Personal Health Tech
Message from Jeremy: To all Tech IT Easy readers, who could obviously not necessarily remember the initial announcement, I have invited my friend Kari to write … about stuff that happens to interest him at the moment.
As the weather is getting more warmer here in Helsinki, I’ve started to pick up my running and cycling habits. The long winter has had a serious effect on my condition.
This spring, I’m prepared with two Finnish high-tech products, which should help me train more efficiently and get back in to good condition.
First, I really like my new Karhu M-Series running shoes. Many companies advertise their products to be revolutionary, but few can back up these facts with university research like Karhu can. Karhu is one of the oldest cross-country ski manufacturer in the world, since 1916. But back to the running business, the first thing (after the huge M-logo on side) you notice about these shoes is that they look like a blast from the past. They look smaller, narrower, lighter and, well, like “not-so-techy” when compared to your average huge white-with-neon-strikes running shoe (like the ones you’re probably wearing right now). One of the reasons is that there’s no air cushioning, Karhu abandoned that idea in the late-80’s. This is something Nike realized only couple of years ago and entered the market with their Nike Free -series of stripped-down running shoes. The latest research shows that extensive support and cushioning is actually bad for your feet. Apparently the best way to train your feet to running is to run bare-footed, which of course is a bad revelation if you’re a running shoe company…
Anyway, these shoes motivate me a lot. And I’m not alone, “Team Karhu” is full of famous people.
Second, I wanted to get more information about my training and that’s why I got a Suunto T3 heart rate monitor. It uses a chest strap transmitter, invented by the founder of another Finnish company, Polar, in 1982. (Suunto’s founder, on the other hand, invented the liquid-filled compass in 1936) These two companies battled out in court about the patents involved in this nice innovation. You might have heard lately about Personal Area Networks and such, but as you can see, there have been applications long before USB and Bluetooth. There are lots of different devices in both companies product range, which enable one to train more efficiently and follow-up the results. I went for T3, because first of all, it looks nice and can be easily outside running track. It has all the watch/alarm functions you normally expect. All in all, the T3 has all the features I need. For the the ultimate HRM geek, there’s the T6, which has so much more functionality, but it’s also a lot more expensive. Of course, if you’re into diving, golfing, sailing or trekking, or if you just want to look like one, Suunto’s got you covered with pretty stylish offerings. For example, take a look at X9i – it has pretty much everything.
The T-series “watches” also support accessories, or PODs, for speed/distance information. You can add a foot pod (similar to the Nike+ thing with iPod Nano), but also a bike pod and a GPS pod. There’s also a PC connectivity pod (and only PC, no Mac support available. This is a real shame and it’s amazing Suunto doesn’t do anything about it even when the most popular discussion on its message board is about Mac support) so you can upload your training data to your PC and to Suunto’s website (similar to Nike+ but not as smooth). Suunto also offers a nice training guidebook (PDF) to help you out planning your training. This is all really cool, as it’s all wireless and easy to use, all thanks to ANT. As a nerd, I’m of course interested in the extra data a foot or bike pod would give me, but, honestly, as long as I can’t upload the data to my Mac, I can’t see any use for them… other than the obvious gadget nerd factor.
The funniest thing is, I didn’t choose these products because they’re “Finnish”, but because they’re, and I don’t think I’m alone with this opinion, really good, high-quality products with reasonable price, yet full of true high-tech. What’s even more amazing is that we’re talking about companies with a long history of innovations and R&D.
In the end, I’d like to share a bit of trivia. Amer Sports (or more accurately Amer Group), the owner of various international sports brands such as Suunto, Salomon, Wilson (but not Tom Hanks) and Atomic, began its life as Amer-Tupakka (Amer Tobacco) in 1950, to manufacture and distribute American-style tobacco products in Finland. They also held Philip Morris’s license and the tobacco business until 2000, when they committed themselves to sports and finally sold off the profitable tobacco unit. What’s even more interesting is that one of the founding organizations was the student union of my former university, the Helsinki School of Economics.
Pretty surprising, isn’t it?
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Kari, that is an AMAZING post.
I think you should get paid to advertise for these brands + get a commission on all sales generated through these recommendations.
1) Excellent post, definitely. I especially liked this oned “The latest research shows that extensive support and cushioning is actually bad for your feet. Apparently the best way to train your feet to running is to run bare-footed, which of course is a bad revelation if you’re a running shoe company…
”
Reminds me an interesting chronicle by French XIXth century humorist Alphonse Allais, who invented a brand new industry: skinning the feet’s skin of poor people used to walk barefoot to produce highly resistant shoes for rich people.
2) At last, a post without any reference to Microsoft…you and I should work more.
you can’t sync your watch with your Mac, even through Parallels or Bootcamp ?
Jeremy, I just honestly think these products rock. I already bashed a service I use, so I thought I could promote couple I really like.
Steve, you know, I’m one of those _real_ Mac users, who’s still running on PowerPC, so no Parallels or Bootcamp available. My only option would be to pay for Microsoft Virtual PC + WinXP, which is slow as hell. They’d only need to release the driver for Mac/Linux and the community would take care of everything else. There’s an unofficial driver for T6 somewhere.
Interesting product-reviews. I was actually planning to write about the “barefoot revolution (http://www.runningbarefoot.org/)” on Friday but my webmaster killed my server for (hopefully just) the weekend.
I’ll definitely check out the shoes if I can find them.
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amazing stuff thanx