With the start of the new year, I'm sure there are lots of folks with resolutions to take better care of themselves in 2013. Today for WSAV Tech Tuesday, we discuss the Nike FuelBand, a gadget that monitors your activity level throughout the day.

The FuelBand goes around your wrist and looks very similar to many of the popular rubber bracelets people wear to support various causes. It contains an accelerometer that measures your movements and attempts to map them to various physical activities. The device awards you "Nike Fuel" points based on your level activity. In addition to your Fuel points, it will also tell you how many calories you've burned, how many steps you've taken, and the current time.

Reviews vary wildly across the Internet. Some people report that the FuelBand consistently overestimates the number of steps you take, and others accuse the FuelBand of being a little too generous with the number of calories burned.

If you are a hardcore calorie counter and are looking for the precise number of steps you take in a day, then you might want to do a little more research on the FuelBand before you commit. But, if you're like me and just want a way to keep yourself honest about your general level of activity from day to day, then I think the FuelBand is great. Over the last two weeks it has shown me that...

Filmmaker Casey Neistat would have us believe that he's taken a page straight from the Steve Miller playbook with his latest project for Nike. As the newly spun yarn goes, Nike gave Neistat an undisclosed pile of cash to make a film about the Nike+ Fuelband. Instead, [ahem!] Neistat spent the money taking his friends on a round-the-world adventure. Says TNW,

In a voyage that included France, Kenya, Egypt and numerous other countries, Neistat and Joseph are pictured doing everything from riding bikes to cliff diving. While it may not have been what Nike had in mind (or was it?), the YouTube video has the potential to be one of those viral greats that come along far too infrequently.

Now the obvious question – Did Nike know what they were getting into before they gave Neistat the cash? It’s possible. But the end result is fantastic nevertheless.

Agreed. The video is great. Round The World in 10 Days is an adventure most people would love to have, so the premise alone is likely to strike common chord and get a ton of video views.

The setup is pretty clever, too—that Neistat took a pile of cash from the man, said eff you and took his friends on a trip around the world. However, the result is exactly what Nike had in mind, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing this video and Neistat would be...

At first glance, you might dismiss this as just another viral video, and you wouldn't be completely off the mark. The Nike Pool video has been making the rounds on the Internet for the past few days and is turning more than a few heads. However, the real story here isn't a viral video; it's the actual story.

On the people side, this is the story about of Nike doing something that really excited a group of people. In just two weeks, they transformed a pool that was slated for demolition into a gnarly BMX complex and created a pro-am style team competition the likes of which England had not seen. And as if that wasn't enough, when the competition ended Nike left the complex open for free public use through the end of their 30-day lease. Talk about awesome!

On the brand side, this is the story of Nike creating an event to reposition themselves in the minds of extreme sports athletes. Over the years, Nike has expanded its brand associations from running to basketball, football, golf, soccer, and more, and it's a relatively safe bet that this event is part of a strategy to expand Nike into the world of extreme sports. As a relative newcomer to BMX (and the culture that surrounds it), Nike was smart to pursue a strategy of grassroots empowerment through this event. They respected the subculture and didn't try to pose as an authority before the subculture identified them as such.

Ultimately, this wasn't about creating a viral video. The video was simply the most effective way to capture the story and extend its reach. This was about Nike...

I'm always intrigued with different uses for technology outside of their traditional intended application. The latest cool offering comes from interactive collective YesYesNo.  This art studio strives to add engaging and artistic attributes to several forms of interactive media.

For their latest project they teamed up with Nike+ to complete their Nike Free Run+ 2 City Pack series. YesYesNo created software that tracked data using Nike+ from several runners. These runs were then displayed visually based on the runner's metrics including speed, acceleration, consistency, and style. After completing each run, the runner was able to get on the computer to add their choice of color and styles.

YesYesNo held a workshop for this event at Nike headquarters and participants got to keep a high-res printout of their run.

The resulting prints, while nothing reminiscent of van Gogh, are pretty cool and would be worthy of hanging up somewhere.

I'd love to try out my talents with YesYesNo's system just to see what out of shape looks like visually.