The accessory vendor Belkin is pushing what it hopes will be a standard called WeMo, which connects household devices over WiFi. The idea is that you'll be able to control lighting or manage a crock pot from an app. WeMo apparently will also connect with the popular app ifTTT (If This Then That), so you'll get a text message if, for instance, your front door opens. There's … [Read more...]
eSight Assistive Goggle for Low Vision
Here's an interesting approach to using wearable tech to assist those suffering from low vision. The eSight goggle uses a highly portable computer to enhance live video of the world around the wearer, and then display the video through the goggle. The manufacturer, based in Ottawa, Canada, says eSight can help people suffering from, among other ailments, macular … [Read more...]
Recon CEO on Bloomberg
Dan Eisenhart, CEO of Recon, which makes video inserts for ski goggles, gave an interview to Bloomberg News the other day. He talks about the social aspects of Glass (isn't everybody?) and wearable tech in general. He says he's sold 50,000 units at $350. Not bad. (We understand that the video below isn't rendering for everyone because of Bloomberg's video supplier. We're … [Read more...]
Scoble on Glass: It’s “Doomed”
There is perhaps no more public supporter of Google Glass than pundit Robert Scoble. So it was something of a surprise to read a posting (It's on Google Plus, and you may need to be a member to read it) where he says, "Google Glass is doomed... [b]ecause the tech press tells me so." He goes on to enumerate Glass's failings, most of which we wrote about recently. It's too … [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...]
Recon Ski HUD Gets Facebook Integration
We've written before about the heads-up ski goggle display insert from Recon Instruments, which is the tech guts of several other goggles including Oakley's. Now comes word from Recon that the latest software rev will include Facebook integration. If you enable it, the Snow2 HUD module will let skier see their news feeds. The update, along with parallel updates to Recon's iOS … [Read more...]
Zackees Founder on Art and Commerce
We wrote recently about the teched-out bicycling gloves being developed by Zackees. Company founder Zach Vorhies, whose Kickstarter went live today, has written an exclusive for Wearable Tech Insider about how you get from wearable art to a wearable product. Here's Zach: The most important question when you get from artistic clothing to something practical is: “What … [Read more...]
Vuzix Ships “First Commercially Available” Smart Glasses
Having finished its production tooling and having cleared regulatory hurdles (and we'd love to hear more about that), Vuzix announced today that it's starting commercial shipment of its M100 industrial smart glasses. Developers and back-orders are first in line; everyone else will get them in two to four weeks. The company's website claims that the M100 is "the world's first … [Read more...]
LED Bike Turn Signal Gloves
We weren't expecting much on the day after Thanksgiving, but we found this morning a truly awesome idea: bicycle gloves with high-output LEDs that function as directional signals. Check this video: [youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJLzunjOpBU] Zach Vorheis was a programmer for Google Earth who found his way into the fashion tech world and came up with this … [Read more...]
Reuters: Apple in the Hearing Aid Business?
iWhat? Somehow, a Reuters article saying that Apple was teaming up with the Danish company GN ReSound to make an iPhone-compatible hearing aid missed most people's attention. The story's not entirely coherent, but it seems that Apple went shopping for partners to make hearing aids that operate on Bluetooth's 2.4GHz band. Most competing companies use lower-frequency … [Read more...]