Gizmodo: weight

Bathroom Pin Scale Makes Knowing Your Weight Twice as Painful

Sean Fallon — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:20:00 EDT

This bathroom scale by designer Jim Ruck takes a painful-looking approach to the simple act of weighing yourself in the morning. Instead of a platform, the users stands on thousands of pins.

Obviously, the tightly-packed pins mean that no real pain will be involved (outside of the trauma generated by the digital readout), but it would mean that your weight would be more evenly distributed across your feet. The concept is interesting, but it would be even better if it could mold to shapes like those desktop pin art gadgets from the 80's. That is, until your wife catches you trying to leave a print by weighing your ass. [Jim Ruck via Coolbuzz]

Asimov's Law Weighing Machines: Scales That Lie

Kit Eaton — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:51:58 EST

No one likes learning their weight from a set of scales, so Alice Wang's new concept devices take inspiration from Asimov's First Law of Robotics to protect you from the cruel truth. Her three scales are designed to not "harm a human being " (i.e. you) by either requiring another person to read them or just flat-out lying to you. Dieting would never feel the same again.

Feel like trusting someone else to be kind about your porkiness? The Half Truth design has a display on the front where you can't see it, leaving it up to someone else to read it and decide what to tell you. Not sure about the "harming a human" rule: this one may be a relationship-strainer.
Open Secrets doesn't have a display at all, instead transmitting data on your current fatness to someone else's mobile phone. You'd never even have to know the exact figure, which may be quite liberating.
And White Lies is the most devious. The further back on the scales you stand, the lighter you appear, so you can choose how much to let the scales lie to you.

Its nice to see a designer tackling a mundane object like bathroom scales, but I can advocate another weighing tactic to avoid upset: ban scales from your house altogether. Much simpler and cheaper all round. [Alice Wang via Dezeen]

Paper e-Ink Scale Design Looks Great on Paper, Might Not Be Practical

Jason Chen — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:47:47 EST

This e-paper bathroom scale idea from Duck Image Studio seems like a fantastic idea at first. It's e-ink, so it's thin, which means you can embed it into bath mats or floor tiles or maybe even into your shower. Imagine being able to see how much you weigh every time you bathed, or brushed your teeth, or took a leak (men only). You'd develop body image issues in record time. [Yanko Design]

Bathroom Egg Scale Wins Eggnoble Award

Jason Chen — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:15:53 EST

What better way to remind yourself that you're big boned than to get a bathroom scale that looks like it's made out of eggs. This, like the 20 second workout girl, lets our wives know what we really think.

Actually, if you replaced these faux eggs with real eggs, you could probably stand on them just fine providing you weren't too heavy and had large enough feet. Something about weight distribution. – Jason Chen

Product Page [ViceVersa via Popgadget]

Kids Get 40% More Calorie Burning Playing Wii Than 360, PS3

Jason Chen — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:00:36 EST

As a follow up to our post before about a lady complaining that her kids were playing sports on the Wii instead of out engaging in the real thing, here's a study from a Liverpool university that says kids burn 40% more calories from playing Wii than other consoles.

Among the findings, energy expenditures were at 156% of resting when playing Wii as opposed to 60% with regular controllers, and a total potential of 1,830 calories burned a week. Multiplied that out to a year, kids can "shift" 27lb in a year. Does shift mean lose? Because that sounds pretty high to us. – Jason Chen

Wii - Kids Burn 40% More Calories Says Research [Spong]

Image by Jessica New

Design Calendar: The Weight of Time

Jason Chen — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:40:35 EST

Winner of the 2005 Kokuyo design awards, this calendar uses weight to determine what month it is. From robotic translation we can gather that you place the weight on the spring, and depending on how heavy the current date is, "the machine which measures the time" is. Yeah.

However it works, it's much better than our method of carving a tick into the wall for each passing day. Our landlord disapproves. – Jason Chen

Kokuyo Prize 2005 [Kokuyo]

Scale Weighs You In With Celebs: Hope You're Not Mr. Ed

Charlie White — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:14:18 EDT

Weight is just a number, right? Not any more with the Celebrity Weighing Scale, eschewing numbers altogether and assigning you a celebrity that corresponds to your weight. Let's just hope you tip the scales closer to that of the Baby Jesus or Oliver Twist, rather than its higher end, comparing you to the likes of Mr. Ed or King Kong. You'll feel cool if you match up with Chuck Norris or Goldie Hawn.

Angry Associates also offers an icon-based scale, letting you weigh in to a corresponding chicken, goat, pig, or heaven forbid, a cow. Your choice, celebs or fauna for 35 (about ~~$60~~ $45). – Charlie White

Celebrity Weighing Scales [diet-blog]

Tanita Scale With Fat Sensor and Bluetooth

Jason Chen — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:55:25 EDT

There's a reason why the Japanese aren't nearly as fat as Americans. Tanita's BC-502 scale can measure your weight and send a small current through your body to tell you your BMI and fat ratio.

What makes this unit special is that it can be connected to a PC using a USB cable so you can chart your progress in losing or gaining weight. Not only that, they have a bluetooth module that can sync up with your phone, so you won't have to bend down to read the scale (and for keeping track of your progress).

Once on the phone, the data can be sent to a website so your doctor can monitor your health. Maybe now we nerds will be tempted to get back in shape? Nah.

Tanita BC-502. the geek's Bluetooth scale [Akihabara News]

Bod Pod Measures Fat with Thin Air

Charlie White — Thu, 04 May 2006 13:13:28 EDT

You've probably heard of hydrostatic weighing, where the amount of water your body displaces while submerged reveals how much of you is lean meat and how much is flab. The Bod Pod takes that concept a step further, using air instead of water to see what you're really made of. It measures mass and volume, and from that it can extrapolate your whole-body density.

Even though the Bod Pod, a fiberglass chamber, has a nice big picture window up front, it still must not be much fun for the claustrophobic. But it only takes five minutes to complete the procedure, it's noninvasive, and it can be used to weigh even the biggest bruisers—500-pounders can fit into the thing.

Product page [Life Measurement, Inc., via medGadget]

Citizen Scale Measures Internal Organ Fat

Noah R — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 11:40:58 EST

There are two ways of looking at fat in America: either we are too obsessed with it, or not nearly obsessed enough. This lovely HM7000 scale from Citizen fits in the latter category. It not only measures fat, but the fat levels of your internal organs, basal metabolic rate, inner body age (say what?), amount of muscle and estimated bone density. Yes, but can I put my morning Twinkies on the scale and have it tell me exactly how much weight I will gain from eating them both in one bite? Well?

Personal data for up to 4 people can be registered. Available January 23 in Japan.

Product Page

More health and body fat scales [Amazon]

Robot Dog to Human: "Go for a walk, fatty."

Travis Hudson — Fri, 02 Sep 2005 09:50:46 EDT

In last month's episode of "What odd thing is MIT making now" we discovered the jerk-o-meter that analyzed telephonic speech patterns to determine if your "friends" really care about your "life" over the phone. Well this month the crazy MIT kids are making life even more pitiful with one of those Sony robotic dogs. This AIBO robot can criticize one of the issues that makes people feel most insecure, weight gain. The dog links up to the weight scale, a pedometer and a personal organizer that food intake logs are stored in. From there the robot can properly calculate how much of a tub of lard you are and insist that you go for a walk, or a liposuction. Thanks MIT, now you guys are rocket scientists who also get to take stabs at the rest of the world.

Robot dog—man's best friend or no-fat nag? [Yahoo!]