Withings has built quite a name for itself since launching its first Wi-Fi Body Scale in 2009, and the new Withings Smart Body Scale is perhaps the biggest update yet released for its original connected scale tech. The new hardware monitors and tracks not only weight, but also body fat percentage, blood pressure and environmental air quality. I tested the Smart Body Analyzer over the course of the past week, so if you’re looking to invest in one of the newly available scales, here’s how it performs.

The Withings Smart Body Analyser (or WS-50, as it’s known more technically) is a very attractive piece of hardware as far as scales go, which is good because Withings wants you to keep it in the bedroom for maximum effectiveness. That’s because of the new air quality monitor, which works best when it’s placed somewhere where you actually spend a lot of time. The air quality meter, combined with the body fat and heart rate measurement are the big selling points here, since they provide the reasons to spend $50 more vs. the standard WS-30 Withings wireless scale.

As mentioned, it’s a good looking scale. It’s glass-topped, which is also necessary for the sensors to connect with your bare feet to deliver accurate readings. But it also feels very solidly constructed, and the readout is legible and bright, opting for low-res output that’s probably easier on battery life (the scale should get a full year on just four AAA alkalines) and on the eyes from the distance you’ll be viewing it at when standing. The bottom line is that the Withings Smart Body Analyzer inspires confidence with its construction, and looks like the type of scale Apple might make were it to produce such a gadget.

The Smart Analyzer is pretty simple to set up. There’s a button on the back (actually more like a pressure sensitive groove) and you hold that down to pair it with your smart phone. A second button controls what units your weight is displayed in on the scale itself (settings within an app control readouts there). The pairing process went smoothly for me on an iPhone 5, and I was then able to transfer Wi-Fi network settings for my home network from the phone, meaning I didn’t have to reenter (or even remember) my complicated password.

The pairing process will also prompt you to install the Withings Health Mate app on your device. It’s here that you’ll create a profile to track your statistics from the scale (and any other Withings devices associated with your account). You can very quickly get up and running with the app, after entering your initial height, weight and age, and you can also set up multiple people to track under a single account if you’re sharing the scale in the household.

The Withings Analyzer does a great job measuring weight, and communicates with the app seamlessly via Wi-Fi (the Bluetooth connection isn’t required after your initial setup). And air quality tracking appears to be fairly accurate, in so far as it definitely saw marked increases in CO2 levels when the room was occupied versus when it wasn’t, and a lot less when no one was home versus when they were.

With body fat percentage and heart rate tracking, I saw some variances since I was lucky enough to be able to test against outside measures. The Withings Smart Analyzer reported both as high compared to tests done on professional measurement tools owned by my local gym. The higher numbers were, however, consistently higher, which means that although they might not have been as accurate as expensive pro-grade hardware, they’re still very useful as a relative measure over time, which is really the important thing from a home health monitoring device like this anyways. And the convenience of having it right there in your own home for daily measurement outweighs the downsides of it delivering slightly inflated readings.

The Smart Body Analyzer is an impressive piece of hardware, and builds on the already useful Withings line. Its data can be used by an increasing pool of apps (now at over 80, according to Withings) in addition to the company’s own, and at $150, you’re not paying too much of a premium for the added metrics of body fat percentage, resting heart rate and air quality. Data reported may not be 100 percent accurate, but I feel it’s plenty accurate enough to meet the needs of the vast majority of consumers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Withings was one of a pretty busy section of the CES 2013 show floor demoing health, fitness and lifestyle monitoring apps, and it had a couple of new things to add to its line of Wi-Fi scales and monitoring devices. One was the new Withings Smart Body Analyzer, which is a version of its Wi-Fi scale that for the first time measures heart rate, and the other was the Smart Activity Tracker, a FitBit-style device for keeping track of your activity.

The Withings Smart Body Analyzer will be hitting stores in Q1 2013 and retails for $149.95, and also does weight and body fat readings like the existing versions, and beams all that info either over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to its companion app for iOS or Android. The scale can also detect air quality, and is intended to be used in a bedroom so that you can check its readings to figure out when you need to open a window to increase air flow.

The Withings Smart Activity Tracker is like the Jawbone Up, FitBit One, etc. It’s tiny, and it’s hard to convey just how small in words, but you can check it out in the video about for a better idea. Besides being incredibly small, which is a big advantage for a device you have to wear with you constantly, it also connects to your iOS and Android devices via Bluetooth, has an on-device display and can send you alerts.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Sometimes startups shut down fast, and in the case of new online scrapbooking maker Irrive, which only launched this past September, the company had barely even gotten started before closing up shop. According to CEO Steven Cohn, who sold his last startup to LivingSocial, he made the decision to quickly pivot (his word, not mine, by the way), because even though Irrive’s metrics were good, the viral event of sharing a scrapbook was too infrequent an action.

“I didn’t feel we would get the scale we needed to build a big business,” he says. “So we are pivoting while we still have the resources to achieve success.” The new product he’s building is in the B2B space, and Cohn declined to provide further details, only saying that none of Irrive’s previous technology would be used in the new creation.

Irrive was too young to ever gain real traction, but it was offering a fairly attractive site where users could create online scrapbooks of life events, like parties, weddings, vacations, etc. Now users have until January 31 to retrieve their photos. And yes, only their photos. According to the email sent out to Irrive’s user base, users are now instructed to login to Irrive, click on a scrapbook, hover over an images and click on “download original photo.”

So much for your customization efforts, folks.

While I’m sure that Cohn is doing the right thing for his company, it’s representative of a larger trend in the photo-sharing space which users should be aware of, before committing their time to these services. In around a year’s time, ZangZing has gone, Gush folded, ThisLife just sold to Shutterfly, and Snapjoy went to Dropbox, for example. PictureLife, meanwhile, is newly funded, and Everpix is also still hanging in there. The two are offering different services – the former is about aggregation and photo storage, while the latter is about extracting the signal (good photos) from the noise (your giant photo archive). 500px seems to be doing okay, too. But for how long?

“Still existing” doesn’t necessarily mean there haven’t been exit opportunities for startups building in the photo-sharing space, and at some point, early adopters will likely get burned when their favorite photo startups hit the end of their runway or are approached with an offer they can’t refuse. (Unless the community has already achieved the scale of something like Instagram, of course, which is rare.)

For something like photos – and specifically, companies who encourage you to “create” using your photos, as Irrive did – you have to wonder if it was even worth it? Maybe you should have just stuck with iPhoto/Picasa/Flickr/Dropbox, etc. and printed out those pictures you cared about at Walgreens for safe keeping. It’s an increasingly risky game to spend your time handing over your photos to early-stage companies, then building new things, in the hopes that your nifty collages, scrapbooks, mashups, videos, organized collections, etc., will be around long-term.

Feel free to enjoy, I suppose, but maybe print out a screenshot before you go.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

AppTrailers, an app that rewards users for watching videos that promote other apps, just released an update with a new “Free Today” section. The section will highlight one app per day — either a paid app being offered for free or a freemium app with normally a paid virtual that’s being provided for free.

“Free app of the day” promotions have become pretty common, so I asked Sheffield Nolan, CEO of AppTrailers maker AppRedeem, what he’s doing differently. The real advantage, he said, is the scale that AppTrailers has already achieved. He’s also announcing that it now has 6.5 million members.

“We decided to add the Daily Free App to AppTrailers due to the demand we have had from our members and our advertisers for a high volume, app launch service,” Nolan told me via email. “There are other Daily Free App promotional apps out there, but none with the scale we can offer from day 1.”

Nolan also said that AppTrailers has consistently delivered more than 15,000 new users to developers every day, and that more than 90 percent of Apple’s top 100 grossing apps were released by AppTrailers customers. Those customers include Ngmoco, Zynga, Pocket Gems, GREE, Disney, and others. Revenue, meanwhile, has grown by 100 percent quarter over quarter, Nolan said.

AppRedeem has raised $750,000 from SV Angel and Blue Run Ventures. You can download AppTrailers for iOS here and for Android here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

ScaleBase, a Newton, Mass.-based startup that helps companies keep fast-scaling databases up-and-running, today announced that it has landed $10.5 million in series B funding, led by Bain Capital Ventures and Ascent Venture Partners, with participation from its existing investor, Cedar Fund. Having raised $4 million from Cedar in 2010, the investment brings the startup’s total funding to just under $15 million.

As scores of new web and mobile apps launch every day, increasingly companies are finding themselves working overtime to manage the intense processing requirements of big data and struggling to preserve up-time. For this reason, ScaleBase sees a big market opportunity for any company offering uninterrupted database performance solutions.

Being able to deliver realtime scalability obviously can have a big effect on application performance and has the benefit of reducing over-provisioning, which has the tendency to eat holes in the company coffers.

While it’s an auspicious problem for a company to have, exploding user bases and, in turn, significant increases in data production, require companies to move fast to scale their databases. Naturally, processing these transactions can be stressful and ridiculously challenging depending on infrastructure and available resources.

More established players had to create ad hoc, internal solutions to solve these problems, but not every company is fortunate to have the available capital that scaling demands. That’s where ScaleBase comes in. As one might expect, high-growth and increasingly active spaces like online gaming and digital media represent big market opportunities for the company.

To date, ScaleBase has attracted over 20 customers including the likes of AutoDesk, AppDynamics, Mozilla and “one of the world’s largest mobile providers who asked not to be named,” said ScaleBase founder and CTO, Doron Levari.

The other key feature of ScaleBase’s technology (and its flagship product, “Data Traffic Manager”) is that they work with a company’s existing infrastructure and therefore don’t require them to re-write their applications. Since the software solution acts as a proxy between the client and the database (whether the client is an app server, BI tool or any other database client), it can reside on site or in the cloud.

That flexibility and scalability add to the startup’s value proposition, especially in a space that’s littered with competitors. The company’s newly-hired CEO Ram Metser said that he thinks the company has appeal for high-growth businesses because many of the players in the space require a new database install, with DBAs having to reshape databases and app developers having to modify apps to fit the system. Which, in turn, just adds extra stress to the system.

To play in this space going forward, companies will have to be able to process enormous amounts of data and users instantaneously, the CEO said, and, of course, ScaleBase wants to be your go-to solution to ye olde scalability challenge.

The startup’s new CEO, Ram Metser, was the former CEO of Guardium, a database security company acquired by IBM in 2009 for $225 million.

As to the company’s new infusion of capital? Metser said that ScaleBase will use it, primarily, to grow its team and ramp up hiring. He wants to grow the company from 15 to 40 employees by this time next year.

For more, find ScaleBase at home here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google rolled out its own integrated, social review system for businesses with Google+ Local in May of this year. Not only was this a nice addition for Google+, but it finally utilized Google’s acquisition of Zagat. Having said that, I haven’t used the service all that much, because there’s some usability issues there.

The team seems to be working on some of those issues and rolled out some changes to how it asks you to rate a restaurant, for example. Rating systems are a pain, because you never really know what to say. For a 1 to 5 system, I often ask myself “is 5 really super awesome, or just good enough?” These are things that cloud these final ratings, making them not so useful for those who come along and read them.

Google has decided to get rid of the number system for reviewing a venue, and replaced it with a scale that makes a bit more sense, ranging from poor to excellent. Google will then do the heavy lifting on calculating a useful score.

Here’s what Megan Stevenson from Google had to say about the changes:

Today it’s easier than ever to write accurate, useful reviews on Google+ Local, thanks to the updated rating scale we rolled out. If you want to rate the food at a restaurant, or the quality of a mechanic, just choose “poor – fair,” “good,” “very good,” or “excellent”. Behind the scenes, we’ll convert your ratings into numbers and factor them into the business’ precise 30-point score that shows up in Google+, Search and Maps.

Give it a try! Click on the Google+ Local icon in the left navigation bar, search for a local spot and click “Write a review.” Happy reviewing!

I’m really fascinated with sentiment analysis, and unfortunately there’s no way to really find out how people “feel” about something when you’re interfacing with the Internet. However, companies like Path do a really great job of that by offering up things like smiley faces and hearts. While Google isn’t going that route, I think that this is a huge upgrade:

The other nice recent addition is that you can see reviews that your friends have made by visiting their profile. It’s something that the team removed, but it has returned, luckily.

Seeing reviews that others have left, if they want to expose that, is a great way to find new places to check out, and also plants the seed that you should also review a place to help the next person out.

As far as ratings, or basically everything really, I don’t think in numbers, and I am more likely to rate a place that I’ve eaten at when presented with actual words to express my feelings. Unfortunately, there’s no option for “absolute suckage”, which is a phrase that I tend to use to explain a really bad experience.

Oh well, maybe next time.

[Photo credit: Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Our boss Jay Kirsch often refers to TechCrunch as “Forbes during the sixties,” a description that royally annoys me because I think TechCrunch is just TechCrunch during the 2010s.

He also thinks that we actually have a job to do in convincing mainstream audiences to care about technology, or more specifically Consumer Internet technology, which also annoys me, because as far as I’m concerned Consumer tech culture is the new mainstream culture — i.e. more people are talking about the iPhone 5

Fitbit has consistently proven to be the best smart pedometer on the market. Competitors exist, including the excellent Striiv, but the ease of use and portability of this little pedometer clip beats them all. In short, Fitbits just work.

With the launch of the Aria wireless scale, Fitbit has added another sensor in the panoply of health data available to high-tech health nuts. This innocuous-looking device takes both your weight and your body fat percentage and automatically sends it to the Fitbit website for later perusal. Like the mini-pedometer, these readings help you understand your current health status and remind you, ceaselessly and without mercy, of your – well, my – failures as a biological entity.

The Aria supports up to 8 users and it senses uses based on previous weight measurements. When the wife or kids hop on, you see their readings (if shared) pop up in the main user’s account. To take body fat percentage measurements you need to take your weight reading with your socks off. Once the Aria senses your vitals it transmits them via WiFi to the server.

The service, in all honesty, couldn’t be easier to set up. In setup mode you simply connect to a WiFi access point that the scale creates initially. You connect to the access point, tell the scale your local Wi-Fi information, and save your settings. Then all you have to do is change batteries occasionally. The screen is easy to read – it’s blue on black, similar to the Fitbit’s OLED screen – and the instructions are simple. Readings are taken in a few seconds.

I didn’t have long to test the scale, but in comparison to similar devices (remember the Tweeting scale?), this device is superior. Because there is no real set up involved, it’s perfect for the technically averse and those who may want to set this up for a loved one in order to help monitor weight loss.

These things work by making you actually think about your weight and exercise. Rather being offered some nebulous terms like “working out” and “shedding pounds,” these devices offer feedback as bluntly and as clearly as possible.
Click to view slideshow.
Product Page

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I have to confess that when I think about GE, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t radical innovation. But, as usual, I might be wrong. As GE’s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, told me when we met at The Economist‘s stimulating Innovation event last week, GE is actually totally committed to creating radically new structures of organization. As what Comstock calls the “world’s oldest start-up,” the 130 year-old company has the scale, she says, to be both nimble and agile. Indeed, she even boasts of GE doing away with traditional organizational hierarchy in some of its many manufacturing businesses so that it can generate more innovation.

But why should TechCrunch readers care about GE? According to Comstock, partnership is a “big theme” and GE is not only committed to working with high-tech startups in everything from healthcare to education, but also into embracing the Internet. Paradoxically, then, it may be America’s oldest companies like GE which are most suited to pivoting and pirouetting amidst the creative destruction of our innovation economy.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Fitness technology startup and TechCrunch 50 finalist Fitbit has raised $12 Million in Series C funding from existing investors Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures.

The company offers a device called the Fitbit Tracker and a companion web-based fitness data aggregation technology that tracks weight, nutrition, exercise, sleeping schedules and other health related data for users (you can read more about how Fitbit works here.)

The Fitbit Tracker is a compact wearable device that clips onto clothing or slips into a pocket and captures, through accelerometer technology, information about daily health activities, such as steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, exercise intensity levels and sleep quality.

The activity data collected by the Fitbit Tracker can then be wirelessly uploaded to the Fitbit website where users access all of the data and track progress toward personal and group goals. Users can also log nutrition, weight and other health information on the site in order to gain a complete picture of their health. The Fitbit API, which was released last year, allows third-party developers to integrate Fitbit data in their own applications, products and services and also to read and write data for users’ Fitbit activities, food logs and other data in real time.

Last Fall, Fitbit debuted a new version of its tracking device, called the Ultra. The device’s successor is slightly more accurate than the old version and also measures exercises better including more aerobic activities like floor workouts and running.

And at CES a few weeks ago, Fitbit debuted a new contraption—a wi-fi enabled scale called the Aria. The Aria, which costs $129.99, will transmit both weight and body fat measurements wirelessly to your FitBit account. In terms of measuring body fat, the scale has four transparent electrodes which shoot a safe low current through body and measures resistance to current, determining how much body fat you have.

You simply open up the Fitbit iOS or Android app via your mobile phone when close to the scale and the Aria will transmit the data to your FitBit account. So you no longer need to manually input this data on the web (or mobile) and the platform can get a more accurate view of your fitness.

As founder James Park explains, consumers were asking for the ability to close the feedback loop and the scale allows for that. The Aria will ship in April, and will most probably also be included in a set package with the tracker. Currently, the FitBit is available in over 5,000 locations including Target, Best Buy, Brookstone and REI and Park says we can expect the Aria to be on sale in those locations. He adds that the FitBit Ultra is also now sold in Canada and the UK.

“We’ve moved beyond being a single product company and are creating incredible digital health products and experiences. This funding will help us accelerate the hiring of the best hardware and software engineers, designers, product managers and marketers,” Park explains.

The new capital will be used scale the Aria, and for additional hiring. Check out our TechCrunchTV video with TechCrunch’s John Biggs and Park from CES below.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch