Sleeping on the job might bring up images of napping at your desk, but in many industries it is a major health and safety hazard -- literally a case of life and death for the worker and for others. With the clear exception of Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot, sleeping on the job is not a funny or trivial problem. No one wants an airplane pilot or the driver of an 18-wheeler … [Read more...]
Year in Review: The 10 Most Popular Wearables Stories of the Year
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...]
Misfit Introduces Foot-Worn Cycling Tracker
Few, if any, inexpensive fitness trackers can deal with cycling. Vigorous as it might be, cycling just doesn't involve the arms, which is where most trackers live. Misfit's figured it out: put the tracker on your foot, which does move. Oh, duh. The Misfit Flash Cyclist Edition puts one of Misfit's signature tracker buttons in a clip that mounts on your shoe. For $50, you … [Read more...]
Hexoskin Raises Nearly $1 Million for Connected Fabrics to Chase FDA Approval
It's been a good year for the connected fabrics business: OMSignal shipped shirts with Ralph Lauren, Clothing+ got scooped up by Jabil (which developed a reference platform), and now Hexoskin has closed a funding round of just under $1 million so it can chase FDA approval for a new line of clothing. Hexoskin's parent company, Carre Technologies, says the upcoming line will … [Read more...]
Pebble Rolls Out Minimal Health Tracking
One of the interesting things about Pebble's smartwatch strategy is its minimalism. Feature creep has no apparent part in the company's culture; they make watches and notification devices, and motion detectors seem to have been included in later models because they're dirt cheap and take hardly any power. Now, Pebble says they'll activate the motion trackers in something … [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...]
Bandages Get a Hydrogel Upgrade
MIT's got an interest in wearable technology with the creation of a “smart Band-Aid,” a flexible, adhesive hydrogel that can carry health sensors and monitor a patient’s condition. With a reservoir in the gel, the dressing can also deliver medication and warn when the medication level getting low. Researchers think one of the first uses for the hydrogel -- which is 90 … [Read more...]
Verily, Is Google Out for Blood?
You can’t get blood from a stone, but Google is apparently planning to get it from a watch. On your arm. Without needles. Are we the only ones who think this could be the foundation for a really bad sci-fi movie about vampire robots? Google recently applied for a patent for this device, but details, like how it gets the blood without a needle, are scarce at this point. The … [Read more...]
The Rumor Mill Grinds Out an Apple Watch 2 in March
We're writing this out of a sense of obligation, not belief: the generally reliable 9to5Mac is citing "sources" as saying Apple will announce an Apple Watch 2 in March, maybe with a new camera, wireless, sleep tracking, and sensor pack. Or maybe not. Or maybe with a smaller, 4-inch, "iPhone 6c." Or maybe not at all. One thing we do know: there will be an Apple Watch 2. But … [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...]