David Pogue reviews two fitness armbands, the Nike Fuel Band and the Jawbone Up. He prefers the former, but appears impressed by neither.

The Nike band is polished and professional, it has that awesome screen and the wireless Bluetooth syncing is the way to go. This pony performs its trick brilliantly, but it’s still just one trick. The Up band is saddled by its goofy headphone-jack syncing method and rather weird software design.

I looked at these recently and came to the same conclusion: the wristband pedometers are great gadgets, but limited by bizarre software. Nike's, for example, wants you to focus on some weird "Nike Fuel" metric based on "oxygen kinetics"--even if it isn't bullshit, it couldn't look more like it.

So, even though I wanted a band, I instead bought the Fitbit One, a traditional 'clip on' model. I'm not ready to recommend it yet, as I'm just a few days into using it, but at under $100 it's cheaper than the other brands. It does come with a wristband into which it can be slotted, but the band is stretchy black gymwear and clearly not as pretty as the gadgets from Nike and Jawbone. The Fitbit One's wireless background sync works perfectly—the Jawbone wristband doesn't even have wireless, and must be taken off and plugged in!— and it's cool to be able to just jump into a smartphone app and see how long I've slept, how much I've eaten, and estimates of far I've walked and how many calories I've burned today.

Click here to play this episode. Gweek is Boing Boing's podcast about comic books, science fiction and fantasy, video games, board games, tools, gadgets, apps, and other neat stuff.

Every once in a while on Gweek, we take a break from talking about movies, science fiction, video games, and gadgets. This is one of those times. I spoke with Bruce W. Perry, the author of a brand new O’Reilly/Make book called Fitness for Geeks: Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health.

If you’re interested in how things work, Bruce’s book will help you experiment with one machine we usually ignore -- our body and its health. Bruce takes a science-based approach to fitness, and shows you healthy ways to tinker with your lifestyle, by using apps and gadgets to self-track your fitness, by creating the ratio of macro- and micro-nutrients work that best for you, and by applying biohacks, such as high-intensity exercise and good stress to your system.

Adrian from Six to Start sez, "We just launched a Kickstarter project for a new running game called 'Zombies, Run!' we're developing for iOS and Android. In the game, you help rebuild civilisation after a zombie apocalypse by going out and running in the real world. As you run, you can collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts that you can use to build up and expand your base - all while getting orders, clues, and story through your headphones. We've already raised over 60% of the funds from over 200 backers, so we're pretty sure it's going to happen now, but we have some super-neat rewards like people being able to contribute their best zombie-groan to the game, and also becoming one of the RUNNERS."

ZOMBIES, RUN! Running game & audio adventure for iOS/Android (Thanks, Adrian!)

A open Indian database of all yoga postures will go live soon. It's intended to serve as a reference for patent and copyright offices around the world who are petitioned by the likes of Bikram Choudhury with patent and copyright applications for individual postures and sequences of postures. The Times of India article is somewhat confusing in that it mixes patent and copyright freely. I haven't heard of patents being granted on yoga postures, but there have been many stories about the controversial practice of copyright offices allowing registration of choreography copyrights for sequences of postures:

In order to stop self-styled yoga gurus from claiming copyright to ancient `asanas', like Bikram Choudhury's Hot Yoga -- a set of 26 sequences practised in a heated room -- India has completed documenting 1,300 'asanas' which will soon be uploaded on the country's Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), making them public knowledge.

Around 250 of these `asanas' have also been made into video clips with an expert performing them.

According to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research ( CSIR) and Union health ministry's department of Ayush, "once the database is up online, patent offices across the world will have a reference point to check on everytime a yoga guru claims patent on a particluar `asana'."

CSIR's Dr V P Gupta, who created TKDL, told TOI, "All the 26 sequences which are part of Hot Yoga have been mentioned in Indian yoga books written thousands of years ago."

He added, "However, we will not legally challenge Choudhury. By putting the information in the public domain, TKDL will be a one-stop reference point for patent offices across the world. Every time, somebody applies for a patent on yoga, the office can check which ancient Indian book first mentioned it and cancel the application."

India pulls the plug on yoga as business (Thanks, Msikk, via Submitterator!)

(Image: Bikram Yoga - with Bikram Choudhury, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from tiarescott's photostream)