Zephyr’s BioHarness: The Ultimate Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor -review

10
January 11, 2011

ANNOUNCEMENT: Discuss your BioHarness at our new RunningDigital Forums

Zephyr Technology’s HxM heart rate and cadence sensor has been an important tool in my arsenal for several months now. It consistently provides the quality data I need and it proves mHealth (Mobile Health concept) works well in Android. Zephyr’s available HxM SDK is being used by more and more developers to add the HxM’s unique functionality into their apps, allowing developers to incorporate the HxM how they see fit while giving consumers the flexibility to use the HxM with any mobile/app combination they want. In fact, no two apps or consumers may use the HxM is exactly the same manner. One dev may decide that only heart rate data is enough, while another includes heart rate stats to a caloric expenditure algorithm. Not every app takes advantage of the HxM’s cadence data, yet some use it to approximate More >

SVOX

Give Your Sport Tracking App a Brand New Voice

2
December 3, 2010

If you’re using an Android or iPhone sports tracking app with voice cues, then you know the built in text to speech (TTS) engine sounds a bit dull and robotic. Enter SVOX Classic Text To Speech (TTS) Engine, available in the Android Market and App Store. SVOX’s HQ voices are an enormous improvement over the stock TTS engines and are served up in 25 languages, some with more than one to choose from. Once installed and set up properly with your particular voice of choice, any application which uses TTS (sports tracking, navigation, ebook reader, etc.) will suddenly sound better, almost to the point of natural.

I’m using SportsTrackLive’s SportsTracker Pro for my daily running and no other Android sport-tracking app has as many convenient audio cue options. However, the more I rely upon current stats being fed to my head through earbuds, the more weary More >

SonyEricsson’s LiveView -Review

12
November 23, 2010

I’ve had SonyEricsson’s LiveView notification module for a week now and it’s time to make my mind up about it. Having used it thoroughly both for it’s out-of-the-box features and for it’s plug in bonuses. The later being why I wanted to try LiveView in the first place, taking advantage of SportyPal Pro notifications integration. SportyPal Pro beta for Android 2.x+up was simultaneously released when LiveView went to market last week and is an important upgrade to CreationPal’s suite of sports apps as it now incorporates Zephyr’s HxM heart rate monitor information.

Before I proceed I want to applaud the innovative effort that LiveView is. I think a device like this has good potential that requires further development from SonyEricsson, and ideally from other manufacturers. LiveView More >

First Look at LiveView from Sony Ericsson

0
November 16, 2010

My first video review! YouTube Full review will post after some field testing this week.

-Update- My initial impressions of this little accessory include slight disappointment. It may partly come from the fact that my HTC Desire has set the bar high enough that using anything else feels like a compromise. No, I wasn’t expecting the LiveView to do anything more than advertised, but I had hoped such a tiny device would at least feel solid and durable. It’s just okay. For one, the screen resolution should be better for such a size. Also, the hard keys don’t always respond; Multiple presses with varying degrees of pressure gave inconsistent results. That made the device feel a bit cheap.

I’ve had it connected and receiving notifications all day reliably. However, after an hour or so I lost any desire to read my messages via the More >

Sony Ericsson's Live View accessory

Sony Ericsson’s LiveView Android Accessory

5
November 5, 2010

The timeline for mobiles is littered with attempts on the wristwatch form-factor. However, Sony Ericsson may just have something in their LiveView concept. Instead of packing all the components of a mobile phone into a “watch”, SE have created a unique module that extends the UI of your handset. The module displays info from compatible Android apps via Bluetooth and a LiveView application, available in the Android Market now.

November 16 is the earliest date I can find for delivery here in Sweden, with prices ranging from 495sek ($75) to 645sek ($98). The LiveView Android app is available now and sitting on my HTC Desire. The client has native support for these notifications: Text message, Incoming calls, Missed calls, Facebook, Twitter, RSS, Calendar, battery level and “Find phone”. Further extensions for notifications come from downloaded plug-ins, with the first one coming from the SportyPal’s Pro sports tracking More >

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