slouching

When I started reading about Lumoback's Kickstarter campaign this morning, my left foot was curled under my right thigh and my back was slouched so far forward it was almost cartoonish. A few sentences in and I was sitting tall, but by the end of the page a few minutes later I was back to my old ways, an offense I'll surely pay for in ibuprofen costs in the years to come.

Enter Lumoback, the sensor and app that hopes to rise above its competition. (Yes, there are several sensors and apps aimed at improving posture.) And having hit its $100,000 goal in a matter of days, with 26 left on the calendar, it looks like it will at the very least see a round of production.

The brainchild of three Stanford grads -- an engineer, physician, and entrepreneur -- Lumoback is essentially a sleek little waistband that tracks movement data and syncs wirelessly to an iPhone 4S or new iPad. The team says it's prioritizing support for Android as well.… Read more

The posture police are at it again, and this time they're not content to rely on stationary desktop contraptions to keep us literally in line. Now there's a weird-looking bird-shaped gadget that's designed to be worn around the neck, programmed to sound an alarm if slouching ensues. It's kind of like one of those anti-sleep devices for erstwhile hunchbacks.

We share Technabob's bewilderment over the avian design and gratuitous manga schoolgirl on its packaging. But we've learned not to wade too deeply into the cultural vagaries of anything made in Japan.