Will Wearables Fuel – or Fracture – Convergence?

The candid snapshot of Google exec Sergey Brin, riding the subway on a $2.25 fare while sporting a Glass prototype worth thousands of dollars, has reignited questions around ubiquitous computing. That sighting of Brin is a timely one. Not only is Google’s Glass Foundry developer schedule kicking off at the end of January, but several other wearables projects have reached milestones this month; Vuzix brought out prototypes of its Glass rival a few weeks back, while Kickstarter success Memoto applied some extra-sensor balm to the sting of an unexpected hardware delay today.

As each project tracks toward release, however, the ecosystem of more straightforward body-worn gadgetry such as activity monitors like Jawbone’s UP picks up for what’s predicted to be a bumper year of sales. Still, among sensor ubiquity and the specter of power paucity, the fledgling wearables industry hasn’t apparently decided whether it’ll face this brave new augmented world hand-in-hand, or jealously guarding its data.

sergey_brin_project_glass_wireless_pan

[Original Sergey Brin image via Noah Zerkin]

Project Glass and Memoto both take photos, but otherwise they come at the wearables space in a very different way. The Google headset shoots stills and video on-demand, but isn’t – as far as we know – intended for permanent streaming. Memoto’s camera, however, is intended as a life-logging tool, periodically snapping shots and tagging them with location and direction; earlier today, the team behind the project confirmed there’d now be a digital compass in there too. Other wearables take their own routes to your wrist, jacket lapel, or elsewhere on the body, such as UP or other digital activity monitors.

Though the ethos may be different, much of the hardware is the same. Headset, wearable camera, and wrist-born pedometer-on-steroids all have motion sensors; both Glass and Memoto have digital compasses, and GPS. There’s a huge degree of overlap, even more when you factor in that most users of wearables will also be carrying a smartphone, with its own battery of sensors and radios.

So, with Memoto’s new-found digital compass, how does its hardware differ from that of an UP, or Fitbit’s Flex? All three have the ability to monitor patterns of movement and figure out if you’re running, or walking, or sleeping; all that’s missing is the software to do the crunching of that data on the camera. Why should tomorrow’s wearables enthusiast carry two, or three, or more accelerometers and magnetometers, when the data from one is sufficient?

Of course, sharing sensors is only one element of what convergence demands: there’s a bigger compromise to be made, when fewer gadgets perform more tasks. Battery life continues to be the bane of the consumer electronics world, and that headache is only going to be magnified when it comes to body-worn technology. A hefty smartphone with a big screen and a 3,000mAh+ battery might be acceptable in your jacket pocket, but a power pack of that size simply isn’t going to fly when you’re wearing it on the side of your head.

“The Personal Area Network is inescapable”

In many ways, then, the PAN – or Personal Area Network – is inescapable. The early iterations of wearables are naively insular in their approach: they try to do everything themselves, with little reliance and few expectations of the other gadgetry on your person. Take, for example, Vuzix’s Smart Glasses M100, a prototype of which we played with at CES earlier this month. Inside the chunky headset there’s a full Android computer, with all the connectivity you’d expect from a reasonably recent smartphone, bar the cellular data.

vuzix_m100_wearable_hands-on_7 (1)

That makes for a wearable with impressive standalone abilities, but also one that’s greedy for power. Vuzix’s headline estimate is up to eight hours of “typical use”; however, what’s “typical” in the manufacturer’s opinion is sporadic activation summing just two hours in total, or even half that if you want to use both display and camera. All that despite the fact that your smartphone – which you’ll probably need anyway, since Vuzix supplies a remote control app to more easily navigate the M100′s apps – has a processor, battery, radios, sensors, and other hardware already.

Bluetooth 4.0, the most power-frugal iteration of the technology, may go some way to popularizing PANs. Still, that’s just the virtual cable: the glaring omission is any sort of wearables standardization, which would allow your eyepiece from manufacturer X to output the information from smartphone Y, having called upon sensors Za, Zb, and Zc dotted around your body (not to mention in spread around the ecosystem around you).

Predictions have it that the wearables market will explode over the next 4-5 years, albeit beginning with more humble tech like activity tracking bracelets, but building to Glass-style headsets once the technology gets in line with affordable pricing. That may well be the case, but it will take more than slick hardware and project execs that drink the Kool-Aid to motivate the industry. We’ve put up with silo’d ecosystems in smartphones, and stomached it in tablets, but if wearables are to succeed the consumer electronics industry will need to set aside its appetite for insularity and embrace openness in augmentation.


Will Wearables Fuel – or Fracture – Convergence? is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facial Recognition Software Befuddled by LED Goggles: Big Brother Stumped

Are you the kind of person that’s worried about Big Brother and those CCTV cameras all over the place? So you don’t want your face on camera feeds? Then these specs might be for you.

privacy visor cctv blocking glasses

These glasses fitted with LEDs were created by Isao Echizen and Seiichi Goshi at the National Institute of Informatics and Kogakuin University in Tokyo, Japan. The glasses emit near IR light, which prevents current facial recognition cameras and software from figuring out who you are. The lights are powered by a small battery pack that needs to be transported in your pocket.

Granted, unless you’re going for some sort of Blade Runner look, they’re not particularly chic, but they get the job done. They’re also not exactly what you’d call inconspicuous, so security might still hunt you down, even though they don’t know who you are.

The researchers are working on making these specs a bit more fashionable. They predict that the final model will cost around $1(USD) to manufacture.

[via Slate via DVice]

Driverless Buses Ready To Roll On Shanghai’s Streets

Driverless Buses Ready To Roll On Shanghai's StreetsBe afraid, Ralph Kramdens of the world, be VERY afraid: Shanghai’s imminent experiment with driverless, magnetically-guided, electric-powered buses could be the start of a new urban transportation revolution.

Tech Deals of the Day: 1/21/2013

Our friends over at TechBargains.com compiled a list of daily deals and we wanted to share them to help you save money.

Keep in mind that as with any true deal, the products are limited quantity and can sell out quickly – so don’t hesitate to check them out now. If you’re looking to buy a product from a specific store, save money with updated and verified coupon codes here.

Computers & Peripherals

Home Entertainment

Personal Electronics:

SimCityEDU Helps Kids Learn While They Build with SimCity

In collaboration with developer GlassLab, EA has announced an interesting extension to the SimCity world. SimCityEDU is an online development portal for the education community to accompany the upcoming new version of SimCity. The goal is for SimCityEDU to be a resource for classroom teachers interested in using digital platforms to help students learn science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects.

simcityedu

The portal will allow teachers to create and share digital SimCity learning plans to encourage students to think critically. For students, this will be an excellent opportunity to get classroom credit for playing SimCity. Anytime you can play video games that are fun in school while also being educational is a big win for teachers and students

SimCity EDU will launch this March – around the same time as the new game. Educators interested in accessing the portal can sign up here.

EA thinks that SimCityEDU and SimCity will help inspire the next generation of leaders allowing them to hone skills for urban planning, environmental management, and socio-economic development. All kids will know is that they’re getting classroom credit for playing a video game.

Sony Xperia Z: Let the Phablet Wars Begin!

While the perfect smartphone size hasn’t yet been nailed down, manufacturers are happy to offer larger phablets or tabphones to consumers, who seem to be lapping them up because of the desire for a convergence device – one that can serve as a phone and a tablet at the same time. Despite not being particularly pocket-friendly, Samsung’s Galaxy Note series has been quite popular. That’s likely the reason why Sony is offering their new Xperia Z with an oversize 5-inch screen.

sony xperia z fonblet tablet smartphone water

The Xperia Z is Sony’s 2013 flagship phablet. This Android phone has glass panels on the back and front. This Snapdragon S4 Pro quad-core powered 5-inch phone will have a 1080p HD display (1920 × 1080), 2GB of RAM, a 13.1MP rear camera, a 2.2MP front-facing camera, NFC, and 16GB of memory, which will be expandable up to 32GB via the microSD slot. It’s camera even supports HDR for videos, which is supposed to be a first for smartphones.

sony xperia z fonblet tablet smartphone

The handset is lightweight at 146g and only 7.9mm thick, making it a hair thicker than the iPhone 5 but still thinner than the Galaxy S3. It’s also water and dust resistant. In addition to the phone’s 2,330 mAh battery, there is a “Battery Stamina” mode, which can be switched on to extend standby time fourfold.

The Xperia Z will be available in black, white and purple. The launch date and pricing hasn’t yet been confirmed, but it’s set to launch during Q1 2013.

High-tech gym floor has LED lights rather painted stripes

Think back to your days in elementary or middle school when you had to go to PE in a gym that was used for multiple sports. Odds are your gym had more than the normal lines for basketball court running across it, making things very confusing if you are new to the sport or just really bad at it. Most of the school gyms have lines for traditional full-size basketball court, and lines running across the middle for basketball courts on each side of the normal court.

led-gym

A high-tech gym installed by a German company called ABS Systembau GMBH ditches those painted lines on traditional wooden gym floors and replaces them with glowing strips of LED light that remind me a lot of Tron. This fancy gym floor is installed in a school gym in Germany. The fancy lighting system allows the gym to be used for basketball, tennis, badminton, or other activities that are played in your average school gym.

The system is called the ABS Glassfloor. The glass flooring material uses a ceramic treatment to reach a level of elasticity and friction is very similar to that the wood floor offers. The company that produces the system also promises that it performs a “bounce test” to be sure that the basketball bounces at the same height on their fancy flooring as it would on a wood floor.

The glass material used in the floor is also dulled to reduce reflection suppliers are distracted. The company says that its glass flooring is about as reflective as a typical marble surface. The treatment also helps to hide scratches that are caused during play and the floor is available in any color. Another interesting aspect the flooring is that the color can be changed after installation. The glass floor is supported by a lightweight aluminum frame that also houses the LED lighting. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this floor is that it can be combined with sensors that will illuminate precisely where the ball landed or where a player’s foot was to determine if they went out of bounds.

[via Digital Trends]


High-tech gym floor has LED lights rather painted stripes is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia Offers 3D Printed Case Developer Kit for Lumia 820 Smartphones

I’ve long thought that one of the coolest technological innovations in recent times is 3D printing. The technology originally allowed manufacturers to rapidly prototype parts and products. 3D printing technology is far from inexpensive, but the cost has come down as more consumer oriented 3D printers have hit the market. Nokia is now helping people who have access to a 3D printer and might want to create custom shells for the Lumia 820 smartphone.

lumia 820

Nokia has offered new detail on the Lumia 820 3D printing community project. As part of the project, Nokia has offered up 3D templates, case specs, recommended materials, and best practices for individuals to 3D print their own customized shells for the Lumia 820. Nokia calls the materials its 3D Printing Development kit or 3DK for short.

The idea is that individuals can 3D print their own cases for the smartphone or businesses can begin taking orders for customized Lumia 820 shells. I think this is a very interesting idea, not that I expect this to make Nokia’s Windows Phone 8 smartphones any more popular with most users.

Some smartphone manufacturers let users hack the software on their devices, so it’s nice to see someone allowing users to hack the hardware to suit their needs.

Smart ‘Ice Cubes’ Let You Know When It’s Time to Stop Drinking

If you’re the type of drinker who can’t tell when enough is enough, then maybe these ‘smart’ ice cubes can help you out. They’re not really ice cubes in the sense that they aren’t made from water and all. However, they’re supposed to go into your glass along with your drink in order to use them.

Smart IceEach cube is made up of an accelerometer, some IR receivers, a battery, and an LED light which is molded into a jelly-like substance. This way, its insides are kept dry and the taste of your drink will remain unaffected.

Smart Ice1

The cube works by keeping track of how many sips the person has had and compares it with a timer to estimate the level of intoxication. The light goes from green to yellow to red to signal when the person has had enough. It’s a rough system that doesn’t consider a bunch of other things when it comes to intoxication, like a person’s tolerance to alcohol or the legal limits, but it’s a pretty good start.

These ‘smart ice cubes’ were built by Dhairya Dand, a student at MIT’s Media Lab.

[via Gizmag]

Biomimicry In Fashion: Bird Skull Shoe Design

Bird Skull ShoeSo many many man-made creations have been inspired by nature, animal
physiology in particular.  But fashion… Biomimicry even goes beyond
the fashionable animal prints we find printed on so many fabrics these
days.  Here, for example, is a Bird Skull Shoe, and I don’t need to tell
you what inspired it.