Hasta La Gadget!

The 11th Wearable Technologies Conference, the leading event for wearables, will be hosted at the International Congress Center in Munich on January 27 and 28. Join us for this exciting conference, meet the leading players, entrepreneurs, developers and visionaries at Europe’s premier conference in this field and register today!

Since the first conference in 2006, Wearable Technologies expanded into the USA and Asia. The growing number of attendees each year proves it to be the world’s leading dialogue platform for the entire wearable technologies ecosystem, bringing forward new solutions and applications for this rapidly evolving billion-dollar market.

The Wearable Technologies Conference will be showcasing cutting-edge innovations; decision makers, experts, and developers will be attending. Featuring Smart Watches and Smart Glasses projects, industry giants like Samsung, Sony, STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments, as well as ingenious start-ups like Playtabase,  BondBand, Amigo Band, and Neptune Pine the 11th Wearable Technologies Conference Europe gives you the chance to get in-depth insights into the future of lifestyle, sports, and health devices and other application fields for wearable technologies. Another highlight is the award ceremony of the Wearable Technologies Innovation World Cup on Jan. 27 2014, where the finalists will present their groundbreaking solutions, and the “WT Innovator of the year” will be announced.

The sports industry has been a pioneer when it comes to wearable technologies, which is why Wearable Technologies has been partnering with ISPO, the leading sports business trade show with more than 81,000 visitors from over 109 countries. This year’s Wearable Technologies Conference Europe is taking place at the International Congress Center Munich parallel to the ISPO MUNICH,

Join us for this thrilling event and register before January 15, 2014 to benefit from our discounted ticket price.

Join the 11th Wearable Technologies Conference in Munich January 27/28 2014 original content from Ubergizmo.

When I was a student, sometimes I’d stab myself in the leg with the tip of my mechanical pencil to keep from dozing off during lectures. That usually didn’t work. Now sleepy students–and other people who need to stay alert for long periods of time–can benefit from Vigo, a Bluetooth headset that measures blinks and body movements to warn users if they are getting too drowsy.

Vigo can be potentially life-saving for drivers and people in other situations where losing alertness can be dangerous, especially since your brain can get fatigued before your body starts to feel tired. The device is currently on Kickstarter and has already reached more than $38,000 of its $50,000 goal, and with 15 days left to go, it has a decent chance of getting funded. The device’s early bird price is a very reasonable $59.

TechCrunch first wrote about Vigo in November while it participating in HAXLR8R, a hardware accelerator program based in Shenzhen, China. Vigo uses an infrared sensor, accelerometer, and its own algorithm to track patterns in your blinks and body movements to gauge your alertness in real-time, and sends you a warning if your energy levels start to drop.

As its Kickstarter page puts it, “Vigo knows you’re drowsy before you do.” You can choose from several alerts, including a gentle vibration, a blinking LED or a song that’s played through the headpiece from your mobile device.

The makers of Vigo say that the average blink happens in 1/5 of a second, but the headset “tracks over 20 parameters in your blinks and watches how these variables change.” It then combines that info with data about your activity and head motions to “quantify your mental energy in real-time.”

You can tag different events (like driving, sitting in class, or study sessions) and save data to look at later. That way you know what times of day you tend to get tired and can make changes in your daily routine to boost your energy levels.

Vigo will also give you recommendations about what you need to do to regain alertness ASAP. For example, if you just need a quick boost, it’ll tell you to drink a cup of coffee or do some quick exercise. But if you’re too tired to function safely, Vigo will order you to take a nap.

In addition to tracking alertness, Vigo works like other Bluetooth headsets and lets you take incoming calls. The startup plans to launch a SDK for iOS and Android, as well as an API, for other developers.

Vigo’s three co-founder–Drew Karabinos, Jason Gui, and Jonathan Kern–began working on its prototype while they were studying at the University of Pennsylvania and struggling to stay awake through cram sessions, lectures, and internships.

“Coffees and energy drinks were all somewhat effective in keeping us from dozing off, but the most reliable way to stay alert was having a buddy next to us that could watch when we were losing our focus and nudge us when we started to doze off,” they say on Vigo’s Kickstarter page. ”Since carrying a friend around all the time wasn’t feasible, we built the next best thing.”

Wearable technology seems to be the latest trend these days, what with companies coming up with head gear and smartwatches. We’ve seen our fair share at CES 2014 but will devices like smartwatches actually catch on and become a thing? Well according to analyst Brian White, they will, but only after Apple’s iWatch has been released, suggesting that the rumored iWatch could be the catalyst to kicking off the smartwatch trend. In a way this is a rather arrogant point of view as it suggests that no one else will be able to create a smartwatch that is compelling enough to stir up a buying frenzy, but admittedly it does not seem like customers are overly eager to take out their wallets to purchase the devices either.

According to White, “In our view, the unveiling of useful wearable technology products that focused on the wrist (i.e., fitness bands, smartwatches) at this year’s [CES] show brought legitimacy to the wearable space […] That said, we believe it will take Apple’s launch of the anticipated ‘iWatch’ to drive a more meaningful adoption rate.” What do you guys think of White’s analysis? Will the launch of the iWatch be what kicks off the demand and desire to own such products? Or do you think that customers are holding back from making purchases now because of Apple’s rumored iWatch?

Analyst Suggests iWatch Will Be The Catalyst To Smartwatch Adoption original content from Ubergizmo.

Smartwatches are definitely the gadget to keep an eye on for 2014. We have heard the rumors that many companies, such as Apple, could debut smartwatches later on in the year, and during CES 2014, companies such as Archos have unveiled their own offering in the form of a smartwatch that is expected to give devices like the Pebble smartwatch a run for its money. Now if there was any drawback to smartwatches is that for the most part, they tended to be rather pricey and did not come across as value for money. Considering that this is still the teething process of the wearable tech industry, naturally a lot of initial offerings aren’t exactly appealing, although they might be interesting.

The good news is that if you wanted to hop aboard the smartwatch bandwagon but did not want to pay an arm and a leg to own one, Archos’ offering could just be what you were after as the company has announced that they will be selling their smartwatch for a mere $50. Yup you read that right, for the price of a very nice meal, you will be able to own a smartwatch. Of course Archos’ offering seems more like the Pebble in terms of functionality, as opposed to the Samsung Galaxy Gear which did seem a little over the top. If simple was what you were after, then perhaps this should do the trick.

Archos expects their offering to arrive sometime in the summer and also expects that they will be introducing more models from now until then with more color options, as well as one with an aluminum casing.

Archos’ Smartwatch To Be Sold For $50 original content from Ubergizmo.

[CES 2014] Wouldn’t it be cool if you were watching a TV show and additional information about said show could show up while you’re watching it? Imagine watching a cooking show and instead of frantically jotting down the recipe and instructions, it were displayed in front of you while you watched? Or have a live Twitter feed going for you while you watched your favorite sporting event? Those are just some of the functions that Sony’s Smart Eyeglass is hoping to do. The company has recently unveiled the technology at CES 2014 which some are calling Sony’s answer to Microsoft’s SmartGlass technology.

As it stands, Sony’s efforts are still in its prototype stages and its functionality is limited at the moment and is definitely not tuned for gaming yet. However what it does have is what we mentioned earlier, which is the ability to overlay information in your vision to help supplement something that you could be watching on TV. However like we said, the Sony Smart Eyeglass is still in its prototype stages meaning that it is unclear as to when we might be able to get our hands on it, and how much it would cost, however with Sony’s new head mounted display pegged at $999, we expect that Smart Eyeglass could be priced somewhere around that region as well, give or take a few.

Sony Unveils Smart Eyeglass Prototype original content from Ubergizmo.