It turns out that Microsoft is working on things besides tablets, enterprise infrastructure, and office productivity apps. Some researchers are working with ladies’ undergarments.
To be more accurate, researcher Mary Czerwinski is looking into how stress can lead to overeating (PDF), and she’s tracking it by placing electrocardiogram and electrodermal sensors in brassieres. Data was sent to a smartphone so researchers (and, presumably, the test subjects) could track how emotions correlate with food intake. One drawback to the research: the bras needed charging every four hours or so. Maybe they signaled by beeping. (And note that this is not at all related to the tweeting bra.)
Yes, they did try something similar with men, but it turns out that sensors about two feet further south weren’t good about picking up heart data. We’ll leave it to readers to come up with smutty jokes about what useful data could be gathered there.
Turns out this is not the first go-round with Microsoft and bras. This totally unrelated and gratuitous Swiss ad for Office XP apparently got some people upset in 2008. It’s totally SFW.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFC0XNAGq6M]