Though it's fun to play Stupid Siri Tricks on the iPhone (we had loads of laughs asking it about the movie "Her"), there's one bit problem with it: Siri needs a network connection. It calls home to process your questions. No connectivity, no Siri. Intel's Project Edison wearable platform apparently has no such limitation. Quartz, the excellent news site from The Atlantic, … [Read more...]
Tech-Enabled Outdoor Clothes Are At Least 5 Years Away
We spent most of last week on the road, a bunch of it at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City. We wanted to scope out what the activewear industry was doing or thinking about wearable tech. The answer turned out to be: not much. In fact, we'd be surprised if there will much activity of scale with wearables in that segment for 3 to 5 years. You probably don't … [Read more...]
How Wearables Makers Can Blow It With Boomers
One of the more promising markets for wearable tech is the cohort of aging baby boomers, now edging into retirement age. Here's a very good post suggesting that gadget makers are on the cusp of doing stupid things that will alientate those potential buyers. Essentially, author Suzie Mitchell says that product designers need to remember the user interface. Keep it simple; … [Read more...]
Sacramento Kings to Wear Glass During the Game
We're hearing that the NBA's Sacramento Kings, at 14-25 10 games out of the Western Division playoff race, are going to wear Google Glass during Thursday's game against the Indiana Pacers. The players won't be taking the court with them on; they'll be donning the devices only when they're on the bench. Cheerleaders and game announcers will be wearing them, too -- and the … [Read more...]
Dept. of Bad Ideas: Glass Sex App
So here's this story about a London Glass Hackathon, in which a winning entry involves getting two people wearing Glass to make the beast with two backs, record the encounter, upload it to the cloud, and -- get this -- each participant then watches the event from the other's perspective. The recordings are purged after five hours. What could possibly go wrong? … [Read more...]
A Drum Set In Your Pants
How about a set of electronic drum pads inserted into your pants and shirts? Drumming your fingers on your legs can turn into a snare roll; tapping your chest rhythmically can sound like a tom or a bass beat. Drumpants doubled the ask on its Kickstarter campaign, which closed last week. The Arduino-driven sensors are programmed through an iPad app. They can be any kind of … [Read more...]
Are Wearables Hot? Chinese Counterfeiters Say No.
The good news is that when you buy a piece of wearable tech, it's probably legit and not a cheap Chinese knockoff. The bad news is that means the counterfeiters aren't seeing enough demand for wearables to bother with them. CNN's got a really interesting report about electronics counterfeiters in China. It seems that in all of Shenzen, manufacturing hub for legit and … [Read more...]
Glass Wearer Beats Calif. Traffic Ticket
Cecilia Abadie picked up a speeding ticket on the I-15 in San Diego in October. So did a lot of people, but what made her newsworthy is that she was wearing Google Glass at the time. Yesterday, Reuters said, she beat the ticket for the same reason that a lot of people hate Glass: the judge said no one could prove that it was turned on at the time. Abadie was allegedly doing … [Read more...]
Swatch CEO Hayek Whistles Past the Wearables Graveyard
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...]
Bankers Are Eyeing Wearables
We're always interested to see how vertical markets are thinking about wearable technologies, and one of the key industrial adapters may well be the banking industry. Not to fund it; to use it. There's a pretty good article in the ABA Banking Journal about how the banking industry is thinking about wearables -- and they clearly are thinking about it. The piece takes a little … [Read more...]