Now here’s an interesting piece of technology from the most unlikely of manufacturers. Yamaha isn’t exactly known for their portable media devices–I mean the only Yamaha thing I own is a classical guitar—but it looks like that’s about to change with their BODiBEAT digital audio player. It seems that this going to be the next big thing to hit all the fitness freaks and health nuts at the gym. Without the appropriate music playing in the background, I wouldn’t be in the mood to work out at all; this thing just might be the gadget I’m looking for.

When strapped to your arm, the BODiBEAT’s accelerometer and wired ear-clip pulse monitor identifies the pace you’re walking, running, or biking.  It then plays songs that matches your heartbeat and music changes every time you speed up or slow down. The device doesn’t change the rhythm of the tracks themselves; rather, it has a range of preloaded beat loops at every tempo to cover gaps in between rhythm changes. Aside from this, you can customize your training program, and even sync the BODiBEAT to your PC to get your training stats.

The downsides to the BODiBEAT is that for a whopping $299, it only has 512MB of memory.  Despite the tiny amount of space, it still looks like a fun toy to check out.  Expect the BODiBEAT to hit stores late this summer!