A little background.The fitbit is a pedometer on steroids. It wirelessly sync's with your pc, uploads the data to their website, and tracks your sleeping patterns. It is a small black and blue large paperclip like style that clips onto your belt and you wear it around everywhere. Battery as advertised is supposed to last 2 weeks, and it has lived up to that hype. It has a small OLED blue screen with a small button that lets you cycle through number of steps, miles traveled, calories, and a flower for how active you have been recently.

Mine had been pre-ordered for over a year while they worked out the kinks in the software, manufacturing process, and website. Overall I think they could have done a better job communicating with their customers on the very long delay.

I signed up for the website a few days before my fitbit arrived, and it does look very well done. The website lets you also add in weight, water consumed, and food you at each day, to help track all aspects of your fitness and diet. I find entering my food to be tedious, and haven't gotten going on that enough. I'm also hoping that their food database will get a lot better. I searched for Chipotle Chicken Burrito, and it couldn't find it. I don't weigh myself everyday, so that is pointless, and water consumption needs some work too, it would be better done with a few icons so I can choose which size glass I just drank, and it marks that accordingly, instead it is a slider in ounces. Who knows that good enough?

The fitbit iself is plastic and my hunch is not water resistant. So it probably is a matter of time before it goes through the wash. I clip it onto my pants every day, and depending on the type of pants, it stays, or wobbles around. I find on the days when I have a belt on, if it is tucked under the belt, it stays perfectly. I've dropped the fitbit from about three to four fee in the air at least 20 times, and it is still ticking. Last week I was running around with the dogs in the park, and it had disappeared. Luckily I was able to retrace my steps and found it. So when running around with the dogs, I now place it in my pocket, but their instructions say you'll get less accurate results.

My favorite feature is the sleep function, you hold the button down for a few seconds, the small screen says start, then strap it on your non-dominant hand using the included strap, and head to sleep. If you had asked me on average how much sleep I got before the fitbit, I would have said seven to eight hours. In reality, I only seem to be getting five to seven hours, closer to around 6 hours each night. That is including the average five to eight times I wake up each night and toss and turn a little bit. So even less when you take that into account. All that sleep data uploads to their website, and shows you some very cool graphs for how you've been sleeping.

Today I had the fitbit on my belt, which is a little thick, and I caught it on something, and heard a small crack, I think the paperclip design was stretched too far, and now it doesn't sit well on the charger without a rubber band pinching it closed to charge, but it is still working fine.  So I believe it is just a matter of time before I'll need to replace it. At 99 dollars plus 10 dollars shipping, it will be something I have to think twice about if I replace it. 

Overall I think it is fascinating, and I wish the fitbit team well and success, but I think the device has a lot of room to grow along with their website features. I look forward to purchasing version two. 

Perhaps though our cell phones will just have this feature built in, in the future? Or better yet, with the powerpad technology, why cant we just embed it under our skin someplace, and wirelessly charge the battery up once or twice a month?