‘Everyone has this idea of the future as this guy with Google Glass and five fitbits,’ creative technologist at Chaotic Moon Eric Schneider says, ‘but the goal is really wearable technology that you can’t even see.’
Enter Chaotic Moon’s new concept of biowearable tech tattoo circuits. These tats fully integrate into the wearers life and provide real-time medical information in the hopes of preventing long term serious illness. Think about someone walking around with a high blood pressure and they don’t even know it until it’s too late. This tech is like the Jewish mom of wearables.
The wearables would be placed on the wearers skin and gather and send all the information that a doctor would normally collect: fever, vitals, heart rate and inform the user via an app of any issues.
Bone induction headphones = not a new innovation. But also, not yet viable for sale. The folk at Studio Banana Things are hoping to change all that by turning to Kickstarter crowd funding for help.
The Batband headphones contain two transducers which sit just above the ear (and one round the back), rattling your inner ear bone and transmitting all sounds to your inner ear.
Paired through Bluetooth to your device, control is taken over by swiping and rubbing the side of the device. Incidentally, women in weaves have been performing this sort of action for years.
A few thoughts on this one:
– No more tender ear caused by hours on a plane
– Can’t they make the back strap translucent so we can spin it around and take to the streets Cyclops style
– Got to try these things first but isn’t it going to be frustrating and distracting walking around with sounds coming to you from within your head AND all the ambient sound around you coming in through your ears. Isn’t this the exact point of noise cancelling headphones we’ve loved for so many years?
– 01:06 for the world’s creepiest tech model
– Is this thing really for real?
Play time will last about 6 hours for music and 8 hours for long-distance relationship calls.
Get it: R2500 on Kickstarter and R4000 on sale once launched
From: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ostrich-pillow/batband
Either fashion just got a solid wallop upside the head, or douche-baggery has been taken to a whole new level of Starbucks coffee.
London based creative technology agency RehabStudio have tasked themselves with imagining what the clothes of the future will look like and do.
They’ve decided that they will have unexpected properties with tech integral to the garment. To prove their point, they’ve hacked into a pair of sneakers and added phase change fibers and shape memory meta materials that enable interchangeability between layouts, locking chosen patterns to the sneakers.
Conductive filaments woven into the shoes membrane, pass electrical signals through to LEDs that act as ductile screens which displays the ‘shift’ designs.
The whole project is open source with an app featuring a “pack” store where users can download and share design layout.
Correct, it looks like they can expect a few strong-worded emails from Pixar’s copyright department, but I reckon they’ll be OK. In the meantime, the PIC Flexcam looks set to take on and soothe the frustrated and unattended-to GoPro market of users who aren’t looking for anything as professional or expensive as a GoPro to capture their mundane existences.
Y’see, not everyone has R4000 for a camera purposed solely for falling out of a plane or sliding along tarmac.
The PIC Flexcam appeared on IndieGoGo 3 days ago looking for $10 000 funding. As of today, 787 people have answered the call to the tune of almost $65 000. That’s what fully funded looks like.
It’s affordable, but it’s incredibly easy to attach to almost anything (head, arm, leg, bike, bag, belt). This isn’t a criticism of the GoPro, they’re easy enough to attach to anything too. However, they require an outdoor housing, duct tape, prestick and sometimes fall off in less-than-ideal situations. The PIC Flexcam however attaches to anything instantly and looks pretty certain to stay on provided you’re not doing any activity that you should be using a GoPro for.
I also love the instantaneous-ness of the PIC Flexcam. The fact that it’s made from sturdily constructed of polyimid resin and thus can take a better beating than Kylie Jenner’s lips while still returning to the same shape means you can just kind of cram it into your pocket, or bottom of your backpack and forget about it.
When it comes to action time, just switch it on and enjoy the 16GB internal memory and 1 hour battery-life. Bonus: it works under 1 metre of water for up to 30 minutes and this requires no extra casing.
Low price-tag and sturdy as concrete. This gadget has the recipe to be big. And admit it, you’re sitting there thinking “why the hell didn’t I think of this?”
Get it: Around R800 – R1 000 if you back them now
From: www.flexcampic.com
Are you a member of the community of tech fans who believe that wearable technology isn’t stupid looking enough? Well don’t worry, because Mini along with the marketing teams at a bunch of Qualcomm companies and Designworks (it’s got to be the marketers behind this. Damn marketers) have got your back.
Last week at the Shanghai Auto Show Mini introduced their Augmented Vision Eyewear concepts that look like this.
Not only do they look like a pair of sunglasses that Lady GaGa looked at and said “nah, that’s a bit much”, but they’re also supposed to enhance safety and functionality of your Mini by incorporating a head-up display and see-through technology.
The goggles show info to the driver in their field of vision but without hiding other important parts of the driving experience, like, I don’t know, everything else in sight.
The HUD shows navigation info, possible parking spots, turning arrows and “points of interest…such as open parking spaces”. But what they really mean by “points of interest” is the nearest Seattle coffee shop and stockist of the Mail and Guardian.
They have incorporated a pretty cool X-Ray view that gives the driver virtual sight through parts of the vehicle that you wouldn’t normally be able to see through, like the A-pillars and doors. Hmm. That is cool.
Two other immediate problems for the wearer come to mind: firstly, “what am I supposed to do with my R3 000 Ray Bans boyeeee?” And secondly, when the call comes in from the President to drop everything, kiss my family good-bye and take my seat at a gattling gun in the back of a World War 2 aeroplane, will I be willing?
NOTE: It’s unisex and ladies can use it too. Just change the hand motion.
While it’s still in development stages, Pornhub are taking responsibility for all the electricity that their users consume while enjoying the adult entertainment that they make available by inviting Beta users to sign up and try out their Wankband. Visit this site for the only time a Pornhub.com URL will appear in your browser search history and you won’t have any explaining to do. Even the video below is SFW.
The device is one of the more simple wearable tech devices we’ve seen. The band contains a valve with a small weight inside that generates and stores energy as the user goes about his/her natural personal-love business. Any device that charges via USB can be connected to the port on the side and the device will catch a quickie while you catch a quickie.
Most users are only likely to get a few seconds of charge out of every use, but a spokesman from Eskom has been quoted as saying “every little bit helps”. Of course they were talking about turning off your geyser, but that’s what they mean.
SIDE NOTE: Isn’t it a bit early for April Fools? A lot of questionable gadgets coming out lately. This too?
The “Smart Banana” is the most bizarre use of fruit since you learnt how to make a bong out of a pineapple in Thailand. And, you guessed it, it comes from Japan. To be specific, the Japanese subsidiary of Dole, the biggest fruit and vegetable company in the world, has created what it describes as the “world’s first edible wearable.”
All in the name of a marketing ploy, Dole created the Smart Banana for two runners to use during last week’s Tokyo marathon. Peeled and then filled with an LED display and a smaller banana, the Smart Banana was GPS enabled and displayed the runners stats on the skin. Race times, heart rate and even messages of encouragement were displayed on the fruit.
And of course, the fruit was enjoyed by the runners after the race was over.
Audio design company AiAiAi, in an attempt to give their users something new to listen to, have teamed up with DJ Branko and dancer “Twerk Queen Louise” to collab on the “Real Booty Music Project”. Made for the Booty, by the Booty.
The idea was born in the simple request to turn a dancer’s booty shake in to music. Enter accelerometers attached to the dancer’s backside, the movements translate to unique velocities and triggers and the dancer becomes the DJ.
“The booty drum is a device that records movement through accelerometers attached to the dancer’s booty.” technology partners OWOW, say. “These movements translate into a lot of unique velocities and directions of movement. The movements, which are being mapped into unique midi values through Arduino hardware and processing software, can in this way be used to trigger samples and create sounds in Ableton. As every single movement sends out a unique set of values, the dancer is able to play around with sounds.”
Check the video below for some twerking in the name of tech.
OR…or…when you look at it right, these clothes make photos you take look brilliantly interesting and unique. Expect an Instagram filter to become available soon.
In an attempt to stop people from taking his photo without his consent, DJ Chris Holmes approached Betabrand, a clothing manufacturer, to make a line of clothes that incorporate into them retro-reflective nanospheres which bounces light back at the same angle as it comes in at, essentially ruining any photo taken with a flash.
Cool idea if you’re a celeb, even better idea if you’re a serial photobomber.
Check them discuss the clothes below. And help them fund it here.
Check out the Cicret bracelet, an attempt to take your tablet interface and stick it on to your skin for instant access and awesome interaction.
Yes, it’s just a concept at the moment, but a beautiful visualisation of what’s possible from wearbale technology.
The tech inside is far from next-gen. The Cicret makes use of a PicoProjector, similar to those we’ve seen in numerous smartphones over the years and also in some of Sony’s next-gen Cybershots. The PicoProjector picks up your finger interrupting one of it’s 8 streams and tells the phone (connected via Bluetooth I assume) what’s going on.
The projected screen reacts to touch, pinch and zoom and shakes as you can see in the badly worded promo below.
They’re looking for crowd-funding, so go help out http://www.cicret.com/wordpress/?page_id=18411
