It's hard to believe that 2015 is drawing to a close. A year that started with dread and anticipation of the Apple Watch, peaked with the Fitbit IPO, is ending with connected clothing on the cusp of the mainstream. But more about next year later. The stories that you, the readers, clicked on the most illustrated the wide range of concerns you have, and your deep interest in … [Read more...]
Urine-Powered Wearables on the Horizon
If you really need electrical power, it may ill suit you to be fussy about where it comes from. British researchers, for instance, have developed a fuel cell that can use urine and steps to generate electricity. The urine comes from the expected source. The breakthrough here is using human power generated by walking to circulate the pee through microbial fuel cells, which … [Read more...]
Old MacDonald Tracks His Cows
We commonly think of wearables for people and wearables for machines. However, it turns out that cows now have their own wearables and "cow chip" has a whole new—and less malodorous—meaning. And apparently the cows are milking it for all it’s worth, on their own. Precision farming, or precision agriculture, is essentially farm management based on numbers. Since the numbers … [Read more...]
Chewing Gum Tried as a Stretchable Sensor Material
Consider, if you will, this scenario: scientists searching for a flexible, stretchable material for wearable technology decide to use chewing gum—and it’s not even in the Twilight Zone. Here’s how it went: one scientist chewed gum (brand unspecified) for 30 minutes; some other scientists washed the gum with ethanol. After letting it sit overnight (perhaps on a bedpost), they … [Read more...]
VFILES, XO Help Lady Gaga Fly In the Face of Fashion
VFILES, a New York Web portal, is a clearinghouse for digital fashion, a social network for all aspects of the burgeoning tech fashion industry. They’re the source for Lady Gaga’s flying dress, Volantis, and Azealia Banks’s “mermaid bra,” both by Studio XO. They're now collaborating on bringing the clothes to the public. The Volantis flying dress has gotten a lot of media … [Read more...]
Tattoos for Healthy Living
Tattoos, however cool, are not usually associated with health, but Austin-based tech development company Chaotic Moon Studios is looking to change that with TechTats. The biowearable has an elegant steampunk look, with all the circuitry operational. It can track the wearer’s biometric data via an Atiny85 microcontroller and electro conductive paint, and download the data to … [Read more...]
Samsung Drops Out of Top Five Fitness Tracker List, says IDC
IDC's 3Q15 wearables figures are out, and Fitbit is the big winner while Samsung the big loser. The market research firm says Fitbit sold 4.7 million devices in the third quarter, twice as many as it sold in the same period last year. It accounts for 22.2 percent of the global market. Apple, IDC said, sold 3.9 million Apple Watches, for 18.6 percent of the market. It was … [Read more...]
“Pay As You Live” Health Insurance?
Someone's got the bright dystopian idea of using fitness tracker data to individualize health insurance rates. The "Pay as You Live" concept is based on "Pay as You Drive" insurance programs such as Progressive’s Snapshot, where you snap a dongle in your car to track how you drive; safer behaviors supposedly result in lower car insurance rates. Some members of the British … [Read more...]
Why Some People Are Dissatisfied With The Apple Watch
Creative Strategies has long been a well-known market research company following technology, and their opinions sometimes feel like they tilt in Apple's direction. That makes a recent survey of people who bought and abandoned their Apple Watches particularly interesting. Researchers found 340 people in that boat and discovered that about half of them lasted two weeks or … [Read more...]
Tech from India: Neyya Rings the Changes
Fin Robotics, a startup from Kerala, has taken India into the global wearables market with Neyya ring, the device formerly known as Fin. Fin was announced at the January 2014 CES show. Then it was to be an optical device that could turn your hand into a tap-and-swipe interface. With crowdfunding and mentoring by the Startup Village in Kochi, as well as interest from technology … [Read more...]