The Fitbit is a pedometer on steroids. It can count your steps, record  your physical activities, and even gauge how well you sleep at night. I have had the Fitbit for about a week and a half now and have been using it constantly ever since.

I originally pre-ordered it in July. It has been a long journey for Fitbit admirers, since it’s announcement at TechCrunch50 in 2008. Shortly after the announcement, they began taking pre-orders and it wasn’t until late 2009 that the product began shipping. If you have not yet pre-ordered, you will need to wait until January 31st before they will be accepting new orders.

The Fitbit features technology that is similar to the Nintendo Wii’s Wii Remote, in which it contains an accelerometer and can accurately count steps in your pocket, clipped to your belt, or anywhere you might put it (on your person).

It comes with a wireless base station which also doubles as a charger for the Fitbit, in which once you install the software on your computer, it will wirelessly transmit your data to the Fitbit servers in which you can immediately see. The web site has no monthly charge.

It also comes with a belt clip and a wrist strap. The Fitbit is  actually designed in such a way that you can clip it onto thin belts and clothes without the belt clip, but if you have a large belt like I do, you will need the clip. It slides in and out of the clip easily without having to remove the entire clip for easy viewing.

The wrist strap is used for night use as the Fitbit tracks your sleep. Simply press and hold the button on the Fitbit until it reads “Start” and it has entered a type of trip odometer mode, which will then automatically determine if you are sleeping and categorize it as such automatically. When you wake up in the morning, you simply press and hold the button again until it reads “Stop”, ending your sleep activity.

The trip odometer function can be used for many activities which are all selectable on the web site. You simply choose from the extensive list, such as running, playing music, car repair to name a few, and the system categorizes your activities and sets basic caloric burn from these activities. This better estimates your overall activity levels even though the pedometer may not be increasing.

The battery life is quite good. The web site estimates you can use the device for 10 days before charging it again. I am on day 12 of using it, and I still haven’t charged it since I initially received it in the mail. The only thing I wish it was a replaceable battery, so I could swap in a fresh one. Fitbit is meant to be with you all day and night, so there really is  no downtime for it to be charged.

A good compromise to this is to put the Fitbit onto the charger when you are using the computer, as you are sitting down and it does not need to track steps, and you can log your “using computer” activity.

If you are a data geek and love stats and graphs and are also concerned about your physical activity levels, you should take a look at Fitbit. It can be quite addicting.

Fitbit

Hello. Welcome to my new blog site… well, redesigned anyway. I plan to use this blog to chat about technology and “life hacking”. Hopefully my site will be informational for both the “newbies” as well as the geeks of the crowd.

Things are still a work in progress at the moment as I restructure some of my page to use this new theme. So remember to visit back often as I continue to tweak things and get going with my first real post.

Tah!