Fitness trackers are a dime a dozen at this point, with Fitbit dominating the market. But as long as wearable gadgets have been in vogue, the concept of a “smart ring” has made the rounds in various forms. Here at CES, it looks like Motiv is the closest yet to cracking the puzzle of building a ring that’s worth wearing. Motiv’s ring is basically a tiny Fitbit: it packs in a heart rate sensor and can track your steps, sleep and “active minutes” with a goal of getting its users to be active for at least 150 minutes per week. The ring itself is very light, fairly unobtrusive and comes in grey and rose gold. Motiv says its has an “ultralight titanium shell” that felt a little cheap to me — hopefully it’ll prove to be durable. The battery is charged with an included magnetic charging dock that plugs into any standard USB port; Motiv is actually including two so you can throw one on your keychain and forget about it. Naturally, the ring syncs to a smartphone app where you can get data on what it measures. The ring has heart rate tracking built-in; that’s how it knows when you’re working out hard enough to count minutes towards your daily activity goal. A Motiv spokesperson said that the ring uses active minutes because it’s a less abstract goal than 10, 000 steps or a certain amount of calories burned, and it does seem like something with the potential to encourage slightly more active exercise. But it also works as a pedometer if you’re used to tracking steps over other metrics. All this data is stored in the app, which uses a card interface to keep you updated on your goals, showing you high-level overviews of your day and week. If you want to dig down into the data, though, the app lets you scan minute by minute to see exactly what were you up to, whether you were awake or asleep. My big question about the Motiv is its manufacturing feasibility — we’ve been burned by smart rings before that just couldn’t figure out the battery tech necessary to work. Motiv’s spokesperson told me that the company designed its curved battery itself; he also said that the device is in production after a lengthy beta period. The model he was wearing appeared to be functional, so it seems like the ring should make it onto the market this spring as planned. If you’re interested and willing to take a bit of a gamble on an unproven company, pre-orders for the $199 Motiv started today. To get the sizing right, Motiv will send buyers a kit with fake rings in it so you can try them on and see what fits best. The Motiv may not do anything differently than the Fitbit, but if you’re interested in having an extremely low-profile device this may be worth a look. Of course, we’ll need to put one through a full review to really recommend it, but on the surface the Motiv is intriguing at the very least. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2017.
An anonymous reader writes: NASA’s Opportunity rover has been rolling around the surface of Mars for over 10 years. It’s still performing scientific observations, but the mission team has been dealing with a problem: the rover keeps rebooting. It’s happened a dozen times this month, and the process is a bit more involved than rebooting a typical computer. It takes a day or two to get back into operation every time. To try and fix this, the Opportunity team is planning a tricky operation: reformatting the flash memory from 125 million miles away. “Preparations include downloading to Earth all useful data remaining in the flash memory and switching the rover to an operating mode that does not use flash memory. Also, the team is restructuring the rover’s communication sessions to use a slower data rate, which may add resilience in case of a reset during these preparations.” The team suspects some of the flash memory cells are simply wearing out. The reformat operation is scheduled for some time in September. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
What if the sweat produced by your body could power your gadgets? And what if the connection between the two could be made by a temporary tattoo, the more you sweat, the more power the tattoo generates? That’s exactly what researchers at UC San Diego have developed—and one day, it could power your wearables. Read more… 
astroengine writes “Although there appears to be a mysterious dearth of exoplanets smaller than Earth, astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope have estimated that nearly a quarter of all sun-like stars in our galaxy play host to worlds 1-3 times the size of our planet. These astonishing results were discussed by Geoff Marcy, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, during a talk the W. M. Keck Observatory 20th Anniversary Science Meeting on Thursday. ’23 percent of sun-like stars have a planet within (1-2.8 Earth radii) just within Mercury’s orbit,’ said Marcy. ‘I’ll say that again, because that number really surprised me: 23 percent of sun-like stars have a nearly-Earth-sized planet orbiting in tight orbits within 0.25 AU of the host stars.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.