The Wall Street Journal is reporting that one of the makers of the taptic engine -- the component that makes the Apple Watch vibrate -- was shipping flawed product, leading to the short supply of product at launch. AAC Technologies Holdings, of Shenzen, China, was the supplier of the troublesome part, the WSJ reported. Apple moved manufacturing to the other supplier, Nidec … [Read more...]
Feel What The Players Feel
It's the ultimate insider's sport fan gear. Imagine wearing your favorite player's jersey, but clothes being tricked out to receive sensations of what the player is feeling as he's on the field. They're trying it out in Australia. Foxtel and the agency CHE Proximity worked with three Australian Rules Football players -- Scott Pendlebury, Luke Hodge and Trent Cotchin. The … [Read more...]
Intimate Wearables Get Personal in Austin
It's no secret to frequent readers that we're not a big fan of "gimmick" wearables. Yet IEEE Spectrum's report on a SXSW session on tech-enabled intimate attire makes us sorry we weren't there. Durex, best known as a condom manufacturer, and Wearable Experiments' Billie Whitehouse were showing off some interactive undergardments designed by the fine folks at the marketing … [Read more...]
Shoes to Guide You On Your Way
A couple of Indian entrepreneurs are about to build shoe insoles that use haptic feedback to direct you to your destination. These insoles -- Lechal, from Krispian Lawrence and Anirudh Sharma -- will vibrate on the appropriate side of the shoe when it's time to change direction. Input your destination into your smartphone and the phone plots your route. The phone's GPS … [Read more...]
Novasentis Haptic Actuator wins CES Innovations Award
One of the lower-key exhibits at the Engadget Expand conference last week was a table that showed a centimeter-square leaf of plastic with a wire running to it from a small panel of electronics. All the leaf did was flex and unflex, but it was doing it in response to electronic signals -- and that's a pretty good technical trick. A few days later, the Novasentis … [Read more...]
8 Interesting Wearables Ideas
There's a thought-provoking list of eight concepts for wearable tech on the AITechTrends tumblr. We're not wild about all of them -- a couple of them seem to reinforce the idea that Girls Think Tech Is Icky -- but a couple are neat. One idea, unsurprisingly out of China, is for a pollution mask that also gathers data and sends it to a crowd-sourced map. Kind of like Waze for … [Read more...]