Hey there, handsome.

For many aspiring self-quantifiers seeking to shame their way to better health, Fitbit--the wearable device that measures the number of steps you've walked and quality of your sleep--was a gateway drug to flashier technology that followed, like the Nike+ FuelBand or Jawbone UP.

But the company, which recently released a realtime self-flagellation™ scale,  just announced two new devices to keep up with its competitors: Fitbit Zip ($59.95) and Fitbit One ($99.95). 

Both gadgets are enabled with Bluetooth 4.0, so users can send stats directly to their iPhone or iPad using Fitbit's mobile app. TechCrunch points out that FitBit has tried to make motivational feedback more overt, substituting a flower icon that grows when you exercise into a smiley face "that beams at you when you’ve gotten off your couch."

Perhaps by the time the higher-end FitBit One is released this fall, it will just be an anthropomorphized version of your skinny jeans laughing as you die a slow death by sitting in front of a screen.

The most amusing part of reading the early hands-on reviews, however, is seeing the device referred to as "the One." As far as naming their next upgrade, Fitbit has kinda painted itself into a corner. How do you follow that: Mr. Right Now? The Rebound?

(Photo: Best Buy)

Blame Michael Phelps fever for our oversight, but we seem to have missed a milestone in Silicon Alley's rise to celebrity status. This past weekend, "Breaking Bad" viewers were treated to the visage of Dennis Crowley, staring back at them from a Best Buy commercial. Best Buy released two different thirty second spots starring the Foursquare cofounder, one of which is also running during the Olympics.

Mr. Crowley, the de facto poster boy for New York's tech scene, doesn't shy away from the limelight. There was last year's print ad for Gap (alongside the defoundered Naveen Selvadurai), as well as his upcoming debut in Vanity Fair. "Have a SAG card yet?," Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer quipped on Twitter. 

All the signifiers of a proper techie are on display, including Mr. Crowley's glow-in-the-dark, lime green Nooka watch, for those who prefer to read time in a 12 dot display, as well as a Nike+ FuelBand, for all your self-quantifying needs.

The commercials, first reported by AllThingsD, are part of Best Buy's "College Innovator" campaign. In one, Mr. Crowley talks about how innovation in smartphones enabled services like Foursquare. In the other, he plugs Best Buy's contest awarding four students a cut of its $100,000 fund to support "the next big technology-based innovation."

Foursquare's Erin Gleason told AllThingsD that the spot was partly to "introduce the all-new foursquare to a large audience," but there's also a philanthropic component. Mr. Crowley is donating his (undisclosed) fee to CampInteractive, a non-profit that provides technology education to underprivileged students. Mr. Crowley, Ms. Gleason, and other Foursquare employees are all involved with the initiative.

As for Best Buy's interest in a CEO whose three-year old startup just launched its first revenue product last week, perhaps it's best to employ Mr. Crowley's advice from the commercial, "Avoid the haters."

Have your heard of this new contraption by Nike, the Fuelband? It's the company's latest attempt to capitalize on the techno-fitness craze, and you can't get in on it.

A limited quantity of Nike Fuelbands went on sale yesterday at 5PM for $149 a pop. A tipster, who was in the market for a Fuelband, explains his experience trying to score one:

They opened it up for preorder with a tweeted link at 5pm just now, sold out by 5:04 and people got screwed because the site crashed.

Fucking insanity. Can't wait for the homicides to start

Runner's rage, perhaps?

So, what is this insanity-inducing so-called Fuelband thingermjigger? Basically, it's a watch that seals around your wrist with a USB port. It then counts your physical activity for the day not by calories, but by "oxygen kinetics," which is then translated into a metric Nike came up called Nikefuel, which is the number assigned to your physical activity for the day. It then shares your Nikefuel output with your iPhone/iPod, which it then does a bunch of things with: Broadcasts it socially, measures it with your day-to-day, compares it with your emotions that day, etc. It's kind of compelling. It goes in line with the continued Gamification of Fitness Craze and the Self-Quantified Life. It's also currently totally sold out.

Try to get one, and you're probably gonna see this:

Nike first started to get into the techno fitness watch craze with the Nike+ Apple system, wherein, you put a button under your Nike shoes, and it syncs up to your iPod/iPhone. It gave rise to a bunch of technofitness gizmos since then: the Jawbone, Fitbit, etc. But a bunch them aren't that great. And Gizmodo says the Fuelband is "awesome." It's supposed to be the best one of these things yet, for those obsessed with this kind of thing.

Since the debut of the Fuelband in January—and of course, Jeremy Lin's effect on the athletic apparel market—Nike stock's been on the-up-and-up:

One of the crucial features of the Fuelband is the way it participates in social networks: If it works, and people begin advertising their "Nikefuel" outputs on Twitter, they'll have a device on their hands that creates and advertises its own viral element through its users. Which, for any company retailing anything, is the Magical Gobstopper of retail that everyone's trying to get right.

For further evidence, see the New York Times' own Twitter-savvy media reporter Brian Stelter's interview about losing weight publicly, on Twitter:

I had tried in the past — in very slight ways, without a real goal — to eat better and I would fail every time because no one around me knew I was trying. This time, by having it on Twitter, both my friends and family — as well as strangers — would hold me accountable. So if I did screw up and if I did have too many cookies, I’d hear about it from people on Twitter, and I needed that constant reinforcement because you really are fighting against both yourself and also society when you’re trying to lose weight, and I needed that reinforcement all the time.”

The Nike Fuelband could just be a (literal) product of retail hype and Shiny New Thing qualities that doesn't do much for the entire market of products merging technology and good old fashioned fitness. Or it could revolutionize it.

There's also the possibility that this exciting new diet pill will just do the work for us and make everyone forget about how important exercise is. So, who knows. But it'll be interesting to watch, considering all the mostly-failed attempts of the past for this kind of thing to catch on.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek