The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Personal Information Tracking via The Fitbit

    When the Jawbone UP was announced my buddy Shawn Blanc was pretty excited about it and subsequently he got me pretty excited as well. Shawn ordered one and found that he liked it and so I set out to get one. After not finding one and being skeptical about keeping something on my wrist — additionally being concerned about its accuracy — I decided to skip the UP and order a Fitbit instead.

    [](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/fitbit-1.jpg)

    The Fitbit looks like an oversized paperclip and is far less useful to clip onto things than a paperclip. The Fitbit is easy to clip onto the included wristband, or a thin shirt. A belt or pants pocket will require the use of the included belt clip. The stupidity of this entire situation does not elude me.

    [](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/fitbit-3.jpg)

    Fitbit is a product that has a built in clip, but also includes a belt clip holster due to the failings of the built in clip. This makes my head hurt.

    [](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/fitbit-4.jpg)

    ### Tracking

    The Fitbit tracks a slew of things, but here’s what I track with it:

    – Steps taken each day.
    – Sleep “efficiency”.

    It’s a glorified pedometer that has been hacked and programmed to tell you all sorts of data.

    [](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/fitbit-2.jpg)

    In my unscientific tests I found the Fitbit to track my steps fairly accurately when kept in my front pocket. It records just a few extra steps for every 100 steps in my testing. That’s not too shabby given that I likely am the cause of the mis-counts (arm hitting my pocket or grabbing something out of my pocket).

    The sleep tracking is what I was very excited for. Then I found out that you must purchase that at a $49 a year price tag. I did. Now I know how many times I was “awoken”, how fast I fell asleep, and how long I slept for. Yay?

    ### The Idea

    The overall Fitbit product is well done (with the exception of the clip fiasco), but the execution for this type of product is significantly flawed.

    The UP comes closer to moving the execution forward by providing the user with active feedback through the use of vibration alerts, but still (I believe) largely fails to push change of any sort. People just don’t want to wear the UP on their wrists all the time, which is the fatal flaw of that product.

    The Fitbit is a completely passive device. It syncs with your computer only through a special cable. It doesn’t show you and give you very useful feedback on the device. The software leaves it to the user to decide what they want to get out of the data.

    When I started using the Fitbit I was sleeping for six and a half hours on an average night — far too little sleep. Yet the Fitbit never said: “hey it is recommend that you get at least 30 minutes additional sleep”.

    That is a simple thing to say and has been beaten into our heads for most of our lives, yet the Fitbit couldn’t care less. I changed my sleeping habit to 7 hours a night, but not because the Fitbit told me to — I just didn’t realize how little I was sleeping. That’s the difference between a useful device and a passive tool. The Fitbit is certainly in the latter category.

    In fact that sleep change of 30 minutes is the only thing the Fitbit has changed about my life.

    In no way is my life better because I have a Fitbit. In no way am I more active. In no way am I in better shape or likewise more healthy. At no point did the Fitbit actively try to help me with any of those above listed items.

    The failure of the Fitbit is not in the product, but the idea that a little piece of plastic can actually help you — because it can’t. At least it can’t help you until you make it aware of the goal.

    Giving the Fitbit a goal of 5,000 steps a day is useless. It’s useless because it does’t count that I walk up and down 12 flights of stairs everyday. Useless because it doesn’t know when I am carrying additional weight while walking (unloading groceries, carrying a computer bag, etc.). The amount of steps I take each day in no way correlates with how active I was.

    In the end these types of devices are utterly useless because they are tracking the wrong things. We don’t need our steps tracked, or for a device to guess at our ‘activity’ level, or looks at our sleeping habits. We need to be told what we are doing wrong and how we can change it.

    That’s going to help.

    And that’s not what the Fitbit, UP, et al does. Save your money, because these activity tracking devices are about as good as the Palm Treo was when all we were looking for is an iPhone.

    **UPDATE** (on Dec 6, 2011): This post doesn’t make it clear that you can track your sleep without the add on purchase, but you don’t get the full benefit of the system unless you pay. Sorry for the confusion.

    **UPDATE** (on Dec 7, 2011): I have added my expanded thoughts on this type of device. [You can find that post here](https://brooksreview.net/2011/12/pam/).

  • Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed in Street-Roving Vans

    You have got to be kidding me. Andy Greenberg notes:

    >But EPIC’s Rotenberg says that the scans, like those in the airport, potentially violate the fourth amendment. “Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” he says. Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure, he points out. “If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”

  • ‘Rote Simplicity’

    Frank Chimero:
    >I’m skeptical of rote simplicity. It’s good for the people making digital tools to simplify their job and make one tiny widget, but a swarm of tools that all do one tiny thing well is still a complex system for the user to manage.

    The “one thing well” idea is great, but only for a small subset of tasks. The Google Chromebook (supposedly) does one thing well: runs the web. Yet not many people want that experience.

    It’s one thing to make small apps for my iPhone that each do a particular task really well — while being a completely different thing to make an iPhone that only does one thing well. The simplicity in the iPhone is that every thing it does out of the box it does very well — without requiring extra things.

    It can be quite tiring to check 45 different apps.

  • Allow Airline Passengers to Use Electronic Devices in ‘Airplane Mode’ During Takeoff and Landing

    A petition over at WhiteHouse.gov to:
    >Allow devices that have “Airplane Mode” to be used during taxi, takeoff, and landing through revising FAA regulation.

  • Gowalla Is Going to Facebook

    Josh Williams makes it official on the Gowalla blog today:
    >Gowalla, as a service, will be winding down at the end of January. We plan to provide an easy way to export your Passport data, your Stamp and Pin data (along with your legacy Item data), and your photos as well. Facebook is not acquiring Gowalla’s user data.

    Gowalla in its original state was far superior to Foursquare. With recent updates it failed to be useful for me, but it is still sad to see it go.

  • ‘Am I going to beat you through the security line?’

    Michael Lopp wrote about moving from a messenger bag to a backpack. This is a fantastic look at the thought behind choosing a great bag. I love Tom Bihn’s products and the [Ristretto that I use](https://brooksreview.net/2011/02/new-bag/), but I think I am going to give a backpack a try after reading this.

    The primary problems with the Ristretto are:

    1. It doesn’t scale well.
    2. Nothing in it every feels truly secure. (I have watched things slide out of it during take-off.)

    Here’s to backpacks? We’ll see.

  • Quote of the Day: Jim Dalrymple

    “The first rule of any business should be ‘don’t piss off your customers.’ Many publishers are failing.”

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    Move the responsibility of remembering daily tasks from your brain to OmniFocus — gather everything into the Inbox for later review, and then organize those bits into folders, projects, actions, and contexts.

    OmniFocus is as simple or advanced as you decide to make it, and available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone with free cloud sync. Move past mere task management and get things done with precision.

    Read more about OmniFocus [here](http://click.syndicateads.net/2011/11/Omni-1/brooksreview.html).

    ### Editor’s Comment ###

    That’s what the OmniGroup has to say about OmniFocus. If you search this site for “OmniFocus” you will get [237 results](http://www.google.com/search?q=OmniFocus&site=brooksreview.net&domains=brooksreview.net&sitesearch=brooksreview.net). That’s quite a bit. [Here is my longstanding thought about OmniFocus](OmniFocus):

    “As of right now there is no doubt in my mind that it is worth twice as much money.”

    There are a lot of things on my Mac that I could use to replace other apps and I would get by just fine. But OmniFocus is completely irreplaceable to me.

  • Justin Williams on Magazines and the iPad

    Here’s Justin Williams’ advice to magazines on the iPad:
    >The iPad is a great opportunity to reach beyond traditional paradigms. Explore them and see what works.

    There isn’t a single iPad magazine that takes true advantage of the iPad in way that many other apps do. Williams’ criticism of *GQ*, *Esquire* and *Sports Illustrated* are spot on and I agree with every point he makes.

    Moreover I have been at the airport and purchased a paper issue of Esquire before because I knew that I wouldn’t have time to download the issue before I had to jump on the plane. That’s just pathetic to think about — especially so compared to how fast I can download (likely) more articles in Instapaper.

    So much of the bad magazine experience can be directly tied to the advertising shoved into the magazines.

    Fix it.

  • Let’s Stop With the Siri Baiting

    Adam C. Engst:
    >Siri can be useful, and is a whole lot of fun to demo, but it’s unreasonable to read anything more — certainly not Apple corporate policy — into Siri’s successes, failures, and little asides.

    This entire drama over Siri is so stupid I can’t believe people got mad about it. ((Well I can believe it, but what happened to common sense?))

  • Congressman Barney Frank’s Best Insults

    My favorite:

    >What the hell is wrong with you?

  • EA Relaunches Tetris on iOS With a $30/Year Subscription

    When you read the above title you probably are thinking: “that’s nuts.”

    Actually EA sells Tetris for $0.99 and then using an in-app purchase you can become a member of the T-Club, this gets you random crap you likely don’t want, for the $30/yr price.

    What’s really interesting is how much they have messed up the look of Tetris. Just look at the [screenshots](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tetris/id479943969?mt=8) — looks hideous.

  • Apple Licensed iOS Scrolling Patent

    Nilay Patel reporting on the licensing of an iOS scrolling patent claims that the following has been licensed in the past:
    >The patent in question is #7,469,381, which covers the distinctive “scrollback” behavior of iOS that displays a background texture when you scroll beyond the edge of a document of webpage.

    Apparently Nokia and IBM licensed this patent. Interesting given Jobs’ comments in his biography.

  • Quote of the Day: Marco Arment

    “Because if anyone’s willing to throw massive piles of money at gaining marketshare that isn’t worth anywhere near what they spent to gain it, it’s Microsoft.”

  • New York Times Overhauls Comment System

    Jeff Sonderman:
    >The Times will invite any reader whose comments are consistently approved over a certain time period to become a “trusted commenter,” whose future comments go public immediately. Everyone else’s comments will be held for review by a Times moderator, as they are now.

    That sounds like a great move and I fully understand why people comment. What I don’t understand is who reads these comments and what they expect to gain from reading the comments.

    Does seeing a “trusted” commenter make a reader more likely to read the comments of that person? Doubtful.

    I still just see comments as a way for writers to allow “discussion” without ever having to pay attention to that discussion.

  • Kindle Fire to Ship 3.9 Million Units

    Laura Hazard Owen:
    >Amazon’s Kindle Fire is the second most popular tablet after the iPad and will ship 3.9 million units in the last quarter of this year, projects research firm iHS iSuppli.

    Keep in mind that this is tablet is based off the same hardware specs as the Playbook — the same Playbook that RIM [failed to sell even a quarter that amount of](http://www.splatf.com/2011/12/playbook-inventory/).

    That’s why software is so important — and I guess having a native email client. ((Idiots.))

  • $16 Billion in Bonds?

    Florian Mueller talks about the bonds that Motorola might have to post for its lawsuit against Apple in Germany. Staggering amounts of money. Now Apple’s cash hoard is looking more and more reasonable. They don’t need the money to pay attorneys — they need it so they can put up the big blind ((That’s a poker term, don’t email me.)) and play their hand.

  • Delete a Gowalla User Account

    Yeah, I’m all over this one.

    [via DF]

  • Facebook Acquires Gowalla to Boost Timeline Team

    All I know is this: I am done with Gowalla.

  • Apparent

    My thanks to Apparent for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote their new Doxie Go scanner. This scanner is truly fantastic and you can check out my full review of it [here](https://brooksreview.net/2011/11/doxie-go-review/).

    I think for the price you pay this is one hell of a scanner. I don’t have anything else to add, so just [read the review](https://brooksreview.net/2011/11/doxie-go-review/) and then [buy one](http://www.getdoxie.com/a/tbr_nov11-2.php).