There's a big Apple announcement coming Monday, apparently about the Apple Watch, and the rumor/leak mill is in full flower. Here's what we people claim to know: TechCrunch says the Watch will automatically check your heart rate periodically. You will get notifications on your Watch only when you're wearing it and the strap is locked. If it's lying on your desk, the watch … [Read more...]
MWC Day 2: Wearables to Gain a Sense of Smell
There is such a thing as an electronic nose: technology that can detect gases and specify aromas. They can detect dangerous conditions of the "canary in a coal mine" variety, find hidden dead bodies, and analyze tastes. But the technology is bulky, expensive, and slow. Environmental analysis of that sort is one of those things that would be an obvious application for … [Read more...]
MWC Day 2: ANT+ Wants to Supplant Bluetooth in Home Control
If you've heard of ANT+ at all, you almost certainly know it as a way for your fitness equipment to communicate -- probably your chest strap to your treadmill or high-end fitness watch. But Garmin-owned ANT+ wants to be, oh, so much more: it wants to be how devices in your home are controlled and communicate. That's a field with no lack of standards, of course. WTI sat down … [Read more...]
MWC Day 1: Voice over IP on a Smartwatch
This falls into the category of "harder than it sounds," but an Israeli company at Mobile World Congress is demonstrating a functional VoIP stack running on a generic smartwatch. Business phone systems that used to be handled by PBXs or Centrex systems have mostly migrated to Voice over IP systems, putting voice communication on corporate data networks instead of more … [Read more...]
MWC Day 0: Wireless Charging in Samsung Galaxy S6 May Have an Impact on Wearables
Just a couple of hours after the announcement, there are already a zillion places where you can read about Samsung's new Galaxy S6 phone. We can affirm that it's a nice piece of gear. But what's important for wearables is not the phone itself but one of its features: wireless charging. The S6 supports wireless charging with the two major standards: WPC (the Qi specification) … [Read more...]
MWC: IKEA Embraces Wireless Charging
We don't know if you'll have to put it together yourself, but IKEA -- the Swedish furniture giant -- will be building Qi-standard wireless charging spots into bedside tables, lamps, and desks starting in April. The company will make the Wireless Charging collection, part of its Home Smart initiative, will be first be available in Europe and North America, and will roll out … [Read more...]
How Silicon Valley Is Helping the Swiss in the Smartwatch Fight
As recently as a year ago, the Swiss watch industry was hoping that the smartwatch business would just dry up and go away. But just as Swatch led the fight against the Japanese onslaught of quartz movements, the Swiss watch industry is now embracing smartwatches, using a common platform from California and its own excellent design sense. It may not surprise you to learn that … [Read more...]
Moto360 Smartwatch To Get the Moto Maker Treatment
Motorola's Moto360 smartwatch is about be customizable the same cool way that you can get a Moto X phone built to your exact specifications. Wired is reporting that the Moto Maker interface that drives custom builds of the Moto X is about to come to the Moto360. In practice, there are to be far fewer options for the watch than for the phone. The watch can be have one of … [Read more...]
Will Wearables’ Form Triumph Over Function?
Juniper, one of the more clued-in research houses, has just issued its view of the tech world over the next five years, and is opining that the wearables that will succeed short-term will be the pretty ones. Analysts don't put it quite like that. They say "invisible wearables," ones that blend in with what you wear and other non-smart tech, will be widely adopted through the … [Read more...]
Storing Your Data in Your DNA
It is perhaps the ultimate in wearable technology: carrying data not just with you, but as part of you. Scientists have apparently had significant replicable success with encoding data within your DNA. Not just a little data, either: petabytes and exabytes, and it seems to be quite durable. There are, of course, about a bazillion questions here. Expense and practicality are … [Read more...]