Stressed out? That’s not just a state of mind. Stress can wear you down and actually make you look older than you actually are.
Crystals have traditionally been the wearable of choice — just ask the Woodstock generation — purportedly providing subtle, passive stress reduction. But modern man wants more than that. Humans today crave tech-filled wrist-wear. Cue the WellBe, currently seeking funding on Indiegogo, a bracelet that monitors your stress and helps you control it.
WellBe measures your calmness levels allowing you to see how what you’re doing affects you, from your rush-hour commute home to peaceful meditation in your bedroom. It monitors your heart rate for three minutes an hour and uses a patent-pending algorithm to determine stress levels based on time, location, and human interactions. The app relies on your calendar and GPS location in conjunction with your heart rate to determine how close you are to snapping.
The WellBe app responds by getting your phone to alert you when your stress levels get dangerous (to you and to that guy who just cut you off in traffic) with “mindfulness” exercises like meditation, focused breathing, and guided imagination. It provides a personalized list of programs that can help you; it’s like Lumosity for stress.
The WellBe folks have also partnered with the Mentor’s Channel to provide programs tailored to stress reduction and learning meditative techniques. The programs are available in 7, 14, and 21 day plans from mentors that can help you form these practices into good habits, perhaps getting rid of some bad ones.
The WellBe isn’t the world’s first emo bracelet where the important crystals are on the inside. Hopefully this isn’t a poor-man’s Olive: It appears to meet similar needs but doesn’t read ambient light, detect your sweat, or provide haptic feedback. One could argue it’s at least better looking, as well as more environmentally friendly, since it’s constructed of cork instead of aluminum and plastic. It also has the mentor programs going for it.
The Indiegogo campaign is still going and has hit 75 percent with more than 20 days to go, and you can back WellBe for a discount on the finished product. Also on offer is a trip to Jerusalem where you meet the founders and practice your calmness techniques.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.