For a company that so thoroughly disrupted its own industry, Swatch is being pretty blithe about the impact of wearables. For those who don't follow such things, the Swatch Group pretty much remade the watch business over the last 30 years or so by standardizing watch movements and relentlessly driving costs down. It's the world's biggest watch maker, and its brands include … [Read more...]
CES: Nuance Voice Recognition for Wearables
CES is so last week, but there were a bunch of announcements that you ought be be caught up on so we'll be trickling them out as we can. Nuance, the voice recognition company behind the Dragon Dictate line, has a robust business building its technology into pretty much anything you (or it) can imagine. The company had a pretty busy CES, announcing deals with auto companies, … [Read more...]
CES: Intel Shows Edison, a Wearable Computer on an SD Card
Fights among microprocessor companies happen on a platform-by-platform basis. Intel won desktop computers, ARM processors are popular in phones, AMD has a grip on the graphics market. The latest battleground is wearables, with Freescale (among others) staking a claim. But at CES, Intel made it clear that it's coming heavy in the wearables market, and it's going to do it with … [Read more...]
CES: Freescale Releases Wearables Reference Platform
Products are cool, but the real work in technology happens levels deeper than that. That's why Freescale's announcement of a wearables hardware reference platform is important stuff. The platform is built around Freescale’s i.MX 6SoloLite ARM® Cortex®-A9 apps processor and supports Android. Included as part of the platform is a turn-key pedometer, a compass and Freescale's … [Read more...]
Pebble App Store Gets Ready to Launch
The Pebble watch is a nice hack and an unobtrusive totem of coolness, but it's been a little hard to justify the cost. Other than displaying interesting watch faces and telling you when you've got emails or phone calls, the Pebble doesn't really do much. That looks like it will change early in 2014. Pebble has announced the opening of its appstore. The appstore will give … [Read more...]
Epson Shows Moverio Visor
Epson is a familiar brand to tech lifers. They're very big in dot matrix printers, labelers, cash registers and stuff like that, but it's been a while since Twittering classes have had them in their crosshairs. But Epson's been back in the labs playing with wearable tech and are about to show their latest take. TechRadar reports that the Moverio visor isn't meant for … [Read more...]
Doc Races Time and Disease to Build Assistive Tech
Crain's New York Business carries the compelling story of Dr. J.R. Rizzo, a doctor at NYU's Langone Medical Center. Rizzo's got a degenerative disease and he's losing his sight. His inventions, a sensor-equipped vest and a wheeled cane that improves on a device that hasn’t changed in almost a century, could help the visually impaired navigate the physical world: “There isn’t a … [Read more...]
Apple Files For Patent On Goggle-type Display
The sharp-eyed folks at Patently Apple have found a new filing by Apple for a ski-goggle-type wearable display. The application (which is NOT an award) makes for interesting reading. The patent claim seems to be not so much for the goggle form factor as for the way the displays are placed inside the goggle, and the ability to adjust the displays for imaging and focus. If you … [Read more...]
Bloomberg: Foxconn Starting Wearables Incubator
Bloomberg News is reporting that Foxconn -- the Taiwanese electronics company that builds Apple's iPhones, among many other products -- is starting an incubator for wearable products. Reporter Tim Culpan reminds viewers that Foxconn is a 40-year-old company that needs to look at the next horizon of tech, and that it needs to build its internal expertise for when clients … [Read more...]
For the Record: Misfit Adds $15.2M Funding
Misfit Technologies, maker of the Shine motion tracker, has reportedly raised another round of $15.2 million, in addition to the $7.6 million raised in a founder's cycle and $800,000 raised on Indiegogo. The money will go for a new product, slated to ship in early 2014. … [Read more...]