Courtesy Lumo

The LUMO BodyTech wearable sensor to track posture.

Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang and Google Chairman Eric Schmidt may not agree on much, but they do see eye to eye on back pain.

Yang and Schmidt, through his investment fund Innovation Endeavors, are joining with Seattle venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group and others to kick in $5 million for LUMO BodyTech, a Silicon Valley startup that makes a wearable sensor to track posture.

The LUMOback device monitors a user’s back posture and transmits that information via Bluetooth to a smartphone application. The sensor, developed by three Stanford University graduates, is worn around the waist and gently vibrates to alert users when they slouch.

This summer, Monisha Perkash, the Palo Alto, California-based company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, raised more than twice her target of $100,000 using the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Early versions of the device are being shipped now to Kickstarter backers, and the company plans to offer it in stores early next year.

Madrona said this is the first foray into consumer hardware for the firm, which led the funding round. Madrona was an early investor in Amazon.com and storage firm Isilon, an EMC acquisition.

LUMObody Tech is the latest to enter the movement toward using wearable sensors and data-analysis software to help improve people’s health and fitness. The area is already populated by the Fitbit and Nike’s FuelBand, as well as devices that monitor sleep.

At this rate, early-adopters may run out of spots on their bodies to attach all of the sensors. But Yang and Schmidt, who competed fiercely for years on search engines, have both decided there’s room for at least one more.

Original post is Eric Schmidt, Jerry Yang Back Posture Gadget in $5M Round by Tech Deals.

Photograph by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

Positivo Informatica tumbled the most in a month after reporting a third-quarter profit that missed estimates.

Unless you’re living in Brazil, odds are you haven’t heard of Positivo Informatica. It’s the country’s biggest computer maker, an honor that seems less impressive every day.

Profit margins throughout the PC industry are declining, as is industry growth as a whole. Positivo appeared to buck that trend earlier in the year when it beat analysts’ estimates. Earnings in March “showed that Positivo has managed to drive margins to a more sustainable level,” analysts at Bradesco Corretora wrote in a note then.

Today, the company’s shares tumbled after reporting third-quarter earnings that missed estimates, Denyse Godoy reported for Bloomberg News. So much for profit optimism.

Investors’ other hope was for a buyout. Positivo’s prospects dimmed in September when Lenovo, the world’s largest PC maker, acquired a rival consumer-electronics group in Brazil called CCE for 300 million reais ($147 million). That sent Positivo’s stock into its biggest tailspin in three years.

With fewer suitors coming around in this slow-growth market, investor sentiment toward this company is looking negativo.

Original post is Little Love for Brazil’s PC Leader by Tech Deals.

Photograph by Corning Inc. via Bloomberg

Believe it or not, cathode ray tubes are still in production today, despite the prevalence of flat screens.

Remember those bulbous TVs and computer monitors that preceded the slimmed-down liquid-crystal displays we have today? Some companies are actually still making them (surprise!), and several of them may be fined by the European Union within weeks over price-fixing agreements, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.

My colleague Aoife White broke the news today that EU antitrust regulators may take as much as 10 percent of annual sales from LG Electronics, Panasonic and Royal Philips Electronics. This wouldn’t be the first time for LG. The EU fined LG Display, partly owned by LG Electronics, 649 million euros ($828 million) for fixing the price of LCD panels in 2010.

Original post is Fat Fine May Hit Makers of Fat TVs by Tech Deals.