Your mobile phone will help you maintain your exercise routine and keep the pounds off this winter.
Washington University researchers and Intel have created two new cell phone applications, dubbed UbiFit and UbiGreen, to automatically track workouts and green transportation.
In a three-month experiment, people using UbiFit with the background display kept up their workout routines over the winter holidays, a period when people typically slack off on exercise, while people without the display let their regimen slide.
The programmes display motivational pictures on the phone’s screen that change the more the user works out or uses eco-friendly transportation.
The applications are designed to change people’s behaviour for the better, said Sunny Consolvo, a recently graduated doctoral student and one of UbiFit’s creators.
UbiFit and UbiGreen are part of a larger project at the university to use mobile computing in everyday activities and for long-term goals such as fitness, said project leader James Landay. “You can’t get fit in a short period of time in one place,” he said. “It happens long-term, in many different places and ways.”


Current versions of UbiFit and UbiGreen use an external sensing device (the Intel Mobile Sensing Platform) clipped to the user’s waist.
The programmes could run on phones with built-in accelerometer sensors, such as the iPhone and the new Android G1, with no need for external equipment, Landay said.
UbiGreen also relies on changing cell phone tower signals to determine if a person is travelling.
The sensing device determines what the user is doing based on how it gets jiggled around, Landay said. The sensing device sends signals three times per second via Bluetooth to the cell phone.
UbiFit displays an empty lawn at the beginning of the week, and flowers grow as the user works out during the week. Different kinds of workouts yield different coloured flowers. Users set weekly workout goals and are rewarded with a butterfly when the goal is met.

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