TC50: Health device company FitBit is a hit, and other startups from the mobility panel
FitBit — making America healthier
FitBit sells a wireless device that tracks your health-related activities, such as calories burned during exercise, sleep activity and calories taken in while eating (obviously, a lot of this involves some educated guesses). The data is then uploaded to a website, where users can see their progress towards different health goals.
The FitBit device costs $99, and the company also plans to charge for premium services. Interestingly, although Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera got the strongest audience response, the expert panelists seemed more favorable towards FitBit, which did a better job of convincing them it’s a company with a real product and a real business plan, not just a cool idea. I also give FitBit points for revealing this interesting fact during its presentation: The average donut now contains 120 more calories than it did 20 years ago. Chief executive James Park says he has lost 15 pounds since he started testing FitBit.
Mytopia — helping the world play together
Mytopia has developed a programming framework called RUGS that helps developers make games available across multiple smartphones. The idea is that a developer could build one application, then make it available on multiple phones with very little extra work or money. The demo involved a single poker game that had been translated into three different programming languages for seven operating systems on 12 platforms — although, when pressed, chief executive Guy Ben-Artzi acknowledged that there’s a small sacrifice in performance. Mytopia has also created a virtual world for games that now has more than 1 million users.
Mobclix — make iPhone applications better
This is an analytics tool for iPhone developers. The company describes its service as “Google Analytics optimized for iPhone” and makes money through revenue-sharing deals with developers. Mobclix says it can give you data to improve your application in 15 minutes. There are plans to add support for other devices.
[Note: I wrote a separate article about Sekai Camera, a service for tagging real-world objects.]
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About the Author, Anthony Ha
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.
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