Maybe you don't need a screen after all... MEMI is a Kickstarter-financed women's bracelet that pairs with your iPhone and vibrates whenever you get an important phone call, text, or calendar alert. That's all. The idea is that women frequently carry their phones in their purses, and can't hear them when they get a call. A watch with a display is overkill and ugly, but … [Read more...]
Tweeting Bra and Other Fashion Tech
Fashionista has an entertaining slide show of out-there wearable tech that may not be all that out there. Leading the pack is the Tweeting Bra, a bra that sends a tweet whenever it's unhooked. It's not for teenagers' parents; at least that's not how it's pitched. The idea is to remind women to do a monthly breast self-exam. Why this requires a daily tweet is not clear. The … [Read more...]
Beauty Tech
A Brazilian PhD candidate named Katia Vega has some waycool ideas about wearable technology that go far beyond gadgets and clothes. She's thinking about instrumented makeup and nail finishes: We propose the use of products on the human body surface that hides electronics, are easy to attach and remove, are ergonomic and highlight the wearer's personality. For instance: … [Read more...]
LED Umbrella
As tech goes, this is on the lower end but cute. A hacker in Philadelphia strapped some LEDs into a clear umbrella to nice effect: It shouldn't be too hard to commercialize this, especially for a fashion-forward audience. Nice. The same woman apparently made a skirt with lights that tracked the orbit of the status of the International Space Station. … [Read more...]
Ellen Degeneres on Wearables
Daytime talk-show host and comedian Ellen Degeneres on wearables. It's about what you'd think. Two observations: Demos never work right. The VC line starts at the left. … [Read more...]
Rocket Scientist Builds High-Tech Halloween Costumes
It's the end of October, and what's a publication that can't figure out a holiday news peg, right? Here's a story about an honest-to-goodness rocket scientist who found himself with a booming business making Halloween costumes based on wearable technology. Mark Rober worked for the Jet Propulsion Lab on the Mars Curiosity Rover. Two years ago, he strapped a couple of iPads … [Read more...]
Female Founders in Wearables
The site Women 2.0 -- "a media company at the intersection of women, entrepreneurship and technology" -- has complied a list of leading women CEOs of fashion tech companies. Here's their list, along with links to the relevant companies (which the originating site didn't include). Billie Whitehouse, Wearable Experiments Lisa Franco, Machina Roopa Vasudevan, Hate … [Read more...]
Oakley HUD Ski Goggles
Here's a disaster waiting to happen, but I can't wait to be first in line to have it happen to me. Oakley, the performance eyewear company owned by Luxxotica, has announced the Airwave 1.5 Goggle, a set of ski goggles with WiFi,GPS, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, Facebook integration, and a heads-up display. It connects with your phone, so you can listen to your music and get … [Read more...]
Samsung’s mobile chief is gone
The NYTimes apparently had the story first: Keith Packingham, Samsung's chief product office for mobile, has left. It's unclear whether he quit or was fired, where he's going or how long the change had been afoot. Forbes has some good background about the guy and his tenure. Besides being in charge of Samsung's phones and tablets, Packingham was in charge of the new Galaxy … [Read more...]
Glazed Over
We wrote last week about the then-upcoming Glazed wearables conference in San Francisco. It upcame, and it upwent. The promise was to connect companies with potential investors -- a laudable aim and one that almost by definition happens away from the public eye. The problem with wearables conferences given the current state of the industry is that seem to focus on the … [Read more...]