Lovey, a device that monitors kids' whereabouts and their environment, is the first winner in the Visionary track of Intel's "Make It Wearable" challenge. The challenge has two tracks. the "Visionary," which requires a general idea accompanied with a 1-minute video, and the "Development," which is considerably more rigorous and for which winners get $50,000 in … [Read more...]
Is Nike Edging Away from the FuelBand?
CNet is carrying a lightly sourced article suggesting that Nike may be getting ready to be out of the FuelBand business. The site cites "a person familiar with the matter" as saying that the sportswear company has had internal talks about suspending development on the popular device. The NPD Group, the article says, puts Nike's share of the $330 million wearable fitness … [Read more...]
Indiegogo Defends Itself About Healbe and Fraud
As regular readers know, there's been a bit of fuss about the Indiegogo crowd-funding campaign for the Healbe health tracker. Pando Daily has been digging into the background of the company and the scientific claims that it's making and not much liking what it finds. Pando has also been doing a tapdance on Indiegogo's head for supposedly turning a blind eye to questions about … [Read more...]
Our Cyborg Future? A Subcutaneous Compass Project
In a longer (and quite interesting) article about implantable technology, CNN points out the Southpaw project: an implantable subdermal compass. This is really interesting reading and not for those easily weirded out. Southpaw is the idea of Lepht Anonym, a Scottish woman and biohacker, who does these things. The biohacker movement is not new, but the interest in wearables … [Read more...]
Wearables History Slideshow from Details
The style magazine Details today carries a nice slideshow neatly encapsulating the history of wearable tech. It's a quick and entertaining read in a format we usually find annoying. Nicely done. … [Read more...]
Stuff Profiles Intel’s Wearables Head Steve Holmes
Nice profile on Stuff of Steve Holmes, the head of Intel's unit that leading the charge on wearables products. It's a quick read and a very consumer-oriented piece but it gives a good idea of how Intel's thinking about not just the technology but the products that the technology will go into. (When you read the piece, hover your mouse over the stock photos. The ALT text … [Read more...]
Google Glass Goes to Work, as NYTimes Ignores Other Products
Google's PR team appears to have woken up to all the bad press about Glass's lack of usefulness. There's a roundup in the NYTimes today with a long list of pilot programs that are using Glass in medicine and industry. This is a significant pivot in Google's public face on Glass, which has long been focused on selling to the geek-forward developer and gadget community. A key … [Read more...]
Fraunhofer Explores Self-Powering Flexible Wearables
Batteries are turning out to be one of the less-tractable problems for wearable tech, but the research company that invented the MP3 format is working on technology might help gear power itself. Germany's Fraunhofer Institute is heading a consortium that's building a flexible wearable energy harvester called MATFLEXEND. The idea is that as the harvester flexes, its … [Read more...]
Are Wearables Over? The Guardian Spouts Nonsense
One of the less attractive traits of the media -- and we say this as having been part of it for more than 35 years -- is its tendency to tear things down that it's only recently hyped. It's good for newspaper sales and works well as clickbait, but does little to actually inform anyone. In most cases, in fact, that kind of reporting is sort of the opposite of information because … [Read more...]
What Banks Think About Wearable Tech
Interesting story in American Banker about what and how banks are thinking about wearable technologies. Most of them are at least dabbling with wrist-based apps -- certainly with the announcement of Android Wear, but several were looking well before that. The story centers around notifications and information -- checking balances and the like -- although a couple of banks … [Read more...]