Nike+ iPod Sports kit

Sports and computer giants team up for a fitness feast.

The result of Apple's tie-up with Nike, this jogger-friendly kit lets your trainers "talk" to your iPod nano, telling it how fast you're going and how many calories you've burned as you run.

Set-up is simple. A tiny sensor - totally unnoticeable in use - slots into a cavity beneath the sole of Nike's "+" range of trainers, and a small receiver plugs into your nano. A Nike+ option then appears on the iPod's menu.

Once on the road, you hold down the nano's central button to play a preselected "PowerSong" - a burst of Eye of the Tiger, say - when your legs start to go. A shorter tap of the central button summons a satnav-esque voice that reads out time, distance, pace, and calories burned.

The real fun starts once you get home. Sync it with your Mac or PC, and your data is automatically uploaded to nikeplus.com.

There, you can track your progress with graphs and compare performance with other runners on the worldwide leaderboard. Basically, this transforms running from a solitary vice into a race against everyone in the world. It's a great little gadget.