LifeFitness Exercise Bike Interface

LifeFitness may have taken one too many creative liberties with its Cyberbike Wii accessory, but it did a laudable job of redeeming itself at Google I/O this week. The outfit brought a USB-equipped exercise bike to the show floor, where an Open Accessory-enabled Nexus S promptly stole the show. We were shown a demo of the CardioQuest app interfacing with the cycle over the aforementioned protocol; the bike itself had a heretofore unreleased firmware update installed that allowed it to interact with the phone, and we're told that said update will be available free of charge to existing customers in the coming weeks.

As was announced yesterday during the opening keynote, the Android Open Accessory API is currently only capable of handling communications over USB, but that didn't stop a clever game from keeping a booth representative mighty busy. The gist is pretty simple -- pedal harder to move the Android up, and relax your stride to see him float down. The goal is to avoid the surrounding walls, while also keeping your mind from focusing on the fact that you're actually burning calories. Mum's the word on whether or not this particular app will ever make it into the Android Market, but there's a video of the chaos waiting just after the break, regardless.

Take a Look: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/11/lifefitness-exercise-bike-interfaces-with-nexus-s-makes-fitness/

Turn everyday objects into touch-sensitive controllers

Take a look: http://gizmodo.com/5800596/turn-everyday-objects-into-touch+sensitive-controllers

What implications are there for physical education?

Touchscreen with No SCreen

Take a look at this: http://gizmodo.com/5801196/the-touchscreen-with-no-screen

What implications are there for physical education?

Top 10 Awesome Android Features that the iPhone Doesn’t Have

All of our software works on both platforms - take a look at http://shop.pesoftware.com

But, look at this list as well: http://lifehacker.com/5801862/top-10-awesome-android-features-that-the-iphone-doesnt-have

Google Launches Chrome 11

Chrome 11 is now available, the biggest changes being a number of security and bug fixes. The new version also delivers speech-to-text and text-to-speech.

Google Docs App for Android

Google's had a mobile-friendly version of Google Apps available for some time now, but it's now finally gone the extra step and released a dedicated Android app. That will of course let you access and edit your documents on your smartphone, but the real standout feature is the ability to capture text with your phone's camera and have it instantly made editable thanks to some optical character recognition. Google notes that won't work with handwriting or some fonts, but it promises it will get better over time. Hit up Android Market to try it out for yourself.

Take a look: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/27/google-docs-gets-an-android-app-lets-you-capture-text-with-your/

Minuscule PicoHD5.1 Media Player

The bantam PicoHD5.1 packs a lot of oomph into a pocket-sized device; on one side, there's room for a USB hard drive, thumb drive or SD card. On the reverse, you'll find HDMI / component outputs capable of piping whatever media you just plugged in onto your television or monitor. There's even support for 5.1 channel surround sound, and we're told that it's encased in aluminum -- you know, for those inevitable bumps and bruises. Is the "smallest HD multichannel media player" truly as spectacular as it sounds?

Take a look: http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/20/minuscule-picohd5-1-media-player-looks-like-a-card-reader-acts/