VentureBeat

Fitbit, the maker of a small device that tracks how many calories you’ve burned, has raised $2 million in a first round of funding. The San Francisco company was a hit among judges when it launched at the TechCrunch50 conference, and it plans to start selling its devices in early 2009.

There are other portable weight loss devices out there — for example, Weight Watchers offers its own mobile application. What’s exciting about Fitbit, however, is the extent to which the company says it will automate the process. You just clip the device to your clothes, and it tracks things like how many calories you burned through exercise and how well you slept. (Unfortunately, things are a little less automated on the food side; it looks like you’ll need to manually enter the foods you’ve eaten into the Fitbit website.) Then you can view your health reports on the company’s site, and adjust your behavior accordingly.

The Fitbit Tracker will cost $99, and will be available for sale initially on the company’s website, says chief executive James Park. There are plans for a roll-out to retail stores later in the year. If the economic downturn continues, Fitbit may have picked the wrong time to launch a device that some might see as a luxury or a novelty, but Park says the company has kept the Fitbit Tracker relatively affordable.

The round was led by True Ventures, joined by Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC and a group of undisclosed angel investors.

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.]