The number 10,000 refers to how many steps you should take in a day to stay fit. And even though you may feel like you surely walk 10,000 steps between your desk and the printer every day, it’s probably closer to 90 steps, and that’s why you need a pedometer — to help you do the math.

Having an inaccurate pedometer is just as bad as having none at all. I once went to a conference in a large convention hall. As a little gift to attendees, the conference host handed out cheapie pedometers that we could use to measure how many miles we walked in a day, as we slogged along from one seminar room to another. A friend and I were comparing numbers, and we realized that we could easily hit the many tens of thousands of steps simply by doing jumping jacks a couple of times. Suddenly, that second brownie we thought we’d earned during breaktime sat heavy in our stomachs.

That’s why I’m curious about the Fitbit Tracker, a new product that launched during Techcrunch 50 and that will be available early in 2009 for $99.

This wireless, wearable gadget automatically tracks and wirelessly uploads data about your activities, such as exercise intensity levels, calories burned, sleep quality, steps, and distance. It’s tiny and clips onto your clothing.

The Tracker uses some kind of motion sensing technology to capture all moment-to-moment physical activity throughout the day and night. It also measures sleep quality to show how many hours of sleep you actually got in the night (vs. tossing and turning). The Tracker displays how you’re doing against goals in the form of an avatar that changes as you advance toward or fall behind in your goals.

The data that’s accumulated is uploaded to a free website, where you maintain your history and track your progress. It also lets you create groups to help spur each other on in your fitness endeavors.

According to the company that created the Fitbit Tracker, it’ll be accurate to about 95 to 97 percent for step-counting. In 10,000 steps, which represents about five miles of walking, you could still be off by around 500 steps at the most. But my thinking is, if you get that close to 10,000, chances are, you’ll still deserve that second brownie.

Posted on September 14th, 2008 by dian