Today SmartHalo launched a new and improved second-generation version of its all-in-one smart bicycle accessory. The minimalist device securely mounts to the handlebars of any standard bike, turning it into a smart bike. It is now available on Kickstarter for $99 USD.

SmartHalo 2 Kickstarter

After a successful Kickstarter campaign for SmartHalo in 2015, the company is back with a revamped second-gen product that cyclists can customize to fit their cycling style. SmartHalo 2 maintains the core functionality of version one, with a number of hardware and software upgrades and a focus on personalization. Like its predecessor, SmartHalo 2’s five core features include a navigation system, a powerful light, an anti-theft alarm, fitness tracking, and personal assistant.
Central to the tech’s minimalist design is an intuitive halo of light that guides cyclists to their destination with turn-by-turn signals, tracks fitness goals and much more. It even greets users when they hop on their bike. The circular interface has been designed to keep cyclists focused on the road.

Among SmartHalo 2’s over 30 upgrades include a smaller size, discreet 1.5” OLED screen, extensive customization of metrics to suit any cycling style, GPX and waypoints integration, a universal mount adapter compatible with quarter lock mounts, a 5-times more powerful smart front light that now automatically adjusts based on the environment, and more.

“We made these improvements based on customer feedback and so we can further get to the root of why each individual cycles,” said CEO and co-founder Xavier Peich. “From commuters and fitness buffs, to casual cyclists and everyone in between, each cyclist has different wants and needs so tech like this needs to address that.”

Among SmartHalo 2’s most notable upgrade are a universal mount (RoadMount) compatible with any standard quarter lock mounts, GPX and waypoints integration, and a discreet 1.5” OLED black and white display with crisp, luminous digits, which allows cyclists to customize a carousel of real-time metrics specific to their type of biking and “why they cycle” (e.g. speed, distance ridden, time spent biking, calories, timer, weather alerts, CO2 saved, clock, navigation info and battery level). Because ultimately, the cyclist knows why and how they want to conquer the road that day. Plus, it has a horn that can play La Cucaracha.

SmartHalo 2 Features

• Navigation – SmartHalo 2 uses an innovative navigation algorithm, custom built for cycling. Cyclists enter their destination in the app, choose their path (e.g. fastest, flattest, safest, or recommended) and the circular interface right on their handlebars guides them with intuitive, turn-by-turn, light signals. Cyclists can also set waypoints en route to their destination, and import/export GPX files. Distance to destination and ETA are shown both on the device and in the app.
• Alarm – SmartHalo stays on the bike at all times with the anti-theft lock to ensure theft protection. The internal motion sensor makes sure that any persistent meddling with a bike triggers a loud, 100db alarm when the cyclist isn’t around. When the cyclist comes back, it disarms automatically
• Fitness – SmartHalo 2 tracks distance traveled, speed, time, calories, and elevation. It lets users set fitness goals in the app, view lifetime stats, and detailed metrics in the app and on the handlebars. It also has Strava integration.
• Light – At night, cyclists can see and be seen. As soon as the sun sets, SmartHalo 2’s 250 lumens
• Assistant – Cyclists should be keeping their eyes on the road and not be thinking about missing calls. SmartHalo 2 allows cyclists to receive notifications from various messaging apps (Android), calls on iOS so they don’t need to check their phone at every corner. It also connects with such as Strava, SMS, WhatsApp, Gmail, Messenger, and Slack. Other features include a clock, a horn and other ways to personalize the riding experience.

SmartHalo 2 uses an innovative navigation algorithm, custom built for cycling. Cyclists enter their destination in the app, choose their path (e.g. fastest, flattest, safest, or recommended) and the circular interface on their handlebars guides them with intuitive, turn-by-turn, light signals. Cyclists can also set waypoints en route to their destination, and import/export GPX files. Distance to destination and ETA are shown both on the device and in the app.
For theft protection, SmartHalo stays on the bike at all times with the anti-theft lock. The internal motion sensor makes sure that any persistent meddling with a bike triggers a loud, 100db alarm when the cyclist isn’t around. When the cyclist comes back, it disarms automatically.

SmartHalo 2 Fitness Tracking

To help with fitness tracking, SmartHalo 2 tracks distance traveled , speed, time, calories, and elevation. It lets users set fitness goals in the app, view lifetime stats, and detailed metrics in the app and on the handlebars. It also has Strava integration.
At night, cyclists can see and be seen. At night or in dim conditions, SmartHalo 2’s 250 lumens rechargeable light turns on automatically with the help of its light sensors. When the ride is finished, it shuts down on its own.
Further personalizing the riding experience, SmartHalo 2 can allow cyclists to receive notifications from various messaging apps (Android) and calls on iOS so they don’t need to check their phone at every corner. It connects with apps such as SMS, WhatsApp, Gmail, Messenger, and Slack.

“Cycling is a healthy, convenient, economical, and eco-friendly way to get around so, with SmartHalo, we’re aiming to encourage more cycling by amplifying the experience,” said Chief Design Officer and co-founder Gabriel Alberola.
The estimated delivery date of SmartHalo 2 is December 2019. For more information on pledge breakdown please see the Kickstarter page.

About SmartHalo Technologies Inc

SmartHalo Technologies Inc is a venture-backed, Montreal-based technology and design company. It strives to improve urban mobility by building amazing cycling products that combine sophisticated technologies and elegant simplicity. Launched initially as a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, the first product has been sold so far to 25,000 cyclists in over 70 countries. It is distributed in Apple Stores, Amazon, Best Buy, Gravis, MoMa Design Stores, and more.

The post SmartHalo launches SmartHalo 2 second-generation all-in-one smart bicycle accessory on Kickstarter appeared first on ChipIn.

Could tinnitus be the new disease of the century? Tinnitus affects 10% of the world’s population, with 2% of patients suffering the debilitating chronic form of the condition. Around 100,000 new cases of tinnitus have been recorded every year of the last decade in France, with the overall age of the population falling consistently over the period. The result is that tinnitus has become a very real public health challenge. So far, sound therapy has proved successful up to a point, but this solution is very restrictive and requires a high level of management and a significant investment of time on a daily basis: at least 6 hours per day listening to very unpleasant therapeutic noise for a continuous period of at least 6 months.
Diapason: allowing patients to easily take control of their own therapy and play an active role in it.

Immersive Therapy has developed Diapason, a gaming app for mobile devices that is designed to assess and treat tinnitus sufferers.

The app first assesses the level of tinnitus and allows patients to produce their own audiogram using the game to characterize the level and range of the tinnitus. Patients then answer a questionnaire to refine that characterization.
On that basis, the app suggests a daily treatment pathway in the form of arcade-type games that allow the patient to treat their own condition in sessions of a few minutes each day over a period of a few months.

The individual activities on this treatment pathway have been built in conjunction with specialist ENT physicians, who have validated every step in this new digital approach to treatment. The clinical trials were carried out at the Pitié Salpêtrière Teaching Hospital in Paris under the supervision of Dr. Catherine de Waele, an ENT specialist and CNRS Director of Research.

Relief in 2 game-based stages

Available on the smartphone (Android now and iOS in a few months’ time) and online, Diapason supports patients at every stage of the care pathway with a series of activities lasting no more than five minutes.

A diagnostic phase in which the app creates an audiogram, and the patient completes a questionnaire about his/her own perception of their tinnitus (frequencies, time of day, level of discomfort, etc.) so that the app can diagnose the individual nature of the tinnitus suffered and qualify it in terms of level and range)

A serious game therapy during which the patient spends a few minutes playing arcade-type games designed to make it easier to undergo this sound therapy routine.

Although the principle of sound therapy is known to be effective in the treatment of tinnitus, the sounds that patients are obliged to listen to are often boring and sometimes downright unpleasant. Immersive Therapy, therefore, delivers these sounds via a short period of activity designed to improve motivation by providing a mini-game that captures the attention of the patient, during which the sound therapy is provided in proportion to success in the game. For example, if the therapeutic sound is slightly louder when a target is achieved (a line in Tetris, for example), the patient unconsciously associates the sound therapy with a positive thought, which in turn improves treatment compliance and the speed at which the symptoms are relieved. These mechanisms are based on Pavlovian conditioning methods that enable a change of perception in response to a stimulus.

As a result, patients take control of their own therapy and play an active role in it. They can administer the therapy where and when they wish, whether on the subway, in a supermarket line or relaxing at home, especially given that each session takes only five minutes.

Dr. Catherine de Waele, CNRS Director of Research: “Over the last 10 years, sound therapies have demonstrated their value in treating the curse of tinnitus, but they do demand costly management and a very restrictive routine. With Immersive Therapy, a few minutes each day are all that’s needed for patients to immerse themselves in the treatment using an entertaining mobile app that works with them on a day-by-day basis and allows them to monitor the entire process towards achieving a significant reduction in tinnitus over just a few months.”

What is tinnitus?

Tinnitus is the perception of an unpleasant sound that does not originate in an external environment but is generated by a condition of the inner ear. Tinnitus is exceptionally trying to the point of being debilitating for some patients. Traumatic events can trigger an auditory shock within a narrow frequency band (excessively loud music at a concert, a diving accident, a car crash and noise pollution are all potential causes). A recent theory suggests that following such an event, the primary auditory cortex increases the sensitivity of neurons within this frequency band to compensate for the absence of audio signal. This then creates the perception of a ringing, whistling, humming sound that exists for no one else: tinnitus.

Current solutions for treating tinnitus

There is currently no therapeutic strategy for this condition. The solutions most commonly offered consist of enabling patients to live with the condition supported by psychotherapy or drug-based therapies in the form of tranquilizers and antidepressants.
Recent research work shows that sound therapy is also a possibility: on the basis of a precise diagnosis, the patient must listen on a regular basis to tailored sounds for prolonged periods, the result of which is relief from the symptoms of tinnitus. In the short term, this therapy provides patients with such relief for only a few minutes after listening to the therapeutic signals. But over the longer term, the patient will gain complete relief from all tinnitus. The problem with this type of sound therapy is not the final outcome, but rather the difficulty patients experience in listening repeatedly and for long periods to a therapeutic sound so similar to their own tinnitus symptoms. Patients, therefore, need a non-invasive, less restrictive and above all entertaining therapy, and that is precisely what Immersive Therapy is offering.

About Immersive Therapy

Immersive Therapy is an innovative tech startup created at CentraleSupélec in 2017 by Lilian Delaveau, Renaud Séguier, and Catherine Soladié. Their overall goal is to design and produce game-based therapeutic platforms through the use of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies that bring a serious game vision into the world of medical treatment. The first specific goal of Immersive Therapy is to offer chronic tinnitus sufferers a new way of treating themselves, which integrates seamlessly into today’s increasingly connected and digital lives.

The post Could Gaming Be The Treatment for Tinnitus? appeared first on ChipIn.

The ecosystem’s functionality is enabled by the exchange of tokens between parties. Here is how it works:
A consumer opens the Lympo digital fitness wallet, connects it with their favorite health apps and wearables and participates in challenges on the platform, like, running 5k to get LYM token rewards. Another way to participate is to purchase online or offline services by personal trainers, dieticians or physical therapists and to follow the health program proposed by these professionals. Anything that can be tracked can be a part of the program like steps, sleeping rhythm, heart rate and once the goals are reached, a consumer gets coin rewards. Lympo users can monetize the data they aggregated over the time by allowing third parties to access it and get rewarded for that as well.

The consumer can then pay for other goods and services rendered in the healthy lifestyle ecosystem with the LYM token, like healthy food, sports clothes and even receive health insurance discounts. Lympo is adding blockchain and token functionality to an existing platform connecting over 500 personal trainers in Lithuania as the service expands to California and Australia.

We recently sat down with Ada Jonuse, the CEO of Lympo to have a chat with her about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Ada. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and Lympo?

I started Lympo a bit more than a year ago in Lithuania. After living more than a decade abroad I decided to come back and do something innovative in my country. It started as a platform to find the best personal trainer based on the user’s geolocation and ratings. It saw a huge expansion in Lithuania with more than 500 trainers on our platform and a B2B deal with the biggest gym chain in the country which made us a post-revenue company in 12 months. I actually wanted to become a politician before, but I find it so exciting what I do know. And then this autumn Lympo was selected as one of the emerging Eastern European tech stars by Google, Financial Times and other partners of the New Europe 100 list.

First off, why did you decide to add blockchain to the existing Lympo platform? What was your thought process behind it? Did you plan to do this from the beginning or did the technology suddenly present itself as you were building the platform using more “traditional” technology.

I got more and more interested in blockchain last spring. I was learning a lot about the disruptive potential of the technology and how blockchain can change so many sectors. Like with everyone who is new in the space, I was so amazed and that was all I was talking and thinking about. My friends thought it is a kind of a sect. At the same time, we were building a community of personal trainers. We asked them what motivates people to reach their goals, because we wanted that as many people as possible use our platform and we can create value for the trainers. One of the things we have often heard were rewards. Even if the rewards are useless points, they motivate people. Then I thought why don’t we have a whole system of incentives based on token rewards and connected to the data we track on phones and wearables. This is how the idea of Lympo.io was born.

Tell us about how you came up with the idea of Lympo.
Did you face a problem within the industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for Lympo to fill?

It was actually my co-founder of Lympo.lt, Laurynas Gumbis. He is a physical therapist. He was spending a lot of time with one of his clients working on a back trauma. During these hours they realized it would be great if every one of us had a personal trainer, a professional that helps us to be healthy and fit. That client later became our angel investment. I learned that it is not enough to exercise, but it is important to have some professional advice the hard way: after finishing my first 20 k run I had a foot trauma.

What do you think is the biggest problem Lympo will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

My vision that Lympo.io is an effective tool to incentivize people to be healthier. The number 1 cause of death globally, cardiovascular diseases, which costs us more than 17 million deaths every year and which represents 31% of global deaths are actually preventable by a healthy lifestyle. Being physically fit is an important part of it. We sit too much, we do not exercise, we eat bad food even at such a technologically advanced age. If using the Lympo digital wallet which rewards users for reaching their personal healthy lifestyle goals using the information we track on our phones and wearables can change the behavior of its users by at least a little bit, I believe that our mission is fulfilled.

Lympo is moving into a very regulated space. While the records are “healthy lifestyle” focussed, there is clearly a healthcare aspect to all of this. How are you planning on addressing privacy issues?

As the data coming from the fitness and wellness apps and wearables is not considered as sensitive as the electronic medical records, we are lucky that the strictest regulations, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) act in the U.S., does not apply in Lympo’s case. However, we believe that security is key to the success of our platform and are choosing the most secure data storage providers.

Editors Pick: Lympo ICO

Lympo – Using blockchain-Based Incentives to Help People Live More Healthily

Posted: January 16, 2018

Blockchain-based health ecosystems are one of the largest growth areas for this technology and that will only increase this year.. According to Deloitte blockchain technology has the potential to transform healthcare. Secure, immutable ledger technology will help provide new models for healthcare provision, data security, privacy, interoperability and make electronic

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In the whitepaper, you mention your expansion plans to California which has some of the strictest state regulation in the U.S. about privacy and consumer rights. How do you plan to address different regulatory issues that your platform is about to face in multiple jurisdictions – starting with privacy.

The expansion process with taking place step by step including more and more jurisdictions. The service Lympo will provide is not exceptional neither in the type of the data our clients will be able to submit nor in its volume. Therefore, I am confident that by following the best examples and the existing regulations, we will be able to address these concerns.

Regulation-wise, are there any other big “nightmare” scenarios for you? Including a theoretical dramatic fall or bottoming out in the price of cryptocurrency? Do you think the system is appealing enough that people will use it as part of a “habit” or “lifestyle” habit anyway? Or does success depend on the coin having a certain “fiat” worth?

As LYM tokens are utility tokens, we do not see any risks concerning our type of tokens. Of course, there are many scenarios that can hurt the whole crypto space, but the service that Lympo will offer and especially the health and fitness data that our users will be able to monetize have value no matter the price of cryptocurrencies. My passion is our product and its potential. Our success depends on delivering the best product which motivates people to be healthier. With enough players in the ecosystem seeing the value of Lympo services, the “fiat” price is secondary.

You mention other potential participants (such as insurance companies and employers) who would be a part of the platform. How would they have access to this data that is being aggregated by users? For example, would insurers offer premium discounts to those who attained a certain level of fitness goals? How would that work with employers?

Health insurances are both interested in accessing the data their clients produce and in incentivizing healthy lifestyle. We will offer both partnership and an opportunity to integrate our infrastructure as a tool to reward clients for a healthy lifestyle. Employers will be able to offer, for example, healthy lifestyle challenges and reward the achieved goals with LYM tokens through the Lympo platform. Our advantage is that we can offer a system that really concentrates on concrete fitness efforts instead of one-size-fits-all solutions like just buying a gym membership for the employees. In this case, the employers would not get the access to the data itself, but just a way to distribute the rewards in an effective manner.

What’s something that you believed to be true for a long time until you found out that you were wrong, or if you don’t like that dichotomy of right versus wrong, what’s something significant that you really changed your mind about over time?

For a very long time, I believed that I should concentrate on having perfect skills in anything I do and know everything about it. I went a challenging and long way to realize that I can always find people with the skills needed who will be better than me and that my main focus is working on my own mindset for personal and professional goals. We can only achieve things that we can imagine. How to be able to imagine more? I don’t know yet, but I work on it every day.

What has been your happiest moment so far working on Lympo?
On the flipside, what has been the most painful, or perhaps the most regretful decision you’ve made with Lympo?

The happiest moments were the last few weeks when I saw our community on Lympo Telegram channel growing from 400 to 3400 people. I got so many messages from people from all over the world who are excited about our product and want to use it: a soccer club owner from Toronto, a SPA owner from Denver, a gym chain representative from New Zealand, a children doctor from Australia, a physical therapist from Nigeria. I see that so many people in the crypto space are only focused on the price of a token. With Lympo, I experience every day the excitement about the product and this is awesome. It takes so much courage to share your business plan with more than 3000 people and the feedback so far has been incredible.

I don’t look back and regret as long as I feel that I learned something from that situation. I wish I launched Lympo token sale earlier and would be much further in the product development now. It took me almost 6 months to believe that the vision and the plan we have is good enough. I spoke with so many people and identified all possible drawbacks. Now I understand that, of course, it is good to have doubts, but if I and my team believe that we can make Lympo work, we will achieve this goal.

Is Lympo already working with notable businesses or firms? Are there any future partnerships in process?
If yes, can you explain briefly about it?

Lympo has a few partners now that are interested in accepting the token as a payment method and we are expanding this network. Right now our partners are a wholesale healthy food platform Smackway.com and a client management tool for fitness professionals Gympro.com with more than 3000 fitness trainers using it.

Tell us more about the LYM token.
What is its function on the platform and what can token-holders expect from it in the future?

LYM tokens will have 3 main functionalities on our platform:

1. LYM tokens will be rewarded to our users who achieved their healthy lifestyle goals.
   They can do so by submitting the data from a tracking app or by checking in to a particular location which has some token value like a training session in a gym.
2. LYM tokens will be used to purchase healthy lifestyle goods and services.
   We will start with an existing platform to find the best personal trainer and expand to including more partners.
3. LYM tokens can be invested in new innovative fitness and wellness startups.
   Lympo investment branch will list the best startups seeking to crowdfund which will be ranked and reviewed by our ecosystem members: people and businesses who know best what the industry really needs.

What do you think is the biggest challenge or obstacle Lympo will face? How do you plan to tackle that challenge?

The biggest challenge will be to find many talented and passionate people to expand our team as fast as possible. That is why I decided to move Lympo headquarters to Berlin, a city with a very lively international blockchain and startup community.

Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

In the recent year, I gave up this idea of having a routine life. I constantly move between Berlin and Vilnius, I run both the existing Lympo platform in Lithuania and the Lympo.io digital fitness wallet development, I travel a lot to expand my network and often speak in various entrepreneurship events or organize events on blockchain myself. My event series “What the heck is blockchain?” with female only speakers on blockchain had a great success in Vilnius, Berlin, and Brussels. I volunteer as one of the founders of the project aiming to provide every Lithuanian fifth-grader with a BBC micro:bit to learn to code.

I am part of the founding team of a platform for women professionals www.womenat.com and also an advisor to a peer-to-peer decentralized lending platform ETHLend. I do my best to ensure that I either do some yoga or meditate every day to find peace and silence in between all of these activities.

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

I believe that the real potential of blockchain is in developing countries that lack many structures existing in the developed parts of the world. Land registries, vaccination registries, ID services based on blockchain can change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Finally, what other personal goals (besides your career) do you have in life? Is there anything else in life you want to achieve?

I want to be more present, less distracted by the meaningless noise and more connected to the people who live a free and fulfilled life.

That concludes our Interview with Ada Jonuse

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

To make sure you don’t miss out on our exclusive interviews, go ahead and sign-up to our mailing list and subscribe to our social media channels.

Get in touch to let us know who you want us to interview as well as the questions you want us to ask.

You’ll get notifications on the latest exclusive articles as soon as they appear on our website – we won’t and will never spam you.

The post Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with Lympo CEO Ada Jonuse appeared first on ChipIn.

According to Deloitte blockchain technology has the potential to transform healthcare. Secure, immutable ledger technology will help provide new models for healthcare provision, data security, privacy, interoperability and make electronic health records more accessible and manageable for both users and wellness if not healthcare providers.

While blockchain cannot fix all the problems facing overburdened health systems, this rapidly evolving technology and the field that supports it holds vast promise for new kinds of health services provision, patient care, and preventive health.

As a recent Capgemini report suggested, growing demand for healthcare services, integrated care delivery, preventive health management and other service model provision has placed an added premium on finding ways to drive out additional costs (not to mention the middleman) in delivery of such services.

Blockchained applications with the right privacy measures could certainly play a major role in helping to not only drive bloat out of healthcare provision but rethinking care provision at every critical point.

Lympo is a blockchain-based start-up that has a singular, passionate mission. They want to build an engaging platform that incentivizes people to live a healthy lifestyle and be rewarded for it.

The Lympo ecosystem is their answer.

Powered by both blockchain and user-generated data that includes health and fitness data collected by mobile health apps, Lympo will allow the exchange of value through the transactions of its system token – the LYM utility token.

The ecosystem will reward users and industry stakeholders fairly. The platform consists of three pillars – the Lympo fitness wallet, a marketplace, and the crowdfunding platform.

The Lympo Fitness Wallet – The wallet functions as the entry into the ecosystem and allows users to earn healthy lifestyle tokens (LYMs).

The Lympo Marketplace – LYM tokens can be earned and spent through the ecosystem marketplace for goods, services, and healthy lifestyle activities.

Lympo plans to create a user-generated and controlled fitness and wellness ecosystem where the exchange of “value” is achieved via the use of the LYM utility token. The company aims to create a marketplace where data is used by ecosystem members and everyone is rewarded for this use. The ecosystem will be comprised of several different communities of distinct participants, all of whom overlap, share data and contribute to the ongoing growth of the ecosystem.

The blockchain-enabled ecosystem is also being added to the existing Lympo platform which enables users to find personal trainers in Lithuania currently and is in the process of expanding to California in the U.S. and Melbourne Australia. The system currently reaches over 500 fitness professionals.

Health-conscious consumers – At the center of this paradigm is the mHealth or wearables consumer but there are other user groups who will be able to use and participate too. The following groups of people will be incentivized to use the system with the central goal of enabling a healthier lifestyle for all participants.

Personal trainers and sports coaches – Not only do these participants gain a fertile marketing entry into a community that is actively searching, but they also can use the Lympo system to help monitor client’s progress, use gamification techniques created by the platform to motivate and attract customers and gain a unique advertising proposition in the process.

Gyms and other wellness businesses – Businesses in the vertical will be able to reach a distinctly pre-selected audience of core potential consumers. They will also be able to interact with customers via the platform rewards system, gain insights from user data, utilize the system’s unique marketing opportunities and tools as well as enter into ongoing partnerships with token ecosystem companies.

Health Insurers and Employers – Incentivizing healthy lifestyles of clients and employees is one way to keep premiums down and employees healthy. The platform provides great incentives for potential clients as well as data-based management options driven by client data.

Health and fitness apps (and other niche-oriented start-ups) – The platform creates a unique way to penetrate a health and fitness minded market of active users, bringing new users, added value for existing ones and interaction with a potentially very wide, but targeted client base.

Investors – Those seeking to enter the blockchain and health world will be aided in their search for innovative companies by accompanying reviews by users and experts as well as have access to data enabled by the LYM tokens to understand user activity, reviews, and ratings by industry experts.

Just how do this reward and incentivization work? The system uses a utility token to connect users and activities and pay for services offered by program partners. Consumers will buy tokens to pay for training sessions and other healthy lifestyle activities supported by the platform (such as visiting a participating physical therapist). There are two types of token awards and several places to spend them.

Healthy lifestyle activities: – Participants receive system tokens if they complete a healthy lifestyle goal such as running 5 kilometers, following a precise diet and submitting records to the Lympo profile.

Healthy location rewards: – Participants who check into a health facility, a gym or attend a sports competition for a certain amount of time are also rewarded with tokens. Participants in platform sponsored and advertised events (like a local 5k fun run) can also earn token rewards.

The Lympo Marketplace: – The developing health services marketplace is the place where users can spend their tokens on everything from premium platform features (like specialized advertising placement), users can purchase discounted goods and services provided by corporate partners to creating token-reimbursed advertising and outreach campaigns.

The Lympo Crowdfunding Platform: – Token holders will also have access to a section of the ecosystem where they can review and explore up and coming apps, services and other wellness start-ups as well as invest in and use them.

Here are the details of the upcoming Lympo token sale:

Token name: LYM

Token base: Ethereum (ERC-20 compliant)

Token supply: 1,000,000,000

Token sale duration: Presale January 23 – February 3, Crowd sale, February 17 – 28, 2018

Token sale target: Presale – 265 million tokens. Crowd sale – 385 million tokens

Token exchange rate: Discounts apply to pre-token sales. Presale valuation is 1 ETH = 50,000 LYM. During the full sale, 1 ETH = 40,0000 LYM

Lympo’s Website

Lympo’s White Paper

The post Lympo – Using blockchain-Based Incentives to Help People Live More Healthily appeared first on ChipIn.

The platform’s main goal is to empower patients with options they deserve (and should have had) in the healthcare industry.
With MediBloc, patients can hold and have full control over their medical records while at the same time, controlling access to healthcare providers as well as updating information with the appropriate amount of patient consent. By enabling these features, MediBloc helps to reduce inherent problems in the healthcare industry like process redundancies, inefficient administrative tasks, delays in giving or receiving treatment, data forgery, and insurance frauds—all of this will be eliminated and improved in a secure and transparent medical platform.

We recently sat down with Dr. Allen Wookyun Kho, the CEO of MediBloc to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Allen. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us more about yourself and MediBloc?

I am the co-founder of MediBloc. I used to work at Samsung Electronics as the lead software engineer for Galaxy S with specialization in the field of peer-to-peer network. I then switched my career to become a dental surgeon and practiced medicine for a few years. Having expertise in blockchain, programming, and medicine, I was able to see the shortcomings in healthcare information system which I decided to address through the MediBloc project.

Tell us about how you came up with the idea of MediBloc. Did you face a problem within the medical services industry or do you think there is a gap in the market for MediBloc to fill?

During my time as a dentist, I was able to see the problem in Personal Healthcare Record (PHR) market. MediBloc co-founder Eunsol was able to see the same inefficiency in PHR market as he is a radiologist with expert knowledge in big data and software engineering. By linking our knowledge in blockchain to the healthcare industry, we clearly saw the solution that will benefit everyone and bring constructive changes to the world.

Editors Pick: MediBloc ICO

MediBloc – The Blockchain-Based Healthcare Information Ecosystem For A Better Healthcare Industry

Posted: November 26, 2017

The modern healthcare industry is flawed and disadvantageous to end consumers. This can be seen in today’s norm where medical records are managed and owned exclusively by healthcare providers instead of the patients themselves. It may not be an issue to some but for people who don’t visit or don’t

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What do you think is the biggest problem MediBloc will solve and why is the problem important to solve?

The biggest problem now is that all the health data is scattered around medical institutions and patients have difficulties accessing their own record. In addition, it is very difficult to guarantee security and trust for any data that has been transferred from one place to another. This is the main cause of all the data forgery and insurance frauds. MediBloc solves these two big problems through using the blockchain technology that guarantees security and trust between trustless participants in the network.

Tell us more about why you decided to use QTUM instead of the more popular ETH blockchain as the basis of the MediBloc platform. What are the advantages of QTUM over other blockchains?

QTUM has positive characteristics of both Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is also currently the most scalable public blockchain due to the use of POS (Proof of Stake) consensus algorithm. Qtum is also a China-based platform and will help MediBloc advance into the Chinese market.

Can you give us your opinion as to why a solution to this problem has only been covered by you and your team now? Why were there no solutions built in the past that could solve this problem? Is it a matter of technology or are there other forces that are preventing change from happening?

Blockchain technology has not really been studied enough in the past. Also, there are many stakeholders in the healthcare industry who want to resist any change. Now we have the technology that is the hottest keyword for everyone everywhere. Today, people also realize that their data are often times exploited without knowing. The public is keen on getting their rights back. MediBloc team believes this is the perfect timing to begin unprecedented disruption in the healthcare industry.

Other than the redundancy of data, what other problems or challenges will MediBloc solve for the benefit of the platform’s users?

Patients, not the hospitals, will be compensated by researchers who buy the access to the permitted patient data.

How will MediBloc change the landscape of the healthcare research industry?

Through the MediBloc platform, more healthcare services will come to online space. Patients and healthcare providers will not feel the same geographical barriers as before. Insurance companies will save tons of money by automating insurance claims through a smart contract on blockchain network. Researchers will have an easier time preparing for developing a new medicine.

Is MediBloc already working with notable businesses or firms? Are there any future partnerships in the process? If yes, can you explain briefly about it?

We have recently formed a breakthrough partnership with Oracle Medical Group, Korea’s biggest dermatology and cosmetic surgery clinics with more than 70 branches globally. They have agreed to fully connect the MediBloc platform to their data network and provide patients easy and secure access to their healthcare records. They will also accept our token MED as their global payment solution. We also have partnered with companies that will help input healthcare data such as Huray Positive, Welt, M20 Mobile while we also have data purchasers such as Syntekabio. We need to create an ecosystem where patients, healthcare providers, and researchers have balanced participation. We are consciously onboarding partners to establish this healthy ecosystem.

What do you think is the biggest challenge or obstacle MediBloc will face? How do you plan to tackle that challenge?

We think the biggest challenge is convincing the existing stakeholders to accept the new change in Personal Healthcare Record (PHR) market. We are trying to solve this issue through our unique token mechanism and reward system. Also, by appealing to the public, we believe there will be a bottom-up pressure on healthcare providers to accept MediBloc.

Moving on to more personal stuff, what does a typical day in your life look like?

Right now, I am on all SNS channel you can think of 24/7. I listen to the community who supports us and respond to people who doubt our project. I also run around all over the places to convince healthcare-related companies and group of people that MediBloc will benefit everyone taking part in it. Often times, I give talks at conferences and meetings to introduce what blockchain is and explain what cryptocurrencies are.

Can you express one personal opinion of yours about the blockchain? It doesn’t matter if it’s negative or positive, we just want to hear your thoughts on it.

It’s a genius invention that can disrupt everything. If this technology is used by the right people with good intention, our lives will improve to the next level.

That concludes our Interview with Dr. Allen Wookyun Kho

We’ll be scheduling even more exclusive interviews like this in the coming weeks to delve into the minds of what makes a blockchain startup tick as well asking the questions you want to know the most.

To make sure you don’t miss out on our exclusive interviews, go ahead and sign-up to our mailing list and subscribe to our social media channels.

Get in touch to let us know who you want us to interview as well as the questions you want us to ask.

You’ll get notifications on the latest exclusive articles as soon as they appear on our website – we won’t and will never spam you.

The post Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with MediBloc CEO Dr. Allen Wookyun Kho appeared first on ChipIn.

The application of AI can be seen in practical problems in real life where extremely impressive results have been achieved especially in technologies that relate to vision, speech, machine translation, as well as decision making.

Even if you move out of the scope of research and development, AI is starting to gain a foothold in many businesses’ processes, with important processes such as database systems and user queries being powered by AI.

However, there are inherent problems within the industry that needs to be dealt with before it grows even bigger.

The learning process of AI and other machine learning models are hindered by an overload of data that are unlabeled and uncategorized.

These data can be classified but converting random dataset to a labeled dataset (a set of data with classes or tags to inform or educate the machine learning model) is very expensive and time-consuming.

Because of this problem as well as differences in businesses’ resources and processes, the gap between early AI adopters and individuals who adopt it much later will drastically widen, which grants early adopters an unfair advantage over others.

Neuromation is a platform designed for the AI ecosystem. The platform offers a much-needed solution to the industry which unites market resources, the scientific community, as well as other parties in an all-in-one, user-friendly marketplace.

The main focus of the Neuromation platform will be on synthetic datasets that have been proven time and time to yield compelling results for use cases.

The use synthetic datasets in machine learning and other processes will significantly decrease the cost of AI adoption as well as ease the process of mass adoption by the public.

So, what does the platform really do?

The platform will utilize a smart combination of datasets, decentralized computing power, as well as advanced machine learning models to help AI researchers across the globe connect with each other.

In layman’s terms, Neuromation aims to build the world’s most advanced AI data platform where businesses can access the platform and library of datasets to utilize and adopt AI technologies for their own use.

There will be an integrated exchange within the platform where users can either contribute or purchase the components of an AI model with one another; much like buying separate parts of a Lego set to build one complete project.

The Neuromation platform moves one step further ahead efficiency-wise by using distributed computing as well as proof of work tokens to help with the platform’s processes and transactions.

With offices in San Francisco, Tel-Aviv, Tallinn, Kiev and Moscow, Neuromation is led by Maxim Prasolov, a respected serial entrepreneur with tons of excellent projects and businesses under his belt.

Another important individual in the platform is Sergei Nikolenko, a respected CRO and scientist in the industry.

Sergei is a key individual in the machine learning department and contributes greatly to the platform’s technological growth while being the platform’s researcher in the field of machine learning and analysis of algorithms.

Neuromation also has two key advisors to the platform’s goals; they are David Orban, the founder of Network Society Ventures, and Andrew Rabinovich, the director of deep learning at Magic Leap.

Orban is responsible for the platform’s international integration into a deep learning community. Andrew, on the other hand, is the main man behind Neuromation’s object recognition technology, allowing the platform to achieve unprecedented results in algorithms training based on synthetic datasets.

Prasolov will lead a team of experienced developers and talented individuals to help power Neuromation, a platform set to revolutionize the AI industry.

Neuromation has been awarded the 1st Prize by the blockchain investors consortium at D10E

As mentioned earlier, Neuromation aims to combine the components needed to as well as synthetic data to build efficient deep learning solutions—all of this to be done on one platform.

Service providers registered on the platform can provide specific resources for the execution and development of the three key components: synthetic data sets, distributed computing services, as well as Neuromation’s machine learning models (which will be explained further down below).

Here is an excerpt taken from Neuromation’s whitepaper that describes how the platform will work:

“Imagine a place where you can go and easily address all requests to acquire AI capability. A vendor will create the data generator for you, then a group of Neuromation Nodes will use the generator to quickly create a massive virtual data set. You can then select a set of Deep Learning architectures to train on that data. Then another group of Neuromation Nodes will do the training in record time!”

Neuromation will consist of three core modules, each with its own processes and libraries.

Synthetic dataset module

Users have access to the synthetic data set module which can be utilized to create data generators, order data sets from the data generator, as well as requesting data labeling for models.

Libraries available in this dataset can be applied to deep learning models and data generators, as well as a library of datasets which can be acquired from the platform’s integrated marketplace.

Machine learning module

The machine learning module will include deep learning model processes, importing models to the platform, ordering training on selected data sets, as well as acquiring custom models from the marketplace.

Like the synthetic dataset module, this module will include deep learning models which can then be offered on Neuromation’s marketplace.

User module

Users can purchase tokens in the user module as well as having access to the platform’s services and the ability to use or provide processing power to the network.

The user module will contain the user data and user models library.

The back-end of the Neuromation platform will also contain the Market Module which enables the efficient matching of buying and selling orders for datasets, models, and labeling services as well as enabling liquidity in the system.

NeuroTokens (NTK) (which will be sold during the token sale) are the primary exchange mechanism for synthetic data generation, distributed model training, data labeling and other AI services in the Neuromation platform.

Neuromation also applies a token burning policy which is the process of buying back tokens from the open market and removing it from the total supply to increase the inherent value of the tokens.

Here are the details of the upcoming NTK token sale:

Token name: NTK

Token base: Ethereum (ERC-20)

Token supply: 100,000,000

Token pre-sale duration: currently live till 1st of January 2018 (pre-sale duration extended)

Token sale duration: January 7th – 15th of February 2018

Token sale target: 60,000 ETH (hard cap)

Token exchange rate: 0.001 ETH = 1 NTK

Neuromation’s Website

Neuromation’s Whitepaper

The post Neuromation – The Decentralized & Distributed Synthetic Data Platform For AI Apps And Businesses appeared first on ChipIn.

Technology is proving to be quite the cure-all, isn’t it? I mean, we not only have sleep inducing applications but also loads that combat snoring as well. But however you ‘trick’ your brain into some sort of a shut eye, have you ever stopped and thought about the quality of sleep that you get every day? Or is it at night? OK, you get the drift.

Enter the Best Sleep Trackers

Sleep trackers analyze your sleeping patterns and habits. Additionally, they tell you when you get enough sleep, what type of sleep you get and when you need more. Sleep affects your memory, mood, and health; sleep trackers can help you achieve maximum health while giving you an idea of what happens when you’re asleep.

Fighting Insomnia? Here are the 10 BEST Sleep Trackers in 2017
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So where can I get a ‘sleep tracker‘?

Below are the top 10 best sleep trackers in 2017 that are worth talking about

1. Jawbone UP3

After its release, the Jawbone UP3 received some bad reviews. However, the good thing about technological devices is there is always room for upgrading. And the company did just that in September 2016. This sleep tracking device now at the forefront of the sleep tracker industry. The Jawbone UP3 has a subtle design that makes it look like a stylish bracelet; this design has won over the hearts of many people due to the fact that it can be worn comfortably throughout the night.

This device takes care of all the things you would like to know about yourself while asleep. It measures your breathing rate, galvanic skin response, heart rate and body temperature. All this is made possible by its advanced sensors and features like bioimpedance. These sensors have the ability to build a picture of your sleep and collect data that may be essential to helping you get a good rest. The Jawbone UP3 assesses time spent awake, as well as in light and deep sleep.

What if you are a sleepwalker? Well, the Jawbone UP3 also measures steps taken, distance traveled and calories burnt. What’s more, it has a battery life of up to 7 days, and recharging is never an issue as it only takes a couple of hours to recharge, which you can do during the day.

Most people shy away from fancy gizmos like sleep trackers because they think they are hard to use, not the Jawbone UP3. It is easy to use and contains helpful and modified sleep coaching tips that can help you improve your sleep. However, unlike some sleep tracking devices, the Jawbone UP3 has no screen display. Yes, it is very accurate in its sleep assessment, but if your preference is a fitness tracker with a screen display, then the Jawbone UP3 is not ideal for you. Nonetheless, what it lacks in display it more than makes up for with the most detailed and accurate information about your sleep.

The Jawbone Up3 goes for $110.99.

2. Sleepace Nox

Sleepace, one of the first companies to launch a sleep tracker 2 years ago called the Sleepace Reston, brings us and improved version with The Nox.

This device surprised many people after the company publicly announced that they had used medical grade sensors in the device. And the feature makes it one of the few dedicated sleep trackers currently in the market. You may want to record your sleeping pattern but find having something on your wrist pretty uncomfortable. I know I do, it takes some time to get used to the wristband type of sleep trackers. Not to worry, meet the Sleepace Nox, a device that does not need to be on your wrist to collect your sleeping data.

The Sleepace Nox has a flat, long belt that comfortably sits under your bed sheet or mattress protector. This keeps it in place while the end piece, which has all the technical bits, clips onto your sheets using magnets. Ideally, you may toss and turn all you want, but it will not move, it will just record all those as part of your sleeping patterns. This tracker measures more than your usual sleep trackers. It measures the quantity of light, time awake, mid/deep sleep, the number of times you woke up, time asleep and times you turned over in bed or got out of it.

Additionally, it also has sleep coaching tips, a fantastic interface, excellent battery life and its design ensures it does not disturb you while you sleep. However, if you move about a lot in bed, the device can slip out of position. Also, unlike some devices, it does not sense when you go to sleep or wake up, so you have to feed these details in manually. Another con to it is it is ideal for you if you sleep alone, more than one person in the bed ends up skewing the bed.

This device goes for $149.99.

3. Withings Aura Smart System

Now this is the ideal sleep tracking device anyone would desire to have. Reason being, it goes an extra mile than just tracking your sleep pattern and habits. The Withings Aura Smart System has a light and sound unit to help you fall asleep and wake up better. I mean, this device will sing a lullaby for you, monitor your sleep and wake you up just right. I know you’re thinking, a lullaby? Really? Well, believe it or not, the primary aim of this device is to make sure you get to sleep, sleep well and wake well.

Unlike some sleep trackers that come all in one, the Withings Aura Smart System has three main components. A light and sound machine sit on your bedside table right next to the App that contains all the results recorded by the third element, which is recorded by a strap that you sleep on to record your movement.

So unlike some sleep trackers that can track activity for the day, the Withings Aura Smart Sleep System is solely reserved for your bedroom. To help you sleep and wake up well, the unit by the bedside plays music on a timer. To induce sleep, melatonin production is triggered by a fading glowing light on a timer emitted by the bedside unit. The hormone is responsible for your body clock’s functioning. The tracker also monitors your heart and breathing rate, time spent in light/deep and REM sleep as well as time turbulent and time awake.

Additionally, environmental sensors monitor the room temperature, noise, and light and let you know if any of them affected your sleep.

The Aura Smart Sleep System goes for $299.95.

4. ResMed S+

For most people, a sleep tracker has to, at least, have contact with you or your bed for accurate information concerning your sleep. What if there was a sleep tracker that could give specific information about your sleep with absolutely no contact with you or your bed? It would need to have highly advanced sensors to deliver accurate information let alone provide any information. Such a sleep tracker is the ResMed S+. This tracker detects your body movements through the night so as to determine your sleep pattern.

It has advanced sensors that sense noise, motion, light, breathing and the temperature in your bedroom. The essence of detecting these environmental occurrences is to find out their effect on your sleep, which the ResMed S+ does so effectively. Just like the other sleep trackers discussed above, the ResMed S+ also detects your light and deep sleep as well as your REM cycles and the times you wake up. All this aids the device in coming up with information that eases finding a score for your sleep.

Just like the Aura Smart Sleep System, the ResMed S+ also plays soothing sounds to enable you to fall asleep faster. However, it is different from the former as it merges the rhythm of the sounds it produces to your breathing pace and slows down as you enter into slumber land. This tracker doesn’t stop at just singing sweet songs for you before you sleep, no, it uses its App merged to your Smartphone to get interactive with you. Do not get too excited, they are just pre-installed question not the artificial intelligence to human or vice versa type of interaction.

The ResMed S+ goes for $ 149.

5. iHealth Wireless Sleep Tracker

iHealth is among the leading fitness App producing companies in the world. They have not disappointed concerning sleep trackers as well. The beautiful thing about this device though is its price; you can have your iHealth Wireless Sleep Tracker for just $22.96. This is arguably the cheapest sleep tracker in the market right now. So if you are doubtful about sleep trackers and do not want to splash your cash on one that might end up disappointing you, you can start at this time. Now you may think because it is arguably cheap; its features are limited. They are not; the iHealth Wireless Sleep Tracker uses a three-axis accelerometer to track motion throughout the night.

Compared to some sensors that some sleep trackers have, this feature may seem minuscule but it does the job effectively. Moreover, it tracks your activity level, sleep efficiency, times you woke up at night, and the times without movement all through the night as well as calories burnt based on your weight, height, and age. However, without a heart rate tracker, it can only track your sleep time based on your movement. The sleep tracker is sweat proof, water resistant, and splash proof and comes with an interchangeable wristband.

6. Beddit Smart 3.0

I recall a friend had a kidney and heart problem not long ago. The doctors always used to runs tests on her, but one that stood out was ballistocardiography or BCG. This test shows your heart condition thereby aiding in proper diagnosis in case something is wrong. Now imagine a sleep tracker that has such a feature and seamlessly provides data on your respiration and heart rates as well as your duration of sleep and sleep quality. The new generation Beddit Smart sleep tracker uses its ultra-thin sensor to perform all these functions.

Beddit 3 Smart Sleep Tracker

The sensor is tucked under your bed sheets, you do not need to tell manually the Beddit 3.0 that you are going to sleep, it senses it the moment you fall asleep. The sensor uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to your Smartphone which collects all the data it gathers throughout the night. This connection happens automatically whenever your Smartphone is in range, so it is advisable to have your phone by your bedside if you are using the Beddit 3.0. The Beddit 3.0 also performs other functions such as tracking the times you woke up at night, how long you slept and low as well as deep sleep intervals.

This sleep tracker can be found at fitness shops, Amazon and the Beddit website, beddit.com at just $149.99. The Beddit 2.0 may not be the best sleep tracker there is, but it is the most convenient if you wish you access your sleep progress throughout the day, which is recorded on your Smartphone.

7. Basis Peak

All along, technological advancements have been most felt in the mobile phone industry with the introduction of smartphones. Well, say hello to one of the smart watches in the market right now, the basis peak sleep tracker. You can associate this sleep tracker with style and elegance as it looks modern and stylish, given the fact that it is a smart watch; you would expect that. What’s even better, this tracker is one of the most robustly designed sleep trackers but somehow manages to remain slim and light.

The Basis Peak sleep tracker has accurate and automatic sleep monitoring. Its sensors enable it to measure light, deep and REM sleep in addition to the times you were restless in your sleep and those that you sleep peacefully. It also tracks your galvanic skin response and temperature as well as constant heart rate monitoring to help provide proper sleep tracking analysis. In addition to being a sleep tracking device, the Basis Peak can also be used for other activities during the day although its best function is sleep tracking. It is waterproof and has an excellent battery life.

Additionally, the Basis Peak has massive tracking data available on a mobile App and even more on a separate online App. This tracker may not be as impressive as some of the trackers discussed above, but it provides the most accurate information concerning sleep. The best sleep trackers are not usually the ones that look elegant on your wrist if they are wearable, but the ones that can match their looks to their performance. Such a sleep tracker is the Basis Peak. It goes for $149.99 and can be found at fitness stores or online at amazon.com.

8. Misfit Shine

It is wise to assume that all sleep trackers are either worn on the wrist or tucked under the bed sheets. That would be a wrong conclusion; the Misfit Shine is among those sleep trackers that defy this notion. This sleep tracker is small, about the size of a coin and has straps tied to it to make it look like a necklace. The funny part is, it actually can be worn as a necklace, and it will perform exceptionally. The tracker seems very simple and has no elegant design or display. You can clip it to your clothing, wear it as a necklace as stated earlier or wear it around your wrist.

That is not all the company has done, in its quest to ensure the sleep tracker is handled correctly, the company designed shirts and socks with tiny pockets where you can slip the sleep tracker. This device monitors light, deep and REM sleep, total time asleep, times you woke up and movement while sleeping. What’s better, it automatically knows when you fall asleep, so you do not need to feed the information manually. This feature is excellent as sometimes it is very hard to say you’re going to sleep and fall asleep immediately.

The devices syncs with Android and iOS devices making it possible for you to not only view your sleep status reports but giving you the ability to share them with your friends or loved ones as well. The misfit shine goes for $99 and can be found in fitness shops and amazon.com.

9. Fitbit One

Most people associate Fitbit with expensive tech. Although they may be right to some extent, it is products such as the Fitbit One that defy this notion. This tracker is small and discreet, in fact, you do not need to wear it; all you have to do is clip it on your clothing. Alternatively, you can pop the inner piece into a wrist strap to have it comfortably wrapped around your wrist. The Fitbit one does not get into much detail about your sleep as most sleep trackers; it just tells you how long you were asleep when you woke up and for how long.

Detailed functioning may be what you are looking for if you need a tracker that tells you how long you slept, when you woke and for how long, then the Fitbit One is the ideal sleep tracker for you. This tracker can also sync with a broad range of smartphones and syncs automatically with your computer whenever it is in range. Also, like some of the devices discussed, the Fitbit One has a very helpful App that has suggestions on how to improve your sleep rate. Despite having an old-fashioned pedometer design, the Fitbit One is among the most effective sleep trackers of its time.

The Fitbit One goes for $ 93.99 at the Fitbit store online, fitness shops and amazon.com.

10. Sense

Sense is another sleep tracker that does not require contact with you so as to perform its duties. It operates by clipping it onto your pillow; it has two units; one to record the data and the other to process it. The pill unit under the pillow is the one that records the data about the movement you make at night as the other unit processes this information. After receiving the information, the other processing half of Sense assembles it together with ambient light, noise, temperature and other factors that might be affecting you in your sleep thereby affecting your sleep.

The reason behind this feature that collects all this data is to enable Sense to figure out what you need to change to have a good night sleep. After evaluation, Sense will tell you that the temperature usually rises to a certain degree and what causes it, this affects your sleep in this and this way. You might opt for slimmer curtains or turn down the radiators in case of noises from the radiators deprive you of sleep. This amazing device is available for $129.

11. Sleepace Reston Z400T

The Sleepace Reston Z400T is a worthy candidate if you sleep alone. The pros certainly outweigh the cons on this design-strong device. This is not a wearable. Instead, you place its sensors under the bed and let it do all the heavy lifting while you get some shut eye. But your first order of business will be letting it know when you are going to sleep. And yes, that can be a bit of a drawback to the Reston. It doesn’t automatically detect when you are sleeping.

But turning it on and off aside, the Reston uses a huge vocabulary of sleep tracking methods to get your sleep to the next level of greatness. It’s sleep monitor separates your heart rate and your respiratory rate into two completely separate neighborhoods. The prevalent thinking here is that good heart rate doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t snore or have irregular breathing habits while you sleep for instance. And vice versa; you could be breathing quite peacefully while you sleep and have an irregular heart rate.

Then the Reston takes on environmental factors to better understand if your sleeping conditions are the main culprit behind your restless nights. Temperature and humidity also have their own real estate in the sleep tracker’s list of analytical portals. The Reston collects a vast amount of data from this and a host of other factors to identify the DNA of your sleeping habits. Everything from how long it takes to fall asleep to how long you sleep then are added with these data to configure a better restful night.

Here’s where the Reston separates itself from the pack. No, it is not a wearable. So you won’t be going to bed with this on your wrist. And it isn’t a device to be poised on your nightstand either. Instead, it’s a thin device that fits under the sheets in order to best monitor you during the night. That being said, it’s unobtrusive, possibly unnoticeable in your bed.

And as for profound data analysis, the nightstand devices and wearables won’t curate in-depth data relative to sleep apnea for instance. The Reston will. And for that reason, the fine folks at Sleepace boast that it is on par with high grade medically accurate devices. And to keep all of these bells and whistles humming seamlessly, it has a long battery life.

But best of all, you have a personal coach to guide you through to better slept nights. What good would all of that data be if it weren’t put to practical, actionable use?

Now that being said, it isn’t optimized for two people. Or if you move a lot during your sleep, the data may be less than accurate. But those are piddling cons in contrast with its grocery list of positive attributes.

. Sleep as Android

You’d be forgiven for thinking this is nothing more than a fancy alarm clock with a built-in sleep cycle tracker, but there’s more to it than meets the eye – the shut-eye, that is. Urbanandroid like to think of it as a ‘sleep lab in your pocket’. This self-proclaimed flagship of sleep tracker apps features binaural sounds inspired from nature, such as whale calls, ocean noises, healing chants, and the crackling fire to induce slumber.

Sleep as Android Sleep Tracking App

Its most impressive features are: bedtime notification, mattress movement sensor, sleep phase detector, actigraph and hypnogram, wake phase identifier, snoring detector, anti-snoring tune, wake-up smart light, wrist-watch integration, captcha alarm disabler with sleeping sheep, math quiz, phone shaker, QR code or NFC alarm disabler, lifestyle tagging and stats, sleep statistics, patterns, and advice. Pebble, Galaxy Gear, Google Fit, S Health and Android Wear are just some of the compatible smart watches. For only $3.99, you get all this and more, but do bring your own phone and smart watch.

. Sleep Cycle App

Brought to you by Northcube AB, Sleep Cycle is one of those sleep tracker apps you can download from the App Store and Google Play to give you an analysis of your sleep when you wake up. It works with a microphone that picks up on your sleeping and your movements, but it also has an accelerometer in case you tend to doze off before you adjust the mic.

Sleep Cycle for iOS Sleep Tracker

If you don’t want to wake up when it tells you to, make it snooze by tapping on the phone twice or picking it up. There’s an intelligent snooze function, and your snoozes will be gradually shorter until you’re woken up for good. The graphics on it are basic, and its mainstay is the ability to wake you up in your lightest sleep phase so that the transition is gentle. But the app is worth the $0.99 price tag, by all accounts.

Sleep trackers should be heard, not seen. At least that’s what some sleep deprived Mavericks claim. Well, if that’s true, then the following are engineering marvels in their own right. And they are. Or at least that what their IQ says. Confused?

1. Sleep Number

There’s something for everyone with the Sleep Number. This mattress features sensors that trigger it to adjust when you move in bed, to warm your feet, to nudge you if you’re snoring, to track your heart rate using the Sleep IQ biometric sensor, to monitor your breathing pattern and to record your movement.

The Sleep Number bed with SleepIQ technology inside tracks how well you sleep each night, giving you personal insights into your sleep.

You can track the changes in the quality of your sleep using the Sleep IQ Score. The bed mattress connects to countless sleep tracking apps and devices to give you insights into what happens when you sleep. Prices start at $699 for the C2 Classic Series, and there are various accessories and bedding options to choose from. There’s a SleepIQ Kids version, as well, with prices starting from $599.

2. Mimo

You may not have thought it, but babies could use a little help falling asleep and keeping to their sleeping schedule sometimes, too. Johnson & Johnson teamed up with Rest Devices to work on this sleep tracking and coaching system that comes in the form of a baby monitor and accompanying app Nod. There are lots of wearables with built-in Mimo technology that you might want to try for yourself. Whether you opt for the sleep suit or the bedding version, Mimo will amaze you with its turtle-shaped sleep tracking gadget discreetly tucked into its dock. It’s got breathing sensors, thermometer, activity, and sleep tracking technology built in.

Mimo uses proprietary sensor technology to give parents insight into their baby’s sleep – helping them see patterns they never thought existed and develop plans to improve sleep routines.

The app is both a sleep and activity video baby monitor, and it now also works with Nest thermostat products to let you know if the baby’s warm enough. As many of Mimo Baby’s reviewing customers say, $199 is a small price to pay for a good night’s rest, because after all, if the baby sleeps well, so do the parents.

If it’s a wearable, it’s already the best, right? What can be better than having your tracker with you wherever you go? Having one that looks like it’s a spy movie prop, for one. These trackers have the most sensitive sensors and the most reliable stats. If they feel close to your heart, it’s because they are!

1. Motiv Ring

If you like your wearables fashionable, then you’ll love this titanium finished ring that tracks your sleep, steps, calories, heart rate and distance throughout the day. Motiv Ring is waterproof, so you’d do well to take it for a spin around the pool.

Motiv Ring – Designed to be worn day and night, motivating you to keep living better. Up to five days battery life, waterproof and comfortable.

With a battery that lasts you for up to 5 days, this could be the kind of Bluetooth-enabled accessory that never goes out of fashion. It comes in two sizes and two color tones, rose gold and slate gray, it’s waterproof up to 5atm, and ultralight, and if you’re not sure you want to spend $199 pre-ordering it, then maybe the interactive ring rotator on the developer’s website will help you reach a decision.

2. Oura Ring

Much like Motiv, Finnish company Oura are basing their offering on the idea that round-the-clock activity and rest data is better than sleep tracking alone. The Oura ring features a sensor that presses gently against the artery in your finger to track heart rate and respiratory rate. The advantage it has over wrist trackers is that the signal in your artery is stronger at the base of your finger than it is at your wrist.

Everything you do is impacted by how well you sleep. ŌURA’s proprietary technology and algorithms provide accuracy which can be compared to that of sleep laboratory methods.

Based on these rates, it will determine Light, deep and REM sleeping stages. Price start at $299 for the Glossy Black and Arctic White Ring and $499 for the Stealth Black ŌURA, so it’s not for everyone.

3. Neuroon Intelligent Sleep Mask

If you have $299 to spare, then you won’t mind spending it on the Neuroon sleep mask, quite possibly the most intelligent one of its kind yet. This award-winning mask gathers heaps of data on your sleeping patterns and then uses light therapy to realign your biorhythm so that you get the most out of your sleep. It can also be used to prevent jet lag, adjusting your own ticker to the timezone of your final destination.

The Neuroon Intelligent Sleep tracker analyzes your sleep and uses light to wake you up gradually. Pulses of light influence the sleep hormone to readjust your life balance.

If you like your siestas, then you’ll also like the power nap features and the sunrise simulations it uses to recharge your batteries. Neuroon is aiming it toward shift and night workers, people who work long hours, frequent flyers and people with chronic sleeping problems – which amount to pretty much everyone, really. So, if you like to don the mask as you wake up to see the simulated dawn, then head over to their website.

4. Sleep Shepherd Blue

A Kickstarter funded project that tries mainly to apply the effects of binaural beats to slow down brain activity and induce sleep gradually. A small built-in motherboard is what manages when and how impulses in various wavelengths are sent to your ears. At night, simply put the headband around your head and listen to the sounds it creates.

The Sleep Shepherd® is unique in that it works with your brain’s natural structure to slow your brain down and help optimize your sleep.

When you fall asleep, it stops playing the tones and monitors your brain. Whenever it looks like you may be waking up, it turns itself back on and offers a deeper sleeping program. To wake you up, it uses the same technology, but the sounds will be pulsed in reverse order. The duration, phases and head orientation during sleep will be tracked and shown to you the next day.

The headband design means you can move in bed without worrying that you’ll lose the device or your stats. Your movement is recorded using 3-axis accelerometers, and your brain wave activity is monitored with built-in EEG sensors. The accompanying app, like many of the ones discussed above, features a Sleep Lab, a Sleep Score, head orientation record, graphs that show your sleep patterns and trends, average score data, and many other types of information.

There are four personality profiles to choose from before you begin tracking your sleep with the headband. The sleep tracking app is available from the App Store and Google Play in various languages, such as Mandarin, Russian and Arabic, and more features added constantly. The inventor, Michael Larson, whose daughter suffers from a sleep disorder, swears by it.

Best Sleep Tracker Questions and Answers

The 5 Sleep Levels – The best Sleep Trackers will be able to measure all 5 of them and guide you on how to improve your sleep

. Conclusion

The post Fighting Insomnia? Here are the 10 BEST Sleep Trackers in 2017 appeared first on ChipIn.

Best Waterproof Activity Trackers

But does this really need to happen when you can spend a few extra pounds and get yourself a device that you won’t have to alter your exercise schedule to protect? Of course no. I’m going to leave this article here so that when you decide to purchase a waterproof fitness tracker any time in 2017, you can have these ten to choose from.

1. TomTom Spark 3 Cardio + Music GPS Watch

The TomTom Spark 3 Cardio + Music is the ultimate go-to if you’re the type who gets motivated by music as you go about your daily workout. And, yes, you can get into the pool and still listen to music because the waterproof fitness tracker doesn’t need a phone to play. For this reason, you’re going to need to fork out at least £205 to obtain a unit from Amazon.

TomTom Spark 3 Waterproof Cardio+Music

Save for the dull architecture and a strenuous procedure of adding music, the Spark 3 Cardio is a hands down top notch device and has been fashioned to suit the requirements of all sorts of athletes: swimmers, runners, cyclers and… well, sleepers.

It counts steps, estimates distance and offers sleep monitoring. Additionally, it has an accurate heart rate sensor, the smart alarm feature, and built-in music storage, and displays stored and real-time stats on a large screen, in one of the most vivid and easy-to-grasp manners.

As relatively large as it may look, the TomTom Spark3 Cardio is actually one of the lightest gadgets you can have strapped to your wrist. It weighs less than 1.7 ounces and hardly causes irritation even when worn for a long time.

2. Garmin Vivoactive HR

For less than $50, there are a few waterproof fitness trackers you can find that can outperform the Garmin Vivofit. Accuracy in counting steps and measuring distance covered, time spent in slumber land and calories burnt, as well as the use of a coin-cell battery, which can last for over a year before draining, stand as its main upsides, and a flawed design as its core weakness. It cannot count stairs climbed either, tell you about your REM cycles or automatically detect that you’ve drifted off and activated sleep mode, not to mention serve as a heart rate monitor; it’s not that comprehensive, in a nutshell, but guarantees perfection in the little it does.

Garmin Vivofit Fitness Band

What interested me most in the Vivofit is how it takes you through your goals. Its default goal is 7,500 steps per day, but you can adjust that to something more challenging like 10,000 steps, which is the baseline for most fitness trackers. Once you meet your target, the band increases your goal, depending on how long you took to meet the current one. Same for sleep; it uses your past performances to set you new goals.
To view your stats, the Vivofit syncs with your PC through a USB ANT+ stick.

3. Garmin Vivoactive HR

The Vivosmart HR is yet another product from the tech giant, Garmin, which does not only count the number of steps you make, measure the distance you cover and calculate the amount of calories you burn, but also make you do them. It reminds you to get up and do something whenever you are too idle by buzzing gently on your arm.

Rated at 5ATM, the Garmin Vivosmart is safe for use to a depth of 50 meters and is thus suitable for use in pro swimming and diving. It comes with a designated swimming app, keeping your lane workouts in the pool on track.

Compared to its less defined sister, the Garmin Vivofit, the Vivoactive HR has more to offer and is clearly worth the $199.99 it goes for on Amazon. It has a longer battery life, has a better waterproofness rating, has the silent alarm feature and keeps reminding you about your goals. The bodywork is also undeniably better, although it can still not measure up against the Jawbone fitness trackers in sleekness and slimness. The design seems to be Garmin’s hugest setback in its ratings.

4. Misfit Flash Link

The Misfit Flash Link, with its $19.99 price tag, would fit better in a list of the cheapest waterproof fitness trackers of 2017, but thanks to its fair tradeoff, merits a slot in the ”BEST waterproof activity trackers”. Unlike most of its rivals in this list, the Flash Link is not worn around the wrist but rather designed to be clipped on a garment like a bra, belt etc. or just placed in the pocket. Since it rarely comes into direct contact with the skin, the fitness tracker lacks heart rate and body temperature monitors. It nonetheless offers step counting, distance estimation and the rest of the activity tracker basics with first rate accuracy and dexterity.

It uses Bluetooth 4.0 and syncs with Android 4.3 and iOS 6.1.3, but unfortunately, has an app that is only compatible with iOS devices only.

For runners and workout buffs, the tracker has a set of LED lights that detect and light when you’re in ”activity mode”, and also measure the intensity of your drills. For swimmers, it can track how long your sessions last and tell you about the intensity of your workouts.
Cheaper than its predecessor, the Misfit Flash, the Flash Link sports a built-in replaceable coin cell battery which can last for a maximum of six months, eliminating the everyday-charging stress.

5. TomTom Runner 3 GPS Watch

The TomTom Runner 3 GPS Watch doubles as a smartwatch and an activity tracker and belongs to TomTom’s new line of GPS watches that is giving the market’s best a run for their money.

It goes at around $120 on Amazon and can be used by both runners and swimmers to track pace, distance and time both during training and on the field of play. It lacks a built-in heart rate monitor (there’s a chest strap sold separately), but with a set of ergonomic buttons, a sizeable LCD display, and an above average design, the watch offers nothing less than what you’re paying for.

TomTom Runner 3 Waterproof GPS Watch

Besides the basic activity tracker functions of step-counting and estimation of distance covered, the tracker also helps swimmers know the intensity of their swimming (low, average or high)and the number of strokes they make throughout their swimming sessions. That’s something most of the activity trackers can seamlessly accomplish, though, and if we had to pick one outstanding feature about the TomTom Multi-Sport GPS Watch, it would be its large LCD display and awesome controls.

6. Basis Peak

While most fitness trackers will adhere to a command that you directly have to feed it with, the Basis Peak will detect runs, bicycle rides and sleep automatically and record proceeds without you having to remind it. With a few advanced functionalities, it doubles as a smartwatch, and its ability to monitor heart rate and skin temperature make it the most sophisticated activity tracker on this list.

Basis Peak Waterproof Activity Watch

With a touchscreen display, it has no buttons at all, and this could make it pretty much difficult to handle immediately after a sweaty workout or swimming session. Another downside is that it cannot measure distance – which is an issue for runners – basically due to the absence of the GPS tracking feature. That said, I find the Basis Peak one overpriced fitness tracker (goes at $149.70 on Amazon) and can be easily substituted by Runtastic Orbit which comes at around $20 cheaper. I don’t know how much you hate taking out your phone to read social media notifications and text messages, though, because the Runtastic Orbit won’t give you that.

7. The Garmin Forerunner 920XT

Just like the Basis Peak, the Forerunner 920XT – which is the immediate precursor for the Forerunner 910XT – includes automated syncing and text messaging, making it half smartwatch, half fitness tracker. For swimmers, it records the amount of time you spend in the pool, the number of strokes you make, and the intensity of your session. As an activity tracker, it tells the number of steps you make, the distance you’ve traveled and the number of stairs and flights of stairs you’ve climbed, and uses this to calculate the amount of calories you burn over a specific period of time. For either (swimming or working out), you can set time and distance goals, and the wristband will alert you once you reach them with a slight vibration.

As a heart rate monitor, the Garmin Forerunner 920XT has been shown to perform best when placed near the chest, especially during swimming where discreet detection of the pulse is difficult. For that reason, Garmin has an exclusive accessory, the HRM-Swim chest band, to firmly hold your 5 ATM-rated devices to your chest as you cruise through the pool.

At Amazon, the sophisticated fitness tracker is available for $496.99, which makes it the most expensive we have on this list.

8. The Polar V800

Here’s another waterproof activity tracker you should not think about if you’re on a tight budget. The gadget goes at a whopping $349 and is one of the few fitness trackers a pro athlete can completely bank on for accuracy and efficiency. With this, there is no need for a chest band, as it can independently monitor heart rate from your arm even under water, thanks to a built-in dual-mode transmitter. It has an integrated GPS tracker which allows you to accurately measure distance traveled, for runners and bikers, and track previously used routes.

Polar V800 Waterproof Activity Watch

It is rated at 3 ATM, meaning it can remain water resistant to a depth of 30 meters. It perfectly counts the strokes you make in water and gives you a breakdown of the session’s activity and lets you compare the day’s stats with those of a previous session. You can also set goals if you wish, set time limits, and leave the rest to the device. It will tell you by how many steps, strokes or meters you missed the goal by – if you did – or automatically increase the target in case you surpass the current one.

9. Finis Swimsense Performance Monitor

And now to the cheapest…
The Finis Swimsense has been particularly developed for swimming (you can just move on to the next entry if you’re looking for an all-round activity tracker). It has built-in accelerometers and magnetometers to capture every single detail of your swim workout; it tracks strokes rates, stroke counts, distances and calories burnt to help you analyze your performances in the pool as well as your daily progress, all by just pressing the swim button on the left side of the screen.

You can view your stats instantly on the display or choose to sync the data to websites such as the popular SportTrack, TrainingPeaks, and Runkeeper. On these sites, you can easily compare your stats for different periods, evaluate your progress and share with your trainers and friends.

The Swimsense is rated at 3 ATM (30 meters) and can be obtained for $34.95 at Amazon. So, if you know you’re not going to use your fitness tracker anywhere outside the swimming pool, then the Finis Swimsense is the best option you have. No other activity tracker of its class can come for 34 dollars, and very few are so specialized for swimming.

10. Exmetrics Swimming Tracker

Xmetrics swimming tracker is a one of kind swimming activity tracker that you clip on to a goggle band and strap it to the skull to track your aquatic life. It’s not yet really a mainstream product, but that has nothing to do with underperformance or any kind of inferiority. In fact, the waterproof activity tracker has been shown to match the accuracy of some of the most reliable products on the market. It actually edges over them with a fairly more ergonomic design, which is quite a respite to individuals who find this kind of gizmos irritating.

The “state of the art” technology utilized in this device combines biometric data sensors and refined algorithms to breed unmatched precision. This data-driven analysis facilitates maximum utilization of every second you spend in the pool, in the long run, and consequently improves performance.

Data gathered by the Xmetric Swimming Tracker can be shared with friends and fellow swimmers on Twitter and other social media platforms.

Update: January 2017

Garmin have just announced their new Flagship Waterproof GPS Running and Activity Watch – The Garmin Fenix 5.

Garmin Fenix 5 introduced at CES 2017 in Las Vegas

The Fenix 3 was one of the best reviewed Fitness Watches and we expect the Fenix 5 Watch will be the must-have item for any serious runner.

Stay tuned for further updates!

The post The Best Waterproof Activity Trackers 2017 appeared first on ChipIn.

Here are the best Bluetooth wireless headphones for Running on the market in 2017

There is a constellation of headphones that populate the Bluetooth headphones space. Functionality aside, what separates them is their practicality. For a lot of us, we look for headphones that won’t budge or wobble while we run. We want headphones that are fixed and fit the shape of our heads perfectly. While finding the perfect fit can be a bit of a challenge, sometimes it merely comes down to design.

In-ear headphones are typically the form that string behind the head or neck and insert directly into the ear. The structure that connects the two earphones can often be a wire or a plastic bar of some sort. This design does away with any cumbersome wires that may drape along the neck or get tangled in our hair or clothing. However, some variations can seem a bit challenging to navigate when on a tough run. With nothing affixing the headphones to the ears, there’s still the possibility of the earphones falling out of place during a run.

Over the ear headphones have a more rigid structure connecting the two earphones with a bar or wire that runs behind the ears and typically behind the head or neck. Because the headphones is fixed to the cranium and behind the ears by running over the top of the ears, you’re less likely to encounter problems with the earphones falling out. But because it is more rigid, you’ll encounter one size fits all designs that don’t necessarily fit all sizes.

You are less likely to encounter problems with the earphones falling out while working out or running

The drawback can be manifold. Perhaps you lose one of the pieces. Or there still can be those moments when an earpiece falls out. And not all earpiece shapes are perfectly molded to fit the shape of our ears.

1. Jaybird X3

The light weight Jaybird X3 is equipped to meet the challenges any strenuous workout might throw at it!

The Jaybird X3 is a reasonably priced in-ear headphones. The latest generation of Jaybird X series is lightweight and forward-thinking. How so? You can customize the sound to your needs. Having an ability to finesse the nuances of the EQ while you run is something you don’t see too often in this sphere of tech.

But Jaybird does it fluidly and seamlessly. The X3 is compatible with all Bluetooth platforms and runs an accompanying app that uses iOS 9+ and Android 4.4. Don’t worry about skipping unless of course, your Bluetooth source is too far from the actual headphones. Otherwise, this pairs nicely with your devices and takes the road like a champ.

As far as durability and functionality go, the X3 is well-equipped to meet the challenges any strenuous workout might throw at it. It has 8 solid hours of battery life. So after a full charge, this one won’t conk out on you in the middle of a workout. It also is sweat proof and it even has a microphone should you want to take an incoming call while you pour it all out on the track or treadmill.

Cons are few unless you’re a hardcore audiophile. No noise canceling and given that these are in-ear headphones, you may occasionally run into instances where the earpieces slip. But it is a solid piece of sports tech and it only retails for $129.

2. Bose Soundsport Wireless Headphones

The design comes with an added plus of StayHear+ design that helps to secure the ear pieces in the ear.

No list about top tech for audio would be complete without a mention somewhere about Bose. They’ve managed to populate a lookbook of sound systems, accessories and all around tech that never fails to satisfy audiophiles. Here is no different as the brand moves into the sports and fitness sphere with the Soundsport Wireless. It like most of the Bluetooth headphones on the market is a lightweight and compact headphones. The design is in-ear but comes with an added plus of StayHear+ design that helps to secure the earpieces in the ear.

Free app that makes connecting and switching between devices easier than ever

Personalization is the main focus of the Soundsport. The accompanying app allows you to connect with ease, using any given number of Bluetooth platforms. So getting started is quick and painless. They retail for $149.95.

3. Bose Quiet Control 30

Bose balances the levels of your music with your surroundings and helps you control how much of your environment you hear at your fingertips.

Here you still have the three sizes of QC tips to keep your earpieces in your ear. But you also have a neckband that does away with the Soundsport’s cable. This one also boasts longer battery life with up to 10 hours on a full charge.

Bose ergonomic neckband does away with the Soundsport’s cable

As far as connectivity goes, the Bose app makes it easy to pair your devices. But it is also NFC enabled for added perks. The Quiet Control 30 retails for $299.95.

4. Monster iSport Victory

These are robust, sweat and weather resistant earbuds with 8 hours of battery life to take you through a heck of a workout

This wouldn’t be a credible list of top Bluetooth headphones for running without some sports brands wading into the fray. Enter Monster. The brand has taken to crafting a solid piece of tech with flying colors. The iSport Victory sits perfectly in Monster’s solid line of Bluetooth headphones. Here we have an in-ear style with adjustable tips for securing your earpieces.

Why is Monster on this list? These are robust, sweat and weather resistant earbuds that go the distance. You get 8 hours of battery life to take you through a heck of a workout should you decide to do so. And while you’re at it, nothing will get in the way of your progress. A microphone comes with the set for taking incoming calls. No more stopping your run to look at a screen.

The in-ear style with adjustable tips work perfectly with helmets, glasses and goggles

Instead, you can focus on where you are in your workout. The iSport features two sound profiles, warm up and sport. Both will set the tone for your run, your stretch or your cooldown. The iSport retails for an attractive $99.95.

5. LG Tone Active Plus

LG Tone Active Plus resists sweat and inclement weather conditions, rendering your tunes in impeccable sound quality

The LG Tone Active Plus is another take on the neckband in-ear combo. LG has long been a stalwart in the electronics game, only being eclipsed by rival and fellow Korean brand Samsung. Here LG hopes to have no peers. The Active Plus boasts a superior dynamic range in case you want your playlist to play through at its most pristine potential. But these superior audio drivers are only par for the course for a brand of LG’s ilk.

The real question is how does LG stack up in the fitness industry? Admirably. The Active Plus boasts a whopping 13 hours of battery life on a single charge. But that’s only the beginning. These aren’t a delicate pair of headphones. Instead, these durable headphones resists sweat and inclement weather conditions, rendering your tunes in impeccable sound quality without batting a lash.

The only drawback to the neckband design is the rigidity of the neckband itself. If you can overlook that one niggling element, then this one is a winner. It retails for $179.99

6. Mpow Cheetah Bluetooth 4.1

The Cheetah comes with the standard bells and whistles you’d expect for a headphones of this price

The Mpow Cheetah fits in the lower price spectrum of headphones. Here is a gobsmackingly affordable set of in-ear headphones that sit in the $30 range. Why might you be interested in something like this? Well, if your workout is as tough and hard on you as you would hope, chances are it’s tough on your gear as well. And cycling through one pair of pricey headphones after another can rack up a fortune in the long run. So opt for something that gets the job done without causing you worry about how much you’ve invested.

The Cheetah comes with the standard bells and whistles you’d expect for a headphones of this price…and more. Yes, it’s sweat proof. Yes, it has a solid 8 hours of battery life. But get this: it also has a microphone for those moments when you want to take incoming calls during your workout. And it features AptX Bluetooth stereo sound.

Sound dynamics are above average. Unless you want to propel yourself front seat and center in the London Philharmonic or hear the deepest subs from your favorite rap and trap playlist, this will get you through your run effortlessly. These are compact and can be rolled up after you’ve used them. And the design uses a behind the neck grip for better hold. They retail for $31.63.

1. Apple Powerbeats 3 Headphones

Apple Powerbeats 3 is easy to pair to not only your iOS devices but Android as well

Apple makes its first appearance on our list with their behind the ear set the Powerbeats 3. They’ve found a way to elongate the life expectancy of your battery life with a specially designed Bluetooth chip, the W1. The results speak for themselves: 12 hours of uninterrupted listening pleasure. And that listening pleasure is only heightened by the fact that Apple spares no effort in eking out the best in dynamic range at this price.

The question is, does the Powerbeats 3 play fair with the other Bluetooth platforms? Sure, we know that Apple has a penchant for making its tech and gear exclusively compatible with iOS platforms. Not the case here. It’s easy to pair to not only your iOS devices but Android as well. Given that Samsung has made it something as simple as a click to connect its Bluetooth headphones to an iOS device, Apple has gone the same route.

Comfort takes a hit, however with the earpieces. The edges are slightly difficult to finesse and manipulate. But they remain in the ear and won’t slip during your run. These are top sellers for Apple. They retail for $199.95.

2. Plantronics Backbeat Fit

Plantronics features a lightweight structure, over the ear design and a behind the neck grip

The Plantronics Backbeat Fit is a simple yet stellar design. This just goes to show that all of the top of the line future innovations that some brands clamor for don’t necessarily make an exceptional headphones. Instead, Plantronics goes for the jugular with a pared down headphones featuring a lightweight structure, over the ear design and a behind the neck grip. The result is a headphones that stays in place and renders the sound in solid quality.

Its other bells and whistles are respectable as well. The Backbeat takes off where its predecessors stumbled. Firstly, at only .85 ounce, it is one of the lightest designs on the list. But then consider equally that it packs a lot of perks into the design: a built-in microphone for those incoming calls, sweat-resistant design, 8 hours of battery life, 6 hours of talk time, can connect up to 8 devices, and the earpieces are built to allow in ambient noise.

The headphones that stays in place and renders the sound in solid quality

Given that the Plantronics Backbeat is rather minimalist when it comes to incorporating excessive tech, it also pulls its price down into the lower price bracket. So here you find an excellently priced, lightweight piece of gear that won’t bog you down during your run. It retails for $129.99.

3. ADV.Sound Evo X

The Evo X comes in an over the ear design that keeps the gear fixed to the listener’s head

Sound team has thought of creature comfort during your workout. It doesn’t just end with the fit. Built-in controls for listening allow you to run without fiddling with your device. It uses Bluetooth 4.1 and has a battery life of 5 hours for your listening or even talking time for calls.

Built-in controls for listening make it convenient to listen to your favorite playlist

While the battery life could use a boost, the frequency response is a solid 20Hz to 20kHz. This is a very respectable range, given that the vast majority of Bluetooth speakers offer about the same. Unless you are looking for dynamic surround sound, you’ll be happy with the sound here. And generally speaking, you’ll be happy because the Evo X doesn’t force you or your wallet to splurge. It retails for $59.99.

4. Under Armour Sport Wireless Heart Rate

In-Ear Heart Rate is a comfortable in-ear technology developed by experts and tested by athletes

We don’t typically lump Under Armour into a category populated by brand standards for audio gear. But here’s the exception. Under Armour has widened its lookbook from workout clothing and gear to tech. Look no further than Under Armour’s forward-thinking collaboration with JBL. The Heart Rate is a masterful piece of work, combining JBL’s sensibilities about achieving excellent performance with Bluetooth and Under Armour’s singular fingerprint for athletic gear.

These over the ear pieces use a cable that drapes across the nape of the neck, resisting any temptation to get tangled up in your hair. Furthermore, the patented ear tips keep these babies locked in place.

Touch sensors are designed for spoken on-demand heart rate updates and endurance training session

JBL has a winning relationship with Bluetooth sound devices. Here is no different. Excellent dynamic range couples effortlessly with a personalized app that does everything from fitness tracking to tweaking just how you hear your tunes.
And Under Armour for its part is fond of putting the athlete first in order to achieve his best potential. So don’t worry about your headphones running down because it’s succumbed to your sweat or bad weather. It keeps ticking defiantly. The Heart Rate gets your blood pumping through wind or rain. And it retails for $199.95.

1. Here One

Here One features huge sound dynamics that plumb the depths of bass frequencies

Here One hopes to steal the thunder of brand giants Samsung and Apple with its completely wireless earbuds. They’ve endowed these earbuds with as much tech as one can hope to cram into two little ear pieces. In fact, they like to consider all the other competition in the crowded Bluetooth market as simply headphones.

Here One for its part has given the two little ear buds a grocery list of options: six microphones for filtering out ambient noise as you please, huge sound dynamics that plumb the depths of bass frequencies and scale up for your heavenly highs, and sweat resistant design to make sure that you can go as hard in the paint as you like during your workout.

Talking has never seemed so fluid and seamless as with the Here One. Simply tapping the ear buds engages your incoming or outgoing calls. However, this is where Doppler’s Here One encounters some hefty drawbacks. Background noise may filter into your phone conversations. And talking as long as you like isn’t an option. Battery life is a minuscule 2 hours.

Here One offers the most pristine sound quality and performance you will find on the market.

But if you whip through a standard workout under a 2-hour session, the Here One offer the most pristine sound quality and performance you will find on the market. Where they falter in endurance they more than make up for in dynamic explosive performance. Call them the sprinter of Bluetooth earbuds. They retail for $299.

2. Bragi The Dash

The fitness tracker keeps you focused on your workout goals

Bragi’s The Dash is rather braggadocious (pun intended) in claiming they’re the best of their breed on the market. These earbud pairs certainly are no slumps. They pack 4GB of storage in addition to Bluetooth connectivity. So performance is only limited to your playlist’s potential. The low end is tremendous thanks to the Dash’s bass response. Your tunes will get a kick in the pants while you sprint through your workout.

But you won’t be able to get distracted by your music either. The fitness tracker will keep you focused on your workout goals. But here’s the kicker: these earbuds are fully waterproof. Sweat won’t remotely phase this pair. The downside is not all earbuds are created equal. Make sure you have a strong, good fit. They are on the pricier side of the food chain. They retail for $299.

3. Samsung Gear Icon X

Icon X is compatible with both Android and iOS

Samsung’s Icon X also ventures into the wire-free earbud scuffle. The Icon X is formidable, packing 4GB of storage and Samsung’s always forward-thinking connected apps. What’s more, the earbud pair has a built-in heart rate monitor. Your earbuds go above and beyond ordinary fitness trackers in keeping accurate tabs on your resting heart rate and your workout pulse. Couple that with Samsung’s constellation of fitness apps and you can tailor your workout to the conditions of the day.

Tap and hold to hear voice prompts guide you through Gear IconX’s functions

The earbuds are touch-sensitive. Swiping alone is sufficient to navigate through your options and controls. And never fear, the Icon X is not exclusively compatible with Android. It is both Android and iOS ready. You also have an ambient mic feature so as not to completely cancel out all the surrounding noise of your environment. Your workout just got an upgrade. The Icon X retails for $199.99.

The post Best Bluetooth Wireless Headphones For Running 2017 appeared first on ChipIn.

Top 10 Most Intuitive GPS Trackers For Kids in 2017. Keep your kid safe.
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It gets hectic when you have to work, run errands and watch after the kids as well. Well, not to worry anymore, with child GPS trackers, you can always know where your child has been and in some instances, know where they are going. Some trackers use Bluetooth to connect over short distances, say in a supermarket while others are long range and can cover more ground. What’s even better is, with GPS tracking, you can pinpoint the exact position where your child is.

1. FiLIP 2

Now, this is what you go for if you are looking for more than a GPS tracker for your child. The FiLIP 2 is a GPS tracker for kids, cell phone, and a wrist watch. Three functions in one tracker with a modern design. Moreover, it is light and water resistant. This feature is good news for almost all parents as; children are playful and coming into contact with water, dirty or clean are nearly a norm for them. In addition to being light, this device was modified earlier in 2015 to ensure it is comfortable on a small wrist.

The FiLIP is a wearable phone and locator for kids, designed with parents in mind

The FiLIP 2 has a kid-friendly band that can be adjusted with spacers. This band can be worn open or closed; the purpose of the spacers on the band is to give room as your child grows so that you do not have to budget for another GPS tracker as your child gets older. With this in mind, the company went ahead and made it more durable. The FiLIP 2 is the first child GPS tracker of its kind to have a two-way text messaging feature. You can send texts or alerts like, dinner is ready, to your kid without having to look for them.

It comes in four kid-approved colors so your child can choose from a variety of colors. However, you can only store and contact five numbers with this device. Then again, why would a child need more than five numbers for? The FiLIP 2 goes for $149.99 plus a monthly $10 fee for phone service.

2. The Tinitell Watch

When buying a GPS tracker for your child, it is important to enquire if the tracker allows communication. The reason for this is, sometimes your child may be out of range or wander off to a very crowded place where you can see them but cannot get to them. Also, they can be in school, or you can be at work, and since some schools do not allow cell phones, this is the easiest way to check on your kid during the day. The Tinitell Watch was made with communication in mind. Nonetheless, it still performs as a tracker and obviously, as a watch.

Tinitell GPS Watch comes in various colours

This device has a module that enables parents to GPS track their child’s location in real-time. Most kids may not be quite familiar with using technological gadgets; well unless they play games or do something a child would consider fun. With this notion in mind, the Tinitell manufacturers enabled voice commands on the device to make using it easy. It would be a big mistake to trust a kid with a touchscreen device when they are not familiar with how it works or are very playful. With Tinitell, all your child has to do is issue voice commands such as, call mom, the device then springs into action.

Easily give permission who can view and interact with your loved one

The device has one button on the front that turns it on and off and two other buttons to adjust the audio levels/volume. The Tinitell GPS watch for kids has arguably the best battery life a GPS tracker can have; it lasts for 60 minutes while talking and seven days on standby. It is also water and dust resistant, this eliminates the worry of your child ruining it while playing or by spilling drinks on it. This smart watch/GPS tracker goes for $150; it has gained a reputation for the simplest GPS child tracker on the market.

3. My Buddy Tag

My Buddy Tag is the ultimate pocket-friendly child GPS tracker for your kid. It is safe to have a backup safety plan concerning your finances and buying such a tracker can help with that. The reason most parents do not go for GPS trackers is because they are expensive, and it is not very wise to entrust a child with an expensive technological gadget. Besides spoiling it, there is also the risk of someone stealing it from your child. This device provides the real-time location of your child’s whereabouts as one of its features.

My Buddy Tag is the only device on the market that sends alerts to you in case your child accidentally drowns. The device sends a signal if it is submerged in water for five consecutive seconds. It may turn out that your child is just playing with water, and it is his hand only that is submerged, but it would not hurt to have this tracker just for this feature. There are multiple cases of kids accidentally drowning but with My Buddy Tag you do not have to worry about that as a parent, or you can, at least, get there on time.

My Buddy Tag has two different wristbands, a terry cloth or Velcro wristband for regular use and a disposable silicone wristband for field trips. Moreover, if you have several children, you can track them simultaneously and identify each tag by name. It also has a place where you can write contact information. However, this device only covers a range of 80-120 feet while outdoors and 40 feet while indoors. My Buddy Tag goes for $38.

4. SAFE Kids Paxie Band

Kids will always love fancy looking things. The SAFE Kids Paxie Band is colorful and elegant looking. No child will see this tracker and not want it. Some will be oblivious of its functions but it doesn’t matter, it looks good, and every child will want to have it as theirs. The company changes the tracker’s design to suit the ever changing children fashion industry. What would be better than a device that your child loves and it can help you locate where they are in real time and looks good on their wrist?

The SAFE Kids Paxie Band GPS tracker for kids has excellent GPS connectivity, which not only helps a parent track their child, but also set boundaries of where the kids should be. The good thing about this tracker is you can know when your child goes beyond the areas you have designated. This device has a feature that helps you input boundaries of where your child should not go past. Moreover, it also records ambient temperature using sensors installed in the wristband. This feature can help you prevent your child from getting a heat stroke.

The SAFE Kids Paxie Band also has inbuilt sensors on the wristband that monitor your child’s heart rate. It also has activity tracking sensors that help you keep track of how active your child has been. This device goes for $ 175 plus monthly fees.

5. PocketFinder

It would be safe to assume that children do not understand the meaning of delicate until later on in their lives. Children often break valuable things out of their unquenchable inquisitive nature or just for the sake of breaking stuff. However, you have no reason to worry about your child breaking the PocketFinder tracker. In fact, you do not have to worry about anyone spoiling this bad boy. The PocketFinder can withstand going through the washer and the dryer. How you ask, well, it is made from the same plastic material that makes riot shields.

If you have a wild child, this is the device for you. You can set your child’s speed limit using this device. It is equipped with an accelerometer that will alert you the instance your child goes past a pre-set speed limit. On one hand, this tracking device can help you know when your child is running from something or someone. On the other hand, in the event of a kidnapping, you would know first. The PocketFinder uses tap alert, a feature that helps the child send SOS messages to the numbers connected to it. It works by tapping it three times on a hard surface.

Your child does not even need to wear this device on their wrist; it can also function properly from a backpack or the child’s pocket, pinpointing your child’s location via GPS. Considering the kind of damage this device can withstand, you do not need to worry about having spent your money on an expensive tracking device only for it to be broken by your child. The PocketFinder goes for $130 and a monthly fee of $10.

6. The hereO

The irony that comes with the hereO is that it is very colorful yet has an insipid aura around it. At a glance, this device looks like a simple watch with a digital clock interface. However, its GPS tracking system can run for up to 72 hours. You know what they say; simplicity is the best form of complexity. The hereO kids GPS tracker comes in several kid-friendly styles. Its design makes it look like a simple kid’s accessory, but its features prove that it is more than just that. It is hard to think it is a tracking device so predators won’t pay much attention to it in case something bad happens.

The tracker activates a tamper alert in case anybody removes the watch from the child’s hand; the alert pings the last known GPS info making tracking easier. Even if it is the child who removes it, the signal still goes through. It is a little disappointing to know that this GPS tracker for kids does not support calls, but it makes up for that by sending location data to pre-programmed family members. This is made possible by its panic alert feature that comes in handy in case of an emergency.

The hereO goes for $149. Moreover, it comes with a charging dock and three months of free service before a monthly fee of $4.95 every month for maintenance.

7. Caref GPS Phone Watch

This tracking device is among many other tracking devices made by Precise Innovation for kids. The Caref GPS Phone Watch has a sleeker look that would go best with children aged above seven years. Its display is easy to read, and the tracker itself is easy to use. It has a call option that allows kids to call their parents directly from the watch. Most GPS enabled child trackers only send alerts to the parent in the event of an emergency or when the parent needs to know where their child is, well, apart from the Caref GPS Phone Watch.

It has an additional feature that sends your child’s GPS location in real-time every ten minutes through the mobile app. With this tracker, parents can set geofence boundaries, and it will automatically send alerts to them the instance their child leaves them. In the case of trouble, the watch has an SOS button that immediately calls for help while relaying the child’s GPS location at the same time. Moreover, if the first number that is pre-programmed into the device does not go through, it systematically calls the other numbers until contact is established

This feature means you do not have to worry if your phone battery dies as anybody on the list can be reached in case of an emergency. The device calls all the numbers until the end of the list. The Caref GPS Phone Watch goes for $67.

8. Trax

Just like some of the tracking devices discussed above, Trax is not worn on the wrist; rather it is a portable box-shaped device that can be carried in your child’s pocket or backpack. It snaps into a clip that can be attached to your child’s belt as well. Most parents would prefer this device for kids who have a tendency of taking the wristband type of trackers off. Moreover, the fact that it is not visible to other people makes it a precious commodity for a child to have.

Trax provides geofencing, just like some devices discussed above as well as speed alerts, location updates, and scheduling. While most GPS trackers for kids provide you with the location of your child, Trax does that and a little more. It provides your child’s location within your vision field through your phone’s built-in camera. Besides, it also provides the distance between you and your child so you can decide the best route to take to get there fastest. This augmented reality feature makes it stand out from most child GPS trackers.

However, unlike most GPS enabled child tracking devices, Trax does not support calls or texts. Additionally, its price is hefty too with one device going for $249. While most trackers offer two or three months of free use, Trax offers two years. After that, there is a monthly charge of $5.

9. Lineable

Lineable is arguably the cheapest tracking device on the market. For just $ 5, you can have this Bluetooth-powered location device.

Lineable lasts for approximately one year and requires no charging. This child tracking device is ideal for instances when you have your child close to you, but you are in a crowded place, say the park, playground or the mall. Lineable has a kid-friendly design that helps it disguise its real function. Most child abduction cases happen in parks and playgrounds; it is wise to have a location device that can tell you where your child is despite being able to see them because a person may distract you, but you can still get to your child before the confusion created by the busy park or mall makes you lose sight of your child.

Lineable makes the world a parent for every kid through a feature called Crowdsource GPS. It uses this as its working system to help people with the Lineable Application track any Lineable device within their range. This feature comes in handy for those instances where you lose your phone, or its battery dies. The Lineable App makes the world a safer place for kids through this feature that allows active engagement of the public. Additionally, this device is waterproof and is coated with silicon, which makes it durable and comfortable for your kid to wear. It also has a long battery life that acts as a massive selling point.

However, you can guess that it has a somewhat limited tracking range because it uses Bluetooth and only uses GPS when you cannot access Bluetooth or need to access Crowdsource GPS; it tracks your child within 65-98 feet, depending on the environment.

10. Amber Alert GPS Locater

This tracking device for kids is the closest thing to a mobile phone a child will have. Most trackers do have the voice call option, but very few have embedded sim cards. Just like the name suggests, this device is currently among the best GPS trackers for kids. Normally, a kid has no idea who the strangers they meet are. A person may be a thief but to a child, he or she is just another stranger, and as long as you can get on with the child properly, you can distract him or her to your real agenda.

Now imagine a tracker that can notify you if your child is close to a registered sex offender. I am not kidding you; the Amber Alert GPS Locator is the only device on the market that sends notifications to parents or guardians when your child is within 500 feet of a registered sex offender, how amazing. I mean, with all these cases of child defilement I know I will not be surprised if parents decided to ask the government to provide their children with these trackers. However, you do not need to wait for the government to get this tracking device; you can get it for only $129.

Did I mention you can make calls using this device? Well, in addition to the price you pay to acquire the device, you can pay $ 15 per month to get 150 texts alerts or $ 18 per month for 300 texts. In addition to texting and calling, the Amber Alert GPS Locator supports alerting via voice and e-mail as well.

A short Relevant Q & A Session

. Conclusion

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