West Florida Components

healthy lifestyle by tracking sleep exercise activity and food

Imagine being able to track every calorie you burn, every calorie you consume and every minute you are sleeping? We came across the Jawbone UP and are just amazed at the capabilities this app possesses. It needs to be coupled with the UP wristband to function (available on their site for about $129 or on ebay for less than $100). The app is compatible with iPhone and Android.

Here’s some of the amazing features:

Sleep and nap tracking – it tracks your sleep including the amount of light sleep vs deep sleep.

Power Nap – need a power nap? UP will let you get one in and wake you up after the perfect amount of sleep is achieved (26.5 minutes according to the UP web site).

Smart Alarm – UP will wake you up at the best possible time in your sleep cycle – this will help you feel more awake and refreshed.

Food and Drink Tracker – helps you keep track of what you eat and drink to get the whole picture of your health.

Activity Tracker – UP tracks every calorie you burn, every activity you do.

There are many more features (like a mood tracker) that you can also monitor but the bottom line is that this system helps you keep track of every bit of your lifestyle and delivers information to help you live a healthier life and encourages you to keep moving forward. Sound interesting to you? We’re hooked! We love the idea and are placing our order today for our first one. We’ll keep you posted on our experience with it.

With its eyes firmly focused on the ebook market which is reportedly about $500 million in annual sales, Google has launched it’s ebookstore. A fast look at the ebookstore appears to make it a smart alternative to buying proprietary e-readers and ebooks like Amazon’s Kindle device.  At the beginning of 2010, Amazon held about 90% of the ebook market – a number that is estimated to drop to about 35% of the overall market in the next five years.

What is special about Google’s ebookstore?

Purchasing a book from their bookstore allows you the ability to use virtually any type of internet accessible electronic device to read your ebook purchased from the Google ebookstore. You can read books on Android devices (smartphones and tablets), iPhones, iPads, iPhone touch, any netbook, laptop or desktop computer and even the Nook from Barnes & Noble and the Sony Reader. Noticeably absent from this list is, of course, Amazon’s Kindle.

Google’s ebooks are stored in the cloud, so there is nothing to download (except maybe an app) if you are using a device connected to the web. And, since your ebooks are stored in your Google account, your page positions will sync across all the devices as you open each device to read.

Given the limitations of other devices such as Amazon’s Kindle which allows you to download your ebook to one device, Google has created a very flexible way to access your purchased reading material.

Look for new tablets to come from Samsung and Toshiba in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2010. Interestingly enough both the Samsung tablet and the Toshiba tablet will be running on Android software (sorry, Microsoft!).

Both Samsung and Toshiba are itching to capitalize on the portable tablet market that Apple created this year with the introduction of the iPad. Apple, which has sold over 3,000,000 iPads since this spring will keep the tablet crown for now as there are so many applications and components already released for the iPad and iPhone devices that it will take a while for the Android based tablets to catch up.

HP, Dell and LG are all said to have their own tablets in development but it is expected that the Toshiba and Samsung tablets will be the only ones to make an appearance in 2010.

The price of both the Samsung and Toshiba tablets has not been finalized but it is expected that they will be comparable to the iPad in price and features.

One notable difference with the Toshiba tablet is that it will have a larger screen than it’s iPad counterpart. What ever else may be different will have to wait until it’s closer to their release.

Research firm, Canalys, reports that Android platform smartphone sales increased an amazing 886% in the 2nd quarter.

An even bigger accomplishment is the fact that Android based phones now account for 34% of the market – topping all other platforms including Apple’s popular iPhone platform.

The press release from Canalys also reports that Android devices combined reached almost 475,000 units in Q2 2010 from no presence in the country a year ago. The Google-backed Android is available in phones from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG, among others.

In total, the US market for smartphones is the largest established market in the world, and it still continues to show rapid growth. In the 2nd quarter of 2010, there were 14.7 million smart phone units shipped.

Buy a smartphone in May, chances are that you can buy a bigger – better – upgraded – faster – prettier – cooler phone in June. It’s been that way for years with PCs and notebook computers so why should the smartphone market be any different?

I’m still waiting on my backordered HTC Incredible, but we already have 3 of them in service on our plan. They’ve quickly become the all-time favorite phone at West Florida Components. Powered by a 1GHz processor, these phones are fast! Other favorite features are the 8MP camera, the GPS and the large touch screen. We’re already watching and waiting to see what other gee-whiz features will be added on to this Android-based phone in V2 but we all agree the single biggest improvement they could make to this phone would be an improved battery. Then we won’t have to close down unused apps to preserve battery life.

One thing is for sure: by the time my backordered HTC Incredible finally arrives, the next ‘gotta-have-it’ phone will already be available. That gives me another 2 years to figure out which phone I just have to have next!