We love Drum Pants, and you do too; our first article about it remains one of the highest-trafficked in the site's history. Its founders appeared the other day on the ABC reality show "Shark Tank," as they tried to raise a round of money in the public eye. It did not go well. (You can watch the episode online at the link above if you have the right cable provider.) We … [Read more...]
Pebble Cuts Prices, Sets Its Own Course
TechCrunch has a nice interview with Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky, pinned to price cuts of $50 and $30 for the Pebble and Pebble Steel, respectively. The notification devices also are gaining additional sleep and activity tracking capabilities. But that's not what makes the article so interesting. Ever since the announcement of Android Wear, Pebble has been walking around with … [Read more...]
Nixie Wearable Drone is an Intel Finalist
We've been writing off and on about the Intel "Make It Wearable" development competition. The company's announced 10 finalists, and although all of them are pretty cool, the Nixie wearable drone is just off the gotta-have-it charts. Understand that the Nixie is not a product; it's a development prototype. You can't buy it, and probably the only place you can see it is in … [Read more...]
Bionym, Maker of Nymi, Closes $14 Million Series A Funding Round
Bionym, makers the Nymi identity band, says it's closed a $14 million Series A funding round, including money from Mastercard and Salesforce. The Nymi, slated to ship this fall, is a wristband that can confirm a wearer's identity by sensing their electrocardiogram. Bionym expects the Nymi to have particular applications related to passwords and financial transactions. The … [Read more...]
Secretive Sensor Maker Valencell Gets Money and Ink, Eyes IPO
There's a company down in Raleigh, N.C. called Valencell that makes biometric sensors for the ear. Its PerformTek products are built into earbuds from Jabra and LG, among others. Valencell, reports the Triangle Business Journal, has a new $7 million funding round (increasing its investment to $23 million), and a new lab and development facility in the RTP area. The article, … [Read more...]
Augmate Lands $2.8M in Seed Funding
The New York-based augmented reality startup Augmate has pulled in $2.8 million in seed funding, led by VC (and California separatist) Tim Draper. Augmate is an enterprise play, building enterprise software for visors; it plays in the same space as APX Labs, for instance. Specific applications are in construction, medicine, and dispatch and repair. … [Read more...]
Monday Morning iWatch Rumor Roundup
The trickle of rumors about the forthcoming Apple wearable is becoming a torrent. Rather than cluttering the site with every one, here's a roundup of what people think they know as of Monday's East Coast start of business: 1. There'll be an app store for the iWatch and major software developers have been seeded with an SDK. This doesn't really qualify as news so much as Duh. … [Read more...]
Misfit Publishes an SDK, Hopes to Populate an Ecosystem
As the wearables market emerges, hardware developers are increasingly opening up their platforms to software developers. Misfit, makers of the Shine fitness tracker, is the latest to publish a software development kit that it hopes will let its hardware interact with a universe of third-party software writers. Misfit's claiming a list of 30 partners who are using the SDK and … [Read more...]
Salesforce Extends Wearables Further Into the Enterprise
A couple of months ago, we wrote about how cloud software company Salesforce had started a pilot program to incorporate wearables into the enterprise. The company is back now with a progress report, having signed on a bunch of particularly interesting companies. Daniel Debow, SVP of Emerging Technologies at Salesforce, told WTI that the Salesforce Wear package now supports … [Read more...]
WebOS Team Reportedly Joins Pebble
One of the sadder tech product stories of the last few years is the fate of WebOS, the excellent operating system from Palm that HP bought and eviscerated. Having been among the earliest adopters of the Palm Treo, we had a Palm Pre smartphone on our desk here at WTI for a long time, just to remind ourselves that Apple doesn't have a monopoly on elegant hardware and software … [Read more...]