Make Health And Exercise Into A Game With NewU App For IOS
When asked what he did to stay in shape for his concerts, famous Van Halen front man David Lee Roth was rumored to have answered thusly: “I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.” That would make David Lee Roth a poor spokesman to NewU, a slick new mobile app that gives users points (called “Sweetsweats”) for every calorie they burn, points that can then be redeemed for merchandise at e-commerce websites including FlipKart, SnapDeal, and Amazon.
NewU is a free IOS app (and apparently not yet available for Android platforms) designed to integrate with all popular fitness tracking apps. Once that integration occurs, calorie burn statistics are pushed into NewU and converted into Sweetsweats. If the user changes his or her fitness tracking hardware – perhaps from FitBit® to MapMyFitness® or from Jawbone UP® to Apple Health® — NewU is supposed to seamlessly reintegrate with each new tracker. Moreover, NewU also provides users with access to what is described as “curated” health and fitness goods and services such as food, gyms, spas, nutritionists and other resources. NewU also has its own flavor of “selfies,” called “Fitfies,” and users can share them to inspire friends and earn bonus points when a user’s fitness partners join NewU. Bonus Sweetsweats are also awarded for your health and fitness-related recommendations.
NewU markets itself as a “gamified health and fitness platform” that can create a “viciously good cycle for the 2.1B global obese to get fit.” Perhaps Kumar’s goal is an app with global health-improvement utility, but that is still probably a way off. NewU’s slick interface highlights merchants offering discounts. For example, 100 Sweetsweats earns the user 10% off on “select food and beverages.” Though other in-app purchase opportunities featured ubiquitous Western brands like Reebok and Nike, all of the pricing was in Indian rupees, and there was no obvious place to reset the currency classification, nor were there language options other than English, so both non-English speakers and Android users will have to wait for further iterations.
Image credit: flickr
---
