The website Android Police is reporting that Google is getting ready to ship a pair of Android Wear smartwatches under its own brand. This bodes ill for the health of Android Wear. The whole point of Android Wear was to create a software platform that OEMs could basically plug into hardware, but only about a half-dozen companies -- all of them pretty big, but at least one of … [Read more...]
Converse ‘All-Wah’: Soft Shoe Goes Hard Rock
Converse, the shoe company that brought color to high-top sneakers and basketball shoes, is now bringing high tech and sound to same. The company’s Chuck Taylor All-Wah (you see what they did there, right?) doesn’t look much different from your regular or garden variety Chuck Taylors. That is, until you notice the connector in the side of the sole and right above that two holes … [Read more...]
New Bluetooth Boosts Range, Ends Pairing Process [UPDATED]
The Bluetooth SIG, the engineering group that controls the Bluetooth standard, today introduced Bluetooth 5, which the group says quadruples Bluetooth's previous range and doubles its speed. More than that, though, an 8-fold increase in Bluetooth 5's data capacity will put an end to the intrusive pairing process that Bluetooth's users are all too familiar with. The SIG says … [Read more...]
Rings To Fight Netflix Infidelity
Cornetto, the UK ice cream brand, has the answer to a particularly 21st century transgression: streaming infidelity. They’ve come up with rings that couples can use to commit to watching—binge or otherwise—TV shows together. Couples register their commitment rings and lock access to the shows they have agreed to watch together; two hearts with but a single screen, so to … [Read more...]
Intel Quits Work on Wireless Power
Intel has stopped work on cordless charging, pulling its employees out of leadership positions in the Qualcomm-backed AirFuel Alliance, Forbes reports. It's been a very long time since Forbes was a reliable source of deep tech reporting, but this piece by Elise Ackerman is a remarkable exception. Ackerman gets very geeky not only about the considerable politics around … [Read more...]
Xiaomi’s CEO Announces Launch for Mi Band 2 — in China
It’s a good news, bad news kind of thing. Good news is that the Mi Band 2 fitness tracker will be available with an LED screen to consumers June 7, according to Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun. Bad news is that it will be available only to Chinese consumers. However, other Xiaomi products have launched China-only and were seen in other markets within months of the Chinese launch. The … [Read more...]
Fitbit Buys Coin’s Wearable Payments Tech
Fitbit's been trying for more than a year to get NFC payment technology into its products; we picked up a strong rumor a few months ago (which we were unable to adequately confirm) that Fitbit had built production quantities of a fitness tracker with payment tech but was unable to get it to work properly. Today comes news that Fitbit has bought the wearable payment tech … [Read more...]
Tata Group Develops Smart Watch For Its Own Enterprise Use
When you're as big as the Tata Group (and if you don't know about the company, you should read up on it), you can develop hardware products just for your own internal use. That's apparently what the company is doing with a piece of wristware building a safety watch for workers in several of its subsidiaries. The Economic Times of India reports that Tata CIO Gopichand … [Read more...]
Berlin’s Fashion Hack Day: Soldering Gun Wedding of Fashion and Tech
From April 29 to May 1, Berlin was the site of the “world’s first hackathon on fashion and tech,” a concept about whose more elusive particulars we are still a bit unclear. However, by means of some English-language reports, some Facebook pages, and in spite of Google Translate, we can now report the pith and substance of the event, beginning with the observation that Hack Day … [Read more...]
Can You Hear Me Now? Glove Converts ASL Sign Language to Sound
American Sign Language is a rich and complex language that takes time and effort to learn, just like any language. For people who are hearing impaired, ASL means being able to communicate with the world. Now, two undergraduates at the University of Washington have won the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for a device that translates ASL to sound or text. Navid Azodi and Thomas … [Read more...]