tablets. “The NFL will be on a tablet,” he said. “It’s a question of what shape or form.” Verizon declined to comment.

Why Verizon? The carrier already has a $720 million four-year exclusive deal to show games and other programming on phones with its NFL Mobile service that was just signed in March. Depending on the terms of that deal (and remember, in March, the iPad wasn’t even in stores yet), tablet computers are most likely not included, but the NFL may find it practically and legally difficult to partner with another wireless provider.

Why would you want to watch an NFL game on a teeny-weeny tablet? Besides being better than watching NFL on a phone, I have two words for you: VGA Adapter.

A Verizon spokesman told the WSJ that the company wants to secure the rights to rebroadcast every NFL game. Suppose you’re on the road, in a hotel, and the local channels aren’t showing your team’s game. Hook up your tablet to the television, and you’ve got it on your screen. You can even catch the Monday night game at the airport while your plane back home is delayed.

Regardless of how the deals eventually shake out, that scenario is definitely appealing to the NFL’s millions of hard-core fans, who are frequently both tech-savvy and constantly hungry for more content, and who have repeatedly demonstrated their devotion with dollars.

Image via NFL.com

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Every year, the Interbike show in Las Vegas brings new and updated products from the big bike-makers. It also has lots of weird niche bikes, which are probably a lot more interesting. And you can’t get much more niche than polo bike designed for travel.

This is the Joust, from Fleetvelo. It was designed by a fellow named Tucker Schwinn, who is both part of the famous bike-making Schwinn family and also a bike polo player. It is this last part that has lead to a bike that looks almost perfect for the sport.

First, the Joust is tough. It has fat steel tubes which have extra reinforcement where they join. I have snapped two frames this summer, both where the bottom bracket meets the seat-tube, so this is important. Second, the fork and frame are wide enough to take fat-tires (the front in this case is made for a 26-inch wheel). Fat tires are more comfortable but more importantly give better grip when braking hard into a turn, where a front-wheel skid can cause disaster.

The Joust is also made to take v-brakes front and back. The most popular polo bike so far is the Cutter, from BMX-maker Volume. It has no drilling for a front brake. The same 135mm axle-length is also used front and back, so you only need carry a spare rear-wheel and you can also use it up front.

But the last, most impressive piece of design is the S and S coupling. This is a super-light yet strong pair off joints that let you split the bike in two for travel. S and S makes travel-cases that are barely larger than the diameter of a wheel, and not very deep, either. Using these makes air-travel a breeze, and you can avoid the crazy charges some airlines levy on bikes.

All this design does’t come cheap, though. The frame alone is $650 ($620 unpainted). That’s a lot for a bike that you’re just going to thrash into the ground, but then again, it’s a lot cheaper than buying a new beater road-bike every couple months, which is what I’m doing now.

The Joust is built-to-order, and currently takes around three weeks to ship.

Fleetvelo Joust Polo Frame [Urban Velo]

Joust product page [Fleetvelo]

Photo: Urban Velo

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Abvio’s trio of motion-tracking iPhone fitness apps have been updated with a major new feature: they know when you stop.

This information isn’t used to detect the lazier amongst us, but to give more accurate readings of your times and average speed. The three apps, Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter, now use GPS signals to detect when you stop moving. They then “roll back your elapsed time to when the stop started,” adding this chunk of time to a new “stopped time” counter. This means that when you next get stuck at the traffic lights (or stop for a beer), you won’t see your average speed

It’s a useful feature, and one that is curiously lacking on almost all other apps in the store. It joins some other neat options, too. First is the new calendar-sharing function, which automatically adds your workouts to your calendar, from whence they can sync across the cloud. Better is the integration of the iPhone’s inline remote, which can be used to stop and start the timer with the phone still in your pocket.

But perhaps best of all is the apps’ ghost-mode, which will project your previously recorded runs onto the map so you can compete against yourself. This, I don’t have to say, is lifted straight from Super Mario Kart and is quite awesome.

The apps cost $5, but it appears that you can just buy one and use it for cycling, running or walking (aka running slowly). Available now.

Abvio product page [Abvio. Thanks, Lori!]

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The Swimsense from Finis is like a bike computer for swimmers, only instead of counting wheel-revolutions, it counts strokes. The new wrist-mounted computer is waterproof (of course) and contains a motion detector which detects “stroke types, records the number of laps swum, total distance, calories burned, lap time, pace and stroke count.” Phew.

The smart part is that motion-sensor, which uses accelerometers to detect what kind of stroke you are swimming based on your arm movements, differentiating between the stately breaststroke, the blind backstroke, the all-conquering freestyle and the flailing, rescue-me-please-I’m-drowning butterfly. Combining this info with settings for the pool-length and your weight, age and gender, the Swimsense then presents a breakdown of what you have done in an online workout viewer. All you do is upload the data via USB.

My swimming is pretty much limited to splashing from the li-lo to the pool-bar, but the more sporting mermaids and mermen out there can add this to their Christmas list: the Swimsense will be $200 when it launches for the 2010 holiday season.

New Product: Swimsense [Finis Blog. Thanks, Jennifer!]

Swimsense product page [Finis]

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

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