scales

Go way beyond the typical bathroom scale with the new Withings Smart Body Analyzer. This fitness gadget not only measures your weight, it also calculates the amount of fat you're saddled with, plus keeps tabs on your heart rate.

The Body Analyzer, which goes on sale March 20 for $149.95, even sniffs the air for carbon dioxide levels in an effort to monitor ambient air quality. Another indication of the product's intelligence is that it can sync wirelessly with mobile devices via Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi.

When it's paired with the Withings Health Mate app, … Read more

Every piano player or student knows how frustrating it can be to need a reference and not have it. Any one scale, chord, or a reference chart such as a circle of fifths is immensely useful, both when practicing and when composing. That's why an app like Piano Companion LITE is such a welcome surprise. Offering a comprehensive directory of chords and scales, along with a reverse lookup tool, it is easier and faster than ever to find the perfect note. While installation is relatively painless and the interface is bare-bones (12 large icons in a grid), the layout … Read more

The rise of the tablet device as a quick go-to kitchen helper has come as no surprise. Having information available at the fingertips is a good way to improve kitchen skills. The only problem with said fingertips is that often they end up coated in whatever happens to travel from the pantry and the refrigerator to the countertop. Baking can be messy business, but despite the danger of a destroyed tablet, the practice continues.

There are plenty of plastic sleeves and other accessories are available to help keep the device from being contaminated by food. So, we grab the expensive … Read more

Combining one thing with another is a time-honored kitchen tradition. In fact, it's hard to imagine how any cooking would get done without such an activity. But beyond the food, there lies another realm of alchemy and it can be found on the shelf or in the drawer where all the kitchen gadgets lay in waiting.

Haunting any kitchen worth its salt will be a set of measuring spoons as well as a measuring cup. They may reside in different areas, but that doesn't mean that the utensil drawer and kitchen cupboard haven't been mixing it up. … Read more

Connecting to a wireless scale through your computer is so first-quarter 2012. Now, if you're willing to drop $150 on the new Withings Wireless Scale WS-30, all you need is a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone or tablet to do the trick.

Withings, the French technology company best known for its sleek wireless scales for adults and babies alike, just announced its latest offering at IFA 2012 in Berlin and says the WS-30 will be available in Europe in late September (PDF). Its new (and free) Health Companion app, which helps users track not just weight and BMI (body mass index) but … Read more

Baking can be a furious endeavor. Throw a cook into a fully stocked kitchen with a set of measuring tools and anything can happen. That doesn't mean everything has to happen, though. Any chef could live without the spills and the messes that inevitably occur from trying to use something that was designed for another purpose. Worse yet is when a commonly used item gets in the way.

Baking scales, like any other piece of kitchen equipment, are only as useful as far as they can be used. Sounds simple enough, but all too often utility is lost due … Read more

MOJAVE DESERT, Calif.--It's hard to imagine a more complete -- and impressive -- collection of aviation facilities and aircraft anywhere on the planet than the one in this vast, arid, wide-open wasteland northeast of Los Angeles.

Thanks to its endless amounts of dry, flat terrain, useless to most people, and the fact that there are only a few ways in -- vital for security -- the Mojave is, and has long been, the beating heart of the aviation world. It's here that Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier. And where Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne ushered in … Read more

Google's popular Nexus 7 tablet has display issues, according to an expert.

First of all, let's be clear: Google seems to have a certifiable hit with the Nexus 7 tablet and reviews have mostly been positive, if not very positive. And there have been no major complaints from review sites about the display.

That said, Raymond Soneira at DisplayMate Technologies says the tablet's display "falls short." Not mincing words, he says in a new blog post that he knew "something was seriously wrong" when he looked at the standard photos that DisplayMate uses … Read more

When considering the bitter rivalries that have emerged in the smartphone industry between Apple and its competitors (Samsung, Google, HTC, Nokia), one needs only to review the patent portfolio of each company to see from where it all stems.

To argue that the patent system is broken is another article for another day, but with Apple receiving the grant from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for document translation, rotation, and scaling, it is safe to assume that the intellectual property battles will only heighten.

Sure, in 2007, just as the iPhone was released, Apple had to teach the … Read more