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Tech I 13 An exercise in Tima crunches: At Rockefeller Center in New Gyms offer Web access to help your busy schedule allows for Web access while utility BY DENNIS McCAFFERTY of places to tone up: a sparkling new health club where members don’t blink at $950 initiation$175 monthly fees Or the gift shop that sells $35 tank tops and $23 bottles of organic lemon-graManhattanites at the shampoo But can’t buy time Not Center Rockefeller at ClubLA Sports to worry Thanks to the latest in fitness and technology the club is happy to help them crunch minutes as well as abs At the stationary bike venture capitalist George Sing computer pedals hard and — thanks to the WebTV-linke- d on the exercise machine — calls up search engines and scours for the latest business buzz Next to him news junkie Debra Williams flips through today’s New York Times (the print version) on her lap while tuning in CNN on the machine’s video display On a third bike Justine Reichman checks out job leads at Monstercom catches up on All My Children and logs on to Hotmail “I’ll my friends about dinner plans or an upcoming conference” says Reichman 27 a marketing' sales executive “Or you talk to friends whom you don’t talk to all the time but you want to say ‘hello’ Or my friends in California whom I don’t get to speak with because there’s a three-hotime difference What’s really great is that it makes the workout go faster” Faster Better Maximum efficiency For multi-taskiT’S THE TONIEST ss well-heel- A Hallmark Hall of fame P Mary-Louis- e RESENTATION Parker Peter Gallagher Be be Nel'wirtii Cate finally found ur the man of her dreams ’ Now all she has to do fast-tracki- is tell her fianc& high-risin- upia 21st-centu- g achievers a workout is such an intrusion when it pops up on the Personal Digital Assistant calendar — it demands more than an hour by the time you shower and dress! So how do fitness centers persuade clients to keep coming? By planting desktop tools in the exercise equipment via WebTV-linke-d stairclimbers stationary bikes and other cardiovascular machines The innovations arrive as the fitness-centindustry seeks to reverse a troubling finding: While the current 299 million UB club membership is at an high less than half of new exercisers maintain programs beyond six months Often clients look at their schedules and make excuses to stop coming Enter the exercise equipment Members can pretty much do anything on the machines taking care of health needs while whittling that daily “to do” list: Order groceries Compare air fares Shop at Ebay Eddie Bauer tech-friend- ly er all-ti- Web-acce- PG cbs com SUNDAY MAY 7 98 CS ©CBS 10 USA WEEKEND ss May 7 2000 |
