Exist

Smart watches, helmets and bike locks: Quantified Self weekly links

Hardware

LOCK8

LOCK8 was previously a successful Kickstarter campaign and the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt Europe. The smart bicycle lock can be unlocked with your phone, integrates GPS/GSM to transmit your location (useful if your bike is lost or stolen), and charges as you ride. It also comes with an option to rent out your bike to other verified LOCK8 users.

The device is available for pre-order now, with delivery expected in the first quarter of 2015.

• MindRider: a helmet that maps how your brain responds to your bike route (Kickstarter)
• Arcus: motion analyser and fitness tracker ring (Kickstarter)
• Breathometer: a breathalyzer for your phone
• SplatterTec: T-shirts that change colour when wet (Kickstarter)

Apps

20 Day Stranger

This seems like a cool experiment:

The app (now in beta testing) partners two people, who live as far away from each other as possible, in an anonymous digital pen pal scenario. Every day for 20 days, each person gets messages alerting them to vague details about their partner’s life: When he wakes up in the morning, where she’s going, what the weather is like where that person lives. You remain anonymous to each other the entire time, until day 20 when you get the chance to send one 400 character message.

• Rove: lifelogging app, now available on iPad [iOS]
• Throwdown: fitness community [iOS]
• Moment: track how much time you spend on your phone [iOS]
• Equinox: a connected gym experience [iOS]
• EverythingMe: contextual launcher [Android]
• Numerous: follow and share numbers [iOS]

News

Withings unveils a slick fitness tracker disguised as an analog watch

The Activité is a watch—and a handsome one at that. But its dials appear analog, not digital, and it was made in Switzerland. Unlike a traditional luxury timepiece, the display masks an accelerometer instead of cogs, to track the wearer’s steps taken and hours slept. Settings provided by the user help calculate calories burned, and all of that data is streamed back to the Withings Health Mate app. The only giveaway that the Activité can do more than the average watch is a smaller, secondary dial: over the course of a day, a hand ticks from 0 to 100, showing your progress.

• The next Fitbits uncovered: heart-rate sensors, gps info, atmospheric tracking, and smartphone notifications
• Pebble watch partners with Misfit for new fitness tracking app
• Chicago is getting lamp posts that count people and track pollution
• Fitbit fitness tracker receiving Windows Phone support

Articles

Larry Page on Google’s many arms

Once we see the utility in the new stuff, we often realize that it isn’t as scary as we once thought — and soon may realize we can’t live without it. "In the early days of Street View, this was a huge issue, but it’s not really a huge issue now," Mr. Page said of the company’s project to send a fleet of cars across the globe to snap photographs of public roadways. "People understand it now and it’s very useful," he said. "And it doesn’t really change your privacy that much. A lot of these things are like that."

• Making art out of the data of everyday life
• Tiny, automated cameras are latest ‘quantified self’ toys
• The internet of things is going to have to do better than this ridiculous "smart cup"
• APIs everywhere (a Flipboard magazine full of news about APIs)
• Quirky to create a smart-home products company
• Ten days with Muse: Head-on with the brain-sensing wearable

Image credits: LOCK8, 20 Day Stranger, Wired