While Wii Fit is probably a more affordable way to simulate some skiing or snowboarding action in the off-season, I’m pretty sure it’s not the most effective way to train for a real competition. But the Olymp most definitely is. You’re not going to be squeezing one of these in your living room, since the platform is almost 23 feet wide, but it’s capable of simulating different slope characteristics and really gives you the feeling of carving your way down a mountain, whether on skis or a snowboard. In fact the pictures don’t really do the Olymp justice, so you’ll want to check out the video included below to see this thing in action. It definitely looks like a real workout.
Having watched Caddy Shack countless times, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to hire one of the caddies at their local golf course, what with all their hilarious misadventures. But if you’re the type who takes their game seriously while not carrying your own clubs, you’ll be happy to know you can finally hire a wisecrack-free robot to do it. The Shadow Caddy can carry your clubs, balls and even beverages and automatically follows you around the course thanks to a wireless transmitter you wear clipped to your belt. And in order to avoid obstacles like other golfers, sand traps or water hazards, it uses a sophisticated object detection system. Apparently the Shadow Caddy will only be sold to golf courses instead of individuals, but they should start appearing on links around the world sometime this year.
Side Note: I love how that product shot makes it look like the Shadow Caddy is hiding in the tall grasses, waiting for the perfect opportunity to take down a golfer that’s been singled out from the herd.
Ok, forget what I said the other day about the virtues of practicing your putting on a real green. That was before I learned about the Putt Up or Shut Up Rug Kit that uses a combination of different carpet types to create a miniature golf course in your living room. Each rug is composed of 8 modular tiles that can be combined to create different putting challenges ranging from a par 3 configuration up to a par 5. A 3-foot by 6-foot tile area will set you back just $139.99, and if you’re like me and blow tens of thousands of dollars on mini golf every year, having this installed wall-to-wall is a far more economical solution.
You can only improve your game so much by putting into a coffee cup or one of those fancy ball return machines in your office. So the RoboCup is designed to fit inside the hole on an actual putting green, allowing you to practice on the real thing all day long, without ever having to walk over and retrieve your balls. On a set of 4xAA batteries the RoboCup will return over 15,000 putts up to a distance of 14 feet, though that varies depending on the green speed, and there’s even a Caddy Cord accessory for directing missed putts into the hole.
RoboCup will be available (come late April) for $49.95 from the FineTuneGolf website, and the Caddy Cord accessory (aka a piece of heavy rope) is an extra $14.95.
Designed by BERU f1 systems, the Factor 001 training bike is chock full of Formula One racing technology which makes it one of the most advanced bikes ever built. Besides the requisite made-to-measure one piece carbon fiber frame and ceramic brakes, the Factor 001’s real secret weapon is its built-in accelerometers that monitor the bike’s lean and other physical factors like wheel speed, torque levels and crank cadence. It will even have a biometric monitoring system for keeping tabs on the rider’s physical condition like body temp, respiration rate and even ECG data. All that for roughly $30,000, depending on the options you order. (That’s the starting price.)
But all that information the bike is gathering is no good if you can’t study it later on. So for an additional $8-10,000 you’ll be able to buy the Factor 001’s custom software package that allows the data to be uploaded to a PC and analyzed in order to improve your performance. Needless to say you have to really want to wear that yellow jersey to be shelling out this kind of money for a bike.
Given the Yankee’s new stadium has a price tag of $1.3 billion, it’s not surprising that some of that money has been spent on what has to be one of the largest ‘TVs’ in the world. The image you see here was taken by a New York CBS affiliate and shows an early test of the stadium’s 103 by 58 foot (that’s almost 6,000 square feet) Mitsubishi Diamond Vision LED display. It’s composed of 8,601,600 LEDs and besides being HD it can also display up to 4 video feeds at one time, and do picture-in-picture.
Unfortunately some fans are worried that the new screen might actually be too big, and that it could become a distraction or overshadow what’s happening on the field, but apparently they’ve never sat through an entire baseball game before. As far as I’m concerned, the more distractions, the better.
There’s no question that technology plays a big part in modern sports, particularly when an athlete relies on a piece of hardware like a pair of skis. But instead of improving how the skis perform, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany are using RFID to improve how a skier’s performance is monitored during training. Typically, coaches and athletes have relied on videos of a run to analyze the weaknesses in a skier’s technique, but that approach lacks concrete data or accurate measurements.
But RFID transmitters attached to the front and back of a pair of skis in conjunction with receivers alongside the slope can be used to continually and accurately measure the position of the skis to within 3 centimeters. So at the end of a run not only do you have empirical data about whether or not a skier has drifted from the ideal path, or if they’re carving and cornering properly, but you can even tell if the skis were parallel to each other.
The new system appears to still be in development right now, and it will need to be perfected to the point where it doesn’t affect a skier’s performance or even drag during a run, but I’m sure down the road it will be responsible for the demise of a few Olympic records.
When I was a kid, I learned a valuable lesson. When you’re putting, all of the aiming in the world doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have a straight swing. Once I taught myself how to swing properly, I mastered the fine art of putt-putt. If your short-game needs some work (that is if you actually play real golf, I prefer to stick to courses with windmills and the like), perhaps the Argon Laser Putter can help you out.
This putter is strictly a tool for learning, as no amount of lasers are going to help you on a real green. The first dip in the ground will screw you up, not to mentioned you’ll get laughed off the course if you try to pull this out of your bag. However, if you’re merely wanting to putt in a straight line, this will be a wonderful aide. It even includes a “Putting Dome” that lights up when you hit the ball dead center. Now getting the timing down on that windmill on the 9th hole, well that’s a different story. If you’ve got $70 burning a hole in your pocket and a bad short-game, then this is just what you need.
Well here’s something different. While most innovations in golf club design usually just consist of a slightly different head shape or use of materials, the Gyro Swing actually incorporates a 20,000 RPM gyroscope that supposedly forces your swing to stay on plane.
And not only does the Gyro Swing club help you feel the perfect swing, but it also provides resistance when your swing goes off-plane or has an early release, so you know when you’re doing things wrong. The gyroscope is powered by 6 x AAA rechargeable batteries (included) that you insert into the club’s handle, and the club’s head features a see-through plastic top revealing its inner workings. I’m just not 100% sure if you can actually use it for hitting balls, and I have to assume it’s not legal for official play.
The Gyro Swing is available from the SKLZ website for $199.99, and that includes an instructional DVD as well as a custom head cover.
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By Andrew Liszewski
