Stay in shape with these fitness gifts for the holidays

The past few years have brought an explosion in fitness technology. Where we used to be limited to basic pedometers and then fitness trackers that were little more than glorified pedometers with a Bluetooth radio, today's fitness devices are tracking our movements in all dimensions, monitoring our vitals, and are even smart enough to dispense advice in real time.

Check out some of our favorites below and feel free to get filled in on some other amazing gadgets with our extensive 2015 Holiday Gift Guide.

There are quite a few wearables out sporting Android Wear — Moto 360, LG Watch Urbane, Huawei Watch, and many more — that are all able to use Google Fit to track your activity without toting your smartphone with you. Whether you're going for a walk, run, or bike ride you can use your voice to tell your smartwatch the activity you're about to dive into for accurate tracking. Google Fit is also compatible with many 3rd party fitness trackers, but doesn't offer automatic syncing just yet. If you're not into the idea of wearing a dedicated fitness tracker, Android Wear on your favorite smartwatch grants easy access to your fitness goals, personal records, and more details using Google Fit while also offering a fully-functional smartwatch.

If the primary goal of your Android Wear watch purchase is fitness, you may also want to consider the extra software that some manufacturers offer on their smartwatches. Motorola, Sony and LG specifically go above and beyond (in addition to) what Google Fit offers, with Moto Body, Sony Lifelog and LG Heath, respectively, adding extra fitness tracking features to their watches. Look into which one offers the best features for your type of activities — it may be worth choosing one specifically for what it offers your workout routine.

Unlike the original Galaxy Gear, the newer Gear S2 doesn't require a Samsung device to use — though you will need a phone with Android 4.4 or higher that has at least 1.5 gigabytes of RAM. This smartwatch is powered by Tizen, and features a 1.2-inch circular display with a 360x360 resolution. Its rotatable bezel makes navigating through apps easier than ever and it comes loaded with S Health to track things like calorie, water, and caffeine intake and utilizes the watch's accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, and heart rate monitor to track your activity.

VR headsets are currently too 'bulky' for longer content

Virtual reality (VR) headsets are currently too "big and bulky" for longer form content.

That is the view of Jens Christensen, the founder of Jaunt, a company that specialises in making cinematic VR cameras.

BBC Click spoke to Mr Christensen about the potential for the technology and why he believes that future versions of the headsets will be just like wearing sunglasses.

More at BBC.com/Click and @BBCClick.

Nasa's dancing robot

Nasa's dancing robot destined for Mars and other news

BBC Click's Nick Kwek looks at the week's technology news including Nasa testing its humanoid robot R5 (Valkyrie) by getting it to dance to electronic music.

Children's toy company Vtech reveals the number of children's accounts which were affected by a recent hack and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan say they will give away 99% of their shares in the company to good causes.

Making a fortune - just by playing games

t's a common worry among parents - the amount of time children spend playing computer games. But those endless hours in front of a screen have paid off for some who have become celebrity gamers competing for huge prizes.

You know a sport has arrived big time when 120,000 people gather to watch a competition. Or when TV channels are devoted only to televising games in professional leagues. Or when the top prizes run into the millions of dollars. Or perhaps when match-fixing scandals erupt around big events.

Welcome to e-sports, which may now be the Korean national game. In South Korea, there was once a moral panic as adults feared a generation was about to waste its time in front of screens but that seems to be fading. Instead, all the signs are of growth and increasing professionalisation.

The recent launch of the latest iteration of StarCraft took place in Gangnam in Seoul with all the trappings of a big, minutely choreographed Hollywood event, complete with red carpet for TV interviews with celebrities and a staged wedding of one of the game's stars to celebrate his recent marriage.

There have always been killjoys who've got themselves into tizzies over games. In 1942, Mayor LaGuardia of New York personally took a sledgehammer to pinball machines. The games were banned in the city until 1976.

Even chess has had its critics. In the Scientific American of 2 July 1859, under the headline "Chess-playing excitement", an article bemoaned that "a pernicious excitement to learn and play chess has spread all over the country". This was deplorable because "chess is a mere amusement of a very inferior character, which robs the mind of valuable time that might be devoted to nobler acquirements, while at the same time it affords no benefit whatever to the body".

The outraged author continues in full indignant flow: "Persons engaged in sedentary occupations should never practice this cheerless game; they require outdoor exercises for recreation - not [this] sort of mental gladiatorship."

Change the word "chess" to "video games" and you might get the same outraged sense of moral panic. That feeling is no longer associated with chess - it is a byword for virtue.

Will the same be true of e-sports?

Man held in UK in VTech hacking probe

A 21-year-old man has been arrested in Berkshire by police investigating the hacking of electronic toy maker VTech.

The man has been held on suspicion of "unauthorised access" to a computer, said the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (Serocu) in a statement.

VTech was hit in mid-November when servers holding its customer information were breached.

In total, details of more than six million people are believed to have gone astray.

Data deluge

"We are still at the early stages of the investigation and there is still much work to be done," said Craig Jones, head of the cyber crime unit at Serocu.

"Cybercrime is an issue which has no boundaries and affects people on a local, regional and global level."

In the attack, servers used to support VTech's Learning Lodge app were compromised. The software lets registered customers download extra content such as games and e-books to their handheld devices.

VTech firm sells a wide range of electronic products ranging from toy cars and interactive garages to cameras, games, e-books and tablets.

The Learning Lodge database logged names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, IP (internet protocol) numbers and other personal data. Some of the information was about children including names, dates of birth and gender.

No credit card data was stored in the compromised database.

Details on customers from all over world, including the US, UK, France and China, were taken.

Some of the data is believed to have been posted briefly online before being removed.

When details about the extent of the data loss became known security expert Troy Hunt said he had "run out of superlatives to even describe how bad" it was.

VTech is just one of a growing roster of firms that have suffered data breaches in recent months. Pub chain Wetherspoons and telecommunications firm TalkTalk both recently lost data in attacks.

Is Europe going to restrict teens from using Facebook?

By the end of this week it could be illegal for any European child under 16 to use Facebook - or Snapchat or any messaging service - without the express consent of their parents. That, according to some interpretations, would be the result of a vote by an obscure committee to raise the digital age of consent from 13 to 16.

Who knew there was a "digital age of consent"?

I certainly didn't but I am told it is built into the decisions that many online firms make about the age they will allow people to join. In the United States a law called Coppa (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) gives extra online protection to children under 13, and Europe has had a similar policy - which is why the likes of Facebook have not allowed children in until they become teenagers.

Now, though, the European Parliament's civil liberties and home affairs committee is considering a change which is opposed both by social media firms and many child protection experts.

A last minute amendment to Europe's Data Protection Regulation, says this: "The processing of personal data of a child below the age of 16 years shall only be lawful if and to the extent that such consent is given or authorised by the holder of parental responsibility over the child."

In other words, online firms that want to deal with anyone under 16 will have to make sure they get mum or dad's permission first. That according to several online safety experts, will make children more vulnerable not less.

In an open letter to the committee they write that changing the age limit "would deprive young people of educational and social opportunities in a number of ways, yet would provide no more (and likely even less) protection."

Image copyrightThinkstock

Image captionOthers argue that social media has provided a vital lifeline for troubled teenagers, and the risk is that they will not feel able to go online in search of help.

Now, there are plenty of children under 13 using Facebook and other social media sites, with and without parental consent, so it is worth asking whether raising the age limit will make a difference.

But the social media companies and their lawyers certainly think it will make it much harder for responsible companies to police their sites.

That is why a furious lobbying effort is going on to try to persuade European lawmakers, who meet today and vote on Thursday, to chuck out this amendment.

What is missing from this debate so far is anyone making powerful arguments in favour of raising the digital age of consent. Time, perhaps, for those voices to be heard.

Update:

I have now heard from one supporter of the higher age limit.

Dr Rachel O'Connell from the consultancy Trust Elevate suggests that new technologies could be used by social networks to detect under-16s and limit what was done with their data without blocking access outright.

"Social media firms could continue to offer access without processing under-16's personal data, ie gathering data, creating psychographic profiles of a young person and selling it to third parties, until they got permission from a parent and young person," Dr O'Connell said.

"This would require companies to be transparent with both parents and young people about how their data will be processed."