BodyMedia is launching a cool looking health-tracking band that you can wear on your arm. The new BodyMedia Core 2 band packs four sensors into a small housing.

We’ll see a lot of such health-tracking devices at the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas, where press events are already underway. But BodyMedia promises it will be the smallest wearable multi-sensor device of its kind and the first to offer a choice of interchangeable jewelry.

The housing for the device is smaller than an iPod Nano music player, and you can attach cool looking faceplates, straps, and cuffs to make it look more fashionable. It features sensors to measure heart rate, temperature, heat flux, galvanic skin response (sweat), and motion. The three-axis accelerometer gets an accurate measure of your steps. Altogether, the system uses the data from the sensors to calculate your calorie burn, exercise intensity, and sleep patterns.

The original Core armband was used on The Biggest Loser television show to track the fitness of contestants. The new device has energy-saving Bluetooth Smart technology that allows it to send activity updates to your smartphone or tablet. It can do so with longer battery life.

With the smartphone and tablet, you can use an app that makes sense of the data and interprets it so you can make smarter decisions about food, exercise, and other things health-related. The company is showing a prototype at CES for the first time today, but the new model won’t ship until August.

The system is not unlike the just-launched Basis Health Tracker from Basis Science. Other rivals have also hit the market, but BodyMedia has upped the ante by adding so many sensors, which capture more than 5,000 data points per minute. The heart-rate monitor is an extra option that you have to purchase separately. The monitor is included in an accessory strap with an embedded heart-rate sensor.

Besides the armband, the system comes with a free mobile app, an online Activity Manager that you can log into via the web, and personalized feedback with the BodyMedia FIT coach. The web site gives you historical data about your activity and sleep, with dietary adjustment recommendations based on your weight goals.

BodyMedia says its earlier monitoring technology has been clinically validated, improving weight loss up to three times over behavioral support alone. It is FDA-registered as a medical device. BodyMedia was founded in 1999 and is based in Pittsburgh, Pa. CES press events are being held Sunday and Monday, and the show floor opens on Tuesday.

If you’ve ever tried to get a single video game controller to work with your smartphone, tablet, laptop, and TV, you’ve probably come away frustrated. To deal with that, game peripheral maker Mad Catz Interactive has proposed its GameSmart initiative to make it possible to use wireless peripherals across all major platforms.

It’s a big idea and will require a lot of industry support, including integration by the makers of operating systems such as iOS and Android, said Darren Richardson, the president and chief executive of Mad Catz, in an interview with GamesBeat. In the larger picture, the effort could make it easier to play games across your TV, PC, smartphones, and tablets.

Richardson said MadCatz has made good headway with the technology and will announce GameSmart products next week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The technology functions through the latest Bluetooth wireless connection technology, known as Bluetooth Smart. Apple and Samsung already use this technology for connecting devices to their newest smartphones and tablets.

Mad Catz says that GameSmart devices will have simplified setup, longer battery life, and universal compatibility across hardware platforms. If you buy a GameSmart controller, you’ll be able to use it much like you can when you buy a computer mouse, which plugs into any PC and just works. That’s the vision, anyway. But first, Mad Catz needs to gather a consortium of allies together to support the GameSmart initiative. Richardson said the effort is open and not proprietary, so other game peripheral makers could join it if they want.

This tech wouldn’t work with the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Wii U, which don’t use Bluetooth Smart — though this could appear in the upcoming generation of consoles. But Mad Catz said the main platform targets are smartphones, tablets, smart TV’s and cloud based gaming services.

“We are working with chip suppliers, platform owners, and the handset makers to make a much bigger protocol that provides simple connectivity for any device working with any hardware platform,” Richardson said. “The efficient way to do this is through changes in the operating systems.”

With GameSmart, San Diego-based Mad Catz hopes to get around the problem that many game developers and game controller makers are running into now. Right now, if someone makes a controller for a smartphone, the ordinary Bluetooth connection could drain the battery in the peripheral device too quickly. And if someone makes a game to work with a phone and controller, there is no guarantee that the game would work with a different phone or different controller.

“Smart devices have made considerable inroads in delivering all forms of entertainment including games, music, movies, books, and social media,” Richardson said. “Mobile gaming is a vibrant and exciting space and we don’t see controller-based games replacing touch screen games, we expect them to enhance and enlarge the smart device gaming experience to include the living room experience.”

Apple began adding Bluetooth Smart capability with the iPhone 4s model. The iPhone 5, MacBook Pro, iPad, and newest iPod touch are Bluetooth Smart ready. So is the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Motorola Droid RAZR. Richardson said he could not say which other companies he is working with now.

“This is a lot more ambitious than doing a closed microcosm of games that are supported by one hardware platform,” he said.

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