Gadgetory

well this is Brian from The Verge and this is the Nike+ FuelBand it's a bracelet that you wear 24 hours a day and it uses a three axis accelerometer to monitor the steps you're taking the calories you're burning and a new metric that Nike is calling Nike Fuel the device itself is pretty straightforward it's a black rubber band with a single button with the Bank of LEDs as the primary display a strip of colored lights let you see how close you are to hitting your daily goal of accumulating fuel and when you cross that there's a nice goal animation with some digital fireworks the way fuel is calculated is actually pretty cool the band is able to recognize specific types of gestures in motion and then uses that information to determine the amount of fuel you're earning using Nikes own algorithms there's a companion iOS app and web portal on Nikes website the app syncs for your Bluetooth which is a big step up from something like Jawbone's up Fitness band and it gives you a graph indicating your progress over the day week and month a number of different achievements are also built into the system so if you meet your daily fuel goal hit a certain threshold you'll get a notification with some pretty intense animations these can all be shared via Facebook or Twitter as well if that's your thing the website component pretty much contains the same content though at the moment it's not integrated with the Nike Plus website the company already maintains well both the app and website are useful it does definitely feel like Nike could do a little bit more here and we're hoping we see some more sophisticated use of the fuel bands data and some deeper social networking integration when the web interface gets an overhaul this summer there's a fuel band app coming to Android around the same time as well using a new metric that doesn't have the baggage or something like calories actually makes the fuel band a lot more fun to use than competing products is probably not going to interest hardcore athletes but there's a much broader possible audience out there for something like the fuel band by covering everything from wind sprints to walking your dog Nike Fuel allows those that wouldn't necessarily consider themselves athletic to participate the fuel band is also in the cooler watch replaces that we've seen that said at $149 it's not cheap but if you're looking for a fun way to encourage yourself to be more active the Nike Plus fuel band is definitely worth a long look