Stir Kinetic Desk, Created by Former iPod Engineer, Makes Other Standing Desks Look Boring

Standing desks are old news. How about a desk that breathes?

That's the idea behind the Stir Kinetic Desk, a new adjustable standing desk dreamed up by a former Apple iPod engineer.

The desk has a small touchscreen on the lower left-hand side of the desktop. Tap it twice, and the desk rises. Tap the screen again, and it sinks to sitting mode. A thermal sensor detects your presence.

Pressing a button on the desk cues up "active mode," which every so often reminds you to get up and slave away while standing, not sitting. It does this by breathing. It is seriously called Whisper Breath, not to be confused with Whispersync, Amazon's content-syncing feature. The desk rises and falls just slightly, as a nudge to stand up.

And the Stir is also Wi-Fi- and Bluetooth-connected, so it has the potential to sync with health and wellness apps like Fitbit.

But, for $3890, the Stir Kinetic desk had better do everything but make me a sandwich. Founder and CEO JP Labrosse said Stir is an investment. Think of it like a mattress, he said, another household item some people will spend big bucks on because they're spending a third of their life on it. (Who are all these well-slept people?)

There are other motorized standing desks on the market that aren't quite as expensive - like the UpDesk and the NextDesk - but they won't learn your work habits over time, or connect to "smart" apps.

Stir, the company, launches out of stealth mode today; the desk is expected to start shipping early next year. The maplewood desk is made in Brooklyn, and comes in Apple white and Hipster espresso (color descriptions are mine, not Stir's).

These pictures really don't do it justice, so I recommend checking out the video below:

Garmin’s Vivofit Has Some Neat Features, But How Does It Compare To Other Wearables?

Wearable-Tech Fatigue and the New Fitbit Force

I had almost given up on all activity-tracking wristbands until I tried the new Fitbit Force.

You see, over the past year and a half I've tried a bunch of these wearable tech products, like the Jawbone Up, the Nike+ Fuelband, multiple Fitbits and others. A few months ago I even wore four at the same time, and compared how they interpreted my daily steps, sleep patterns, heart rate, food intake and more.

But then I fell off the wristband wagon. When life got super busy, the activity-tracking wristband was the first thing I ditched.

There are a few reasons for this. The first is that I moved out of New York City, where walking is almost by default a competition. I had no problem meeting my step goals there. Now I'm in a community where driving and biking are the most-used forms of transportation. (In fact, I'm probably a better test case now than I was before, for these get-up-and-move devices.)

Recharging the bands became a hassle. And they all come with proprietary chargers that are easy to misplace or lose.

Another reason is that some of these bands felt too high-maintenance after a while. While they auto-record some data, other data has to be manually logged into a compatible mobile app.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, considering how much attention some of them require, I felt like I wasn't getting enough back. Beyond my own self-motivation, few provided me with the habit-changing analysis or positive reinforcement that is promised with these bands. These were supposed to be "smart" bands, and yet they weren't really super-smart.

Despite all this, I decided to test yet another band this week, the new Fitbit Force, to see if it offers enough features to lure me back. This particular activity-tracking wristband costs $130, and hits the market in a couple weeks. It syncs your activity data to the Fitbit website and iOS and Android mobile apps.

Unlike Fitbit's previous Flex wristband, the Force has a display, tracks stair climbing and elevation (if you are, for example, running up a hill), and in the future it will wirelessly pair with iOS 7 devices to show notifications from your mobile phone. In short, this is what the Fitbit Flex should have been.

After a week of using the Force, I can say it's a pretty cool activity-tracking band. It's simple, low-commitment and tracks a fair amount of data.

That said, it seems as though the whole product category has moved on to Activity Tracking 1.1, but hasn't quite graduated to Wearables 2.0. There is competition coming in from multiple directions now. Nike just announced a new FuelBand. There are - and will be more - smartwatches that show notifications from mobile devices and also track activities. There are also purpose-driven apps that run on that device you already have in your pocket, and those smartphone sensors are getting smarter.

There still isn't one product or solution that does it all really well.

I did not get to test how mobile notifications appear on the Force, because that software update isn't available yet from Fitbit. I think that will be a key part of its overall usefulness, if it works.

Setting up the Force is simple. You can plug the wristband into your laptop via USB, or pair it up with your smartphone using low-energy Bluetooth. The Fitbit apps and website are free to use, but for $50 a year you get more advanced analytics around your activities.

The Force is thicker and slightly heavier than the Flex wristband, to accommodate the display and the larger battery that powers it. But it didn't feel bulky or geeky to me. It comes in two colors, black and slate, and the OLED display is a slick strip, like a piece of black tape, across the top of the rubbery wristband.

The Force's clasp is the only thing that peeves me. I don't know why, but every morning I wrestle with two plastic prongs you squeeze through railroad-track-style gaps on the underside of the wristband.

On the left side of the band is a tiny button that you press to toggle through the information on the display. This includes the time of day, how many steps you've taken, how many miles you've traveled, how many calories you've burned and how many stairs you've climbed. The stair-climbing count seemed a little off at times, but having that number on my wrist still made me think to take the stairs more often (especially when there's an elevator right next to the staircase, as is the case at my apartment complex).

As with the initial set-up, syncing the data is super easy. On my iPhone 5, I turned on Bluetooth and left it on all week. Each morning, I would open up the Fitbit app and my data from the day before would wirelessly sync to the app. While I think Jawbone's Up app is fun, I really appreciate the clean interface of the Fitbit app. (And, like the Up app, Fitbit pulls in data from other apps, as well - like MyFitnessPal, Lose It! and MapMyRun.)

Fitbit tracks your food intake, but you have to manually enter that in, which I opted not to do this week. The Fitbit Force also tracks your sleep duration, but you have to set it to sleep mode at night by holding down the button and waiting for it to buzz.

With the older Fitbit wristband, users can remove a nut-sized dongle from the wristband and swap out bands. Not with the new Force: This wristband is all one piece. Mine is still in great shape after a week of use, though I've heard longtime users of the earlier Flex band complain that the rubber bands degrade over time, making the Flex's swap-out option appealing.

Fitbit said the Force's battery should last seven to 10 days, even with notifications running. In my experience, without receiving mobile notifications, the wristband has lasted more than seven days.

So, the Force still requires you to manually log your food, and it's not smart enough to just know when you're sleeping. It doesn't have a heart-rate sensor, skin sensors (for measuring heat flux or exertion levels). It doesn't pick up on activities like bike-riding, which I've been doing more of, and it's not waterproof enough for swimming. Side note: I also miss my watch, which is a nice, stylish watch.

As I said, this is the next step in activity-trackers, and it's baby steps. Still, I like the Fitbit Force. It might just get me back into activity-tracking gear.

A Week With The Sync Burn, A Battery-Powered Fitness Band

Fitness bands are a dime a dozen these days. Everyone has one, it seems, from audio manufacturers like Jawbone to upstarts like Fitbit and Basis. Now the EB Sports Group, a company that makes fitness devices under a number of brands including Everlast and Men's Health. I've historically been wary of "no name" bands like this one - bands that are created to cash in on a trend rather than from an effort to create a software/hardware ecosystem, but I'll give this unit a pass for a few reasons.

The most interesting aspect of the Burn is its 1-year battery life. As a regular Fitbit user, I would kill for a device with a fully readable screen that can last longer than two weeks, let alone 365 days. The device is basically a digital watch and is about the size of the Pebble smart watch. The button on the top right controls the readout - you can tag workouts, see your hourly energy expenditure, and see exercise history. The lower right button activates the sync features which, in turn, activates a low energy Bluetooth transmitter.

There is a central button on the bottom of the watch that doubles as a read-out control and heart rate monitor. You can scroll through calories burned, steps taken, and miles walked. If you press and hold the button, however, the watch measures your heart rate. This, in turn, helps estimate calories burned. It's a wonky system and you have to press fairly hard with your thumb to get a reading but - and this is important - it works 99% of the time and helps conserve the battery.

The Burn is a product of trade-offs. It is a unique product - a quick visit to Alibaba didn't turn up any similar, unbadged watches - and I'm pleased with the battery life and simplicity of use. To really get the most out of the device, however, you can sync it with an app called MapMyFitness, a free app (with a $29.99/hear training add-on that comes free with the watch for six months) that tracks your runs. By syncing with the app you can simply add your daily walks to the MapMyFitness database. You essentially get a screen like this:

Obviously this isn't much better than any similar pedometer product but the heartrate monitor built in puts it on par with more expensive devices, like the Basis, and the lower-priced, $99 Withings Pulse. At $130, however, I'm hard pressed to recommend this over, say, a Fitbit Flex or the Pulse. Because of the odd choice to support only MapMyFitness, a popular but not particularly well-integrated piece of software, and the weird method for actually measuring the heart rate, the watch could end up being more trouble than its worth.

I used this primarily as a pedometer, checking my heartrate rarely during the day. To sit there and press and hold a thumb on the sensor is unfortunately too distracting while, say, taking or a walk or going to the gym. I far preferred the Basis' always-on sensor or even the Fitbit's overall passivity.

In terms of styling the Burn looks like any other sports watch with a nice red and black color scheme. The screen is a bit dark and unreadable at acute angles but I always enjoyed being able to read my steps taken with a simple direct glance at the watch, something almost none of the other fitness devices offer.

What's the bottom line? If you're a fan of MapMyFitness, this could be a solid addition to your regimen. If you're a fan of a more developed ecosystem I'd recommend the Basis, Nike+, or Fitbit over this device. It's a clever, nicely built sport-watch/fitness band but it just doesn't have the depth of data and support afforded by other devices.