Further workout related uses for iPhones

A while back, the most well know athletic everything company and the most widely used smart everything company got together and synched up two of their products- the Nike+ footpod and the iPhone. Turns out, you can do more than just use this combo as a GPS watch replacement.

Cool App #1
In an earlier blog post the beats per minute (bpm) of music was mentioned as a way to increase your cadence to the golden 180 that is experienced by many of the top runners, but what about target heart rates? On nearly all exercise machines we see charts that detail which ranges we should shoot for for different types of workouts, but we were fully responsible for getting our heart rate to these ranges. Well, now a team of researchers led by Shahriar Nirjon at University of Virginia in Charlottesville are making this easier to accomplish by embedding a microphone into a set of headphones so that they can listen to your arterial pulse. Then, the current heart rate, the target heart rate, and the activity level (as gathered by accelerometers) are sent to a "recommendation engine" on the web to choose the next song.  It also learns as it is used what songs worked to raise or lower the user's heart rate.

Cool App #2
If you need to make sure your training is providing the cardiovascular benefits you were hoping for you can look to using  the Tinké from Zensorium. 

All you do is place your thumb on the sensor and the Tinké measures heart rate, blood oxygenation and respiratory rate.  Using this data the associated app calculates a "Vita Index" which it stores for later comparison.  It can also use fluctionations in heart rate to determine your "Zen Index".  The "Vita Index" and "Zen Index" can also be shared on facebook or Tinké's own network to allow you to compare your progress among other users.