Hasta La Gadget!

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Since the launch of Google Glass, wearable technology has become a hot topic in the tech industry, specifically in the Silicon Valley. Additionally, the miniaturization and the decreasing price of components alongside innovations in low power technologies foster the rise of the wearable tech industry. In 2007, Wired editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly started the Quantify Self, a movement that has recently got a lot of traction thanks to the popular connected bracelets Jawbone UP and Nike+ FuelBand.

Yesterday, Stained Glass Labs, the first incubator/accelerator focused on Glass and wearable Technologies announced the Glazed Conference, a 3-day event that will gather the world’s top tier investors, press, developers and entrepreneurs to engage the Silicon Valley in conversation around  wearable technology.

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Stained Glass Labs Glazed Conference Announced original content from Ubergizmo.

Now here is a device with a name that I would personally say does not fall within the “normal” boundaries of naming conventions, where Zensorium has called it the Tinké. It does have a fairytale ring to it, does it not? Well, the Tinké will now come with an integrated Lightning connector for iOS devices, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for iOS device owners. Wait a minute, I have yet to describe just what the heck the Tinké is, right? All apologies – the Tinké would target those who are concerned about their health, where it relies on optical sensing technologies in order to capture blood volume changes as well as quantifying your fitness and relaxation levels into indexes to make it a snap to compare.

Zensorium hopes that these indexes will be compared liberally and trend alongside one another so that you will be able to better understand your fitness progression from your iOS device. For starters, there is the Vita Index, which is a fitness score that has been created by piecing together data which was collected from heart rate, blood oxygen level and respiratory rate. As for the Zen Index, the name itself gives the game away – it is a quantified score for your state of relaxation which relies on heart rate variability as a basis.

After all, it makes perfect sense for one to remain aware of one’s fitness level, even though there are moments in your life that you do not remain engaged in physical activity. Tinké is used only when you are at rest so that it can measure, monitor and trend your heart rate, respiration rate and blood oxygen level. Apart from that, Tinké’s Zen measurement would also let you breathe better and measure your level of relaxation at the end of a 60-second practice, now how about that? The Zensorium Tinké comes in a unique and stylish form factor, and it is tipped to arrive later this October for a yet unreleased price point.

Press Release
[ Zensorium unveils Tinké copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

What you wear can say a lot about yourself. Some people might not put much thought into what they put on in the morning, but if you spend a lot of your day interacting with people, there’s a good chance that you’ll take a few extra minutes to make sure that you look good. Of course, if you’re heading off to work, there are additional things to consider. But regardless of the look you’re going for, there is one thing that is always fashionable to wear. A watch.

TokyoFlash is a company that has set themselves apart from the competition by creating unique designs for their watches. The new Kisai Neutron is no exception to this. This is one of the rare watches that displays numbers rather plainly, and doesn’t require a brief explanation of how to read it. But that still doesn’t mean that it looks like any other timepiece you’ve seen before.

The Neutron’s face looks like some sort of grate, when not lit up. However, once you’ve activated it, you’ll see the individual bars light up to display the numbers that make up the time. What’s interesting is that you can activate the face in one of two ways. You can be boring and press a button on the side, or you can turn on the motion sensor. For the latter, you’ll simply need to flick your wrist, and the time will magically appear. This unique watch features a USB-rechargeable battery, and will set you back $139.

 
[ Kisai Neutron watch is activated with the flick of your wrist copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

The tech world may be hoping for Apple to unbox some wearable technology in the near future but who cares about the iWatch when an NFC ring is a thing? NFC fans — you know, these sort of folk — hankering for the convenience of having the wireless transfer tech always on their person should point their eyes at this U.K.-based Kickstarter project.

The NFC ring is designed to be used in conjunction with NFC-enabled gadgets — such as smartphones and tablets, NFC door locks and so on — so the wearer can perform tasks such as unlocking their phone, unlocking their front door or sending their contact info, personal website or Bitcoin address to another smartphone user by either fist-bumping or using an open-palm gesture.

Provided you’re happy to wear a bit of bling, the relatively slimline ring gets around some of the awkwardness associated with bumping and grinding NFC phones together to do data transfers (aka ‘phone sex‘). Being passive NFC, it also doesn’t need any battery power to work. And all the programming is done via apps, including third party apps if you want to use it to unlock your phone.  The NFC ring creators have also made their own open source software for writing actions to the ring.

The ring actually has two NFC inlays, with a larger ‘public’ area designed to worn at the top for sending things like contact data via a fist bump gesture, and a smaller ‘private’ area designed to be worn so it can be concealed in the palm and only activated via an open palm gesture. This area is intended to store more sensitive data such as front door and phone unlocking info, says creator John McLear.

The dual NFC design is intended to help keep a ring owner’s most sensitive data from being slurped by nearby NFC readers. But it’s worth pointing out that jewellery rarely stays put so NFC ring bearers are likely to end up spending a lot of time checking their precious is correctly aligned. Or drunkenly failing to send contact info to the person they are trying to chat up in the bar, and trying to unlock a non-existent front door instead. That’s a whole new level of geek faux pas.

The NFC ring is basically a more convenient (i.e. wearable) version of the NFC tags that are sometimes shipped with NFC smartphones. But since awkwardness is a barrier to more widespread NFC use, anything that helps reduces friction is a welcome development for the contactless fraternity.

The NFC ring is fast approaching its Kickstarter funding goal of £30,000 — with close to 1,100 backers pledging almost £29,500 so far with 27 days left on the campaign. The creators say rings are due to ship in late October, if all goes to plan. Cost per ring is around £25/$38 but the creators have also released a CAD design so the basic ring form can be hacked, customised and 3D printed. They are then offering cheaper pledges to just ship the NFC inlay for fixing inside these 3D printed rings.

It’s worth flagging that the “normal size ring” (which is ~7mm wide) doesn’t work with all NFC phones — notably the Samsung Galaxy S4 and BlackBerry Z10 won’t play nice. For those devices the creators warn “you will need an alpha size ring”, which they add is “really only for chaps with big fingers”.

I’m a bit of a computer nut, and I love tinkering with new hardware. It’s fun to get a new piece of equipment in, and see just how much of a difference it makes on your system. It’s also a lot of fun to see how far you can push it. If you want to maximize your performance, you can do something called overclocking, which makes the processor run faster than it was originally meant to. This is especially helpful when you want an older machine to still perform like new. Now if only we could do the same thing for our brains.

According to FOC.US LABS, you can actually push your brain to perform more quickly. They have developed a specialized headset to do this very thing. The foc.us headset is supposed to help your synapses fire faster by using a method called Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation. This sends small amounts of current into your brain, and is used to help stroke victims.

So what is the point of “overclocking your head”, as they put it? They are marketing this as a device for gamers to use. The idea is that the faster your brain can process information, the faster you can react. While this seems like a logical conclusion, I don’t really feel like zapping myself in the brain to get a competitive edge. If you think it’s worth a potentially fried brain, then you’ll need only lay down $250 to get your own.

Source: Dvice

 
[ Foc.us headset wants to overclock your head copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]