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.]