Some people can't just be told to go outside and exercise. They need to gamify the process somehow -- they need rewards for being active and staying in shape, because the true reward of "being healthy" isn't tangible enough for them.
OK, it's me. I'm talking about myself.
I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not. It's much easier to get me off the couch or away from my desk if I can do something to earn "points," even if they're meaningless, for being active. This is why the Fitbit and similar products work. They throw a high score board in your face, encouraging you to be better than your friends at walking.
Tgoma seems like a smart extension of that mentality, and I'm sure I would have loved it as a kid.
It's kind of a silly name (it sounds like it's pronounced like "tag-o-ma" only you skip over that invisible "a" as much as possible), but it's a clever idea. Essentially, you connect a 7 to 11 inch tablet wirelessly (via Bluetooth) to sensors on a trampoline, then attach that tablet inside of the trampoline's net so it works like a screen. Then, when you're jumping, the sensors detect where on the trampoline you jump -- as well as how hard -- and feed that data to the tablet.
On a basic level, this means you can track things like your calories burned while you're outside jumping. But the bigger focus is a series of games, mostly aimed at children, that will hopefully encourage them to get outside and get some exercise instead of just sitting in a dark room playing Angry Birds all day.
The games I saw were incredibly simple: A version of Whack-a-Mole called Alien Stomp and a game where jumping in different spots on the trampoline would throw tomatoes at other fruits (for some reason), which looked a bit like a low-rent Plants vs. Zombies. I'm told there's also a version of 2048 (which you might know as the game that blatantly ripped off Threes), which is hopefully as addictive as the real thing.
None of the seven games in the Tgoma package are likely Game of the Year contenders, but if they can serve their goal of getting kids outside to play, then mission accomplished. Encouragingly, this lineup doesn't have to be final. Since the Tgoma hardware is just made up of accelerometers (the same kind of sensors that detect motion in your smart phone), nothing is preventing future games from being developed to take advantage of the idea.
A potential downside of Tgoma if you've already got a trampoline in your back yard: It's only compatible with Springfree trampolines. I don't think there's any technological reason for this -- it's just their product, so they're going to keep it close to their chest.
The upside if you're in the market for a trampoline, though: Springfree is including Tgoma with every trampoline they sell from now on.
