Track your fitness, environmental impact with new cell phone ap...(the localized motion at your waist will ...)

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 colored flowers. Users set weekly workout goals and are rewarded with a butterfly when the goal is met. Users can also enter workout information manually if the sensor made a mistake, they forgot to wear it, or they did an activity that the sensor does not detect.

This background display proved motivational, said Consolvo, who is a researcher at Intel Research Seattle. She ran a field study from November 2007 through January 2008, with 28 participants. The results were presented at the UbiComp conference in Seoul in September. In her study, participants using the UbiFit background screen maintained their workout activity through the holiday months, while people using a version of UbiFit without the display let their workouts slide.

"The background display was definitely one of the biggest wins of our study," Consolvo said.

The design of UbiGreen was inspired by UbiFit, Landay said. The project was presented Nov. 18 at the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change conference in Sacramento, Calif.

UbiGreen automatically logs a trip that involves walking, running or biking using accelerometer data, and uses cell phone tower signals to determine if someone is riding in a vehicle. A quick survey pops up at the end of the trip and the user chooses car, carpool, bus or train. Eventually, the application could be programmed to glean almost all this information just from the accelerometer, Landay said, because the movements of cars, buses and trains are very different
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