Google Calendar update makes it easier to track fitness goals

Just when you were ready to ditch that New Year's resolution to go running every morning, Google is here to help. Well, it's here to help people who use the Goals feature in Google Calendar.

Google on Thursday said you can now connect Google Fit and Apple Health to your fitness goals in Calendar. "When you do, activity in your favorite fitness apps will be recorded and used to mark your goals in Google Calendar as 'done' automatically," reads a post about the update.

 

Smart home experts hope 'magic' moments will convert nonbelievers

What will it take to convince smart home newbies that the tech is for them?

In a panel at CES in Las Vegas on Thursday some of the biggest names in the smart home industry joined CNET Editor in Chief Lindsey Turrentine and Editor at Large Brian Cooley to look at what it will take for the smart home to become a real, essential and seamless part of everyday life.

Speaking at the event, Alex Hawkinson, chairman and CEO of SmartThings, said the sales his company has seen over the past year suggest it's not just early adopters opting in to the smart home revolution. The industry is growing, but a huge challenge still lies ahead.

 

A fitness watch that holds all your music? Misfit Vapor wants to be that watch

Big, bright, round screen? Check. GPS? Check. Water resistant for swimming? Heart rate? Check, check. Misfit's newest fitness watch looks like it's going for all the features. But yet, after seeing it, I'm not even sure it'll exist in the form I saw.

Called Misfit Vapor, the round watch looks sharp and promises a mix of phone-connected and fully stand-alone functions. It also has Wi-Fi, and according to Misfit, it'll check email and even play music away from a phone.

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Misfit Vapor's weather report.

Scott Stein/CNET

But music playback is limited to MP3s, loaded via a computer over USB or Wi-Fi. The Vapor can't connect to a phone to transfer music because it can't hook into services like Google Play or Apple Music, and doesn't have its own on-phone app store. According to Misift, the goal is to head to streaming music services eventually: maybe Spotify, or Amazon Music. Even the MP3 function didn't work during my demo.