WTI was out a lot last week, seeing a bunch of new wearable products here in New York City and listening to some interesting ideas. Not much trend or narrative emerged -- the wearbles business isn't quite mature enough to cohere that way -- but some patterns may be starting to peek out. Eyebeam, a gallery in the Chelsea section of New York, has an ongoing research initiative … [Read more...]
Wearables History Infographic
BeyondCurious, which put on the recent Glazed conference, has put together a terrific infographic tracking the history of the wearables industry. To their credit, they don't pretend to predict the future -- and if there's anything significant they missed, I didn't catch it. We're linking to it instead of thumbnailing because we know a lot of you are on mobile connections. … [Read more...]
The first wearable computer, hedge funds, and the Nobel Prize
Engadget's got a nifty story this week about what was probably the first wearable computer, built by MIT professors Edward Thorp and Claude Shannon (yes, that Claude Shannon) to beat roulette tables. Given that it was 1961 and electronics weren't exactly miniaturized yet, it didn't work very well, but still... Thorp went on to do minor stuff like invent card counting at … [Read more...]
Gassee on the Apple iWatch
Jean-Louis Gassee was one of the grown-ups at Apple when the company nearly ran onto the shoals. Though not always right, his insights about the company, its direction, and its thought processes are usually worth reading. Just before the latest iPhone announcements, he weighed in on why an iWatch isn't as interesting a product as one might think. Writing before the event, … [Read more...]
Smart Watches Old News to Casio
The idea of wristwatch communication is at least as old as, well, Chester Gould and Dick Tracy. Apple may have taken all the air out of the market with hardly a word and without a product, but the NYTimes points out that until now it's been the more-or-less-anonymous Casio that's done most of the grunt work in connected watches. I remember a Timex Datalink watch from 20 … [Read more...]