Hands-on with Jawbone’s Up movement-tracking band (video)

Jawbone is one of the new entrants into the market for quantifying your life. Its Up movement and sleep-tracking health wristband is aimed at people who want to keep track of and improve their health.

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The product had a good launched in November, but Jawbone decided to put sales on hold because it got complaints that the Up units died suddenly within the first week of use. Jawbone offered to replace the failed Ups for free. Sales have not yet restarted.

Even so, Travis Bogard, vice president of product management and strategy at San Francisco-based Jawbone, was promoting the product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

You wear the Up band 24 hours a day. It will measure your movements, including your steps. It will record how much sleep you get. You can snap pictures of the food you’ve eaten, and it will reward you points for food intake. You can challenge a friend to see who can take more steps. Overall, it’s one more product that helps you find a healthy lifestyle.

A free companion app for the Up band tells you how you’re doing throughout the day — if you’re getting enough sleep, eating the right foods, moving enough. After you start using it for a while, you can see how much you’re exceeding or missing your targets.You can pull the band apart and plug it into your iPhone to synchronize it.

The app measures your sleep and wakes you at the ideal time, using a silent “smart alarm” which vibrates on your wrist. It can detect whether you are in a deep or a light sleep and assess the overall quality of your sleep. It also reminds you when you’ve been idle for too long. And after you eat, it asks you how you feel.

You can share your information with friends on a social network and compete or get positive reinforcement.

Here’s a video of Bogard talking about Up.

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