To watch collectors and aficionados, mechanical movements are particularly desirable since they best represent the fine craftsmanship and precise engineering that has gone into watch and clock making for centuries. But ironically, even with today’s technology, mechanical movements don’t keep perfect time. They gain and lose seconds as they lose power, so Urwerk has created a watch that’s smart enough to know when it’s not accurate, letting you make adjustments as needed.
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Remember SMI’s Eye Tracking Glasses? They use a pair of small cameras on the rim to follow your gaze, allowing corporate and academic types to to see exactly what consumers and other subjects are focused on. Now the German company has launched Eye Tracking Glasses 2.0, an update that brings a slimmer design, instant setup, 60Hz eye-tracking performance and a smartphone-based recorder — currently a customized Samsung Galaxy S4. Along with a bit less dorky look, the new electronics allow for much smoother tracking and shorter gaze time perception, according to SMI. There’s no word on pricing or availability for businesses, but there is a rather dry video after the break.
These days there’s a new rumor or smartwatch announcement every time you fire up the internet. But they’re all designed to work alongside a smartphone doing boring things like display caller IDs or rejecting a call. Not the Hoop Tracker. This is the first watch designed to keep track of your prowess at the rim so you can know for sure if your hoop dreams have any chance of coming true. And it doesn’t need a smartphone assist.
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Broadcom, wireless. Peanut butter, jelly. Together, they just work. So today’s announcement that the company is adding WiFi Direct to its WICED (Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices) platform feels pretty natural. The firm believes that WICED Direct will allow OEMs to develop wearable sensors — pedometers, heart-rate monitors, keycards — and clothing that transmit everyday data to the cloud via a connected smartphone or tablet. This would help push along the internet of things movement that’s been bandied about so much recently, and maybe even ensure you aren’t locked out of the house again.
[Image credit: Brandon Shigeta / Flickr]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile
GoPros are great, but if you’d rather film discretely without your subjects going into “dude” mode, there’s now the ParaShoot wearable camera on Kickstarter. The idea is to sport the 1.3 ounce device like an amulet or on a belt during your day-to-day activities, so you can shoot 720p, 30fps video whenever a moment strikes. While slight, it still packs features like a 100 degree field of view, built-in imagine stabilization, a microSD slot, USB port, 700mAh battery, automatic recording and WiFi. Finally, unlike other wearable cameras, you won’t be shooting blind thanks the included WP8, iOS and Android app that lets you monitor video and control the ParaShoot. The company’s already doubled its modest $30,000 goal with over a month to go, but if you’d like roll the Kickstarter dice and pre-order, you can still grab one at the source for $149. Delivery’s expected by December this year.
Filed under: Cameras, Wearables
Source: Kickstarter
The cat’s out of the bag, and a rogue Samsung executive is the one who’s been untying the strings. During a chat with the Korea Times, Samsung’s Lee Young-hee blabbed that we’d see both the Galaxy Gear and the Galaxy Note III being announced at IFA on September 4th. The mobile VP added that the oft-rumored “wearable concept device” wouldn’t come with a flexible display and will be a companion gadget for your smartphone — but declined to offer any more detail about what we can expect from the flagship phablet. Never mind, however, because pictures purporting to be of the Galaxy Note III’s front have emerged over on HD Blog, and you can catch a full gallery down at the source.
Update: Here’s even more pictures purporting to be of the Note III from ETradeSupply. The site is claiming that the third generation device will measure in at 5.69-inches. [Thanks, Lucas]
Filed under: Cellphones, Wearables, Mobile, Samsung
Via: SamMobile, Sonny Dickson
Source: Korea Times, HD Blog (translated)
TokyoFlash’s watches aren’t known for their subtlety, but, despite taking cues from the aviation world, its latest design looks a bit more grounded than previous offerings. The Kisai Blade sports a custom-made turbine-style lens, and uses tube LEDs that rotate, like an airplane propeller, to tell time. The LEDs operate in three different modes, “Turning” uses a constant cycle to light up hours and minutes, while “Animation” turns your wrist into a rave with a constantly spinning diodes. In case you’re wondering how it displays the finer minutes, “Flashing” mode slowly flashes the minute hand at the standard five minute intervals, and four dots indicate minutes one through four. The timepiece uses a USB-rechargeable battery that can go a month between charges and is available with red, blue and green LEDs, and gold, silver and black bands; there’s a leather band option, too. If the Blade strikes your fancy, you have the next 48 hours to snatch one up for the launch price of $139, or if you miss the sale window, $159.
Filed under: Wearables
Source: TokyoFlash Japan
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you’d like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with “Insert Coin” as the subject line.
Light-up clothing is all the rage, and a company called Erogear is upping the ante with Fos, a Bluetooth-enabled solution for style-conscious athletes. The brainchild of engineer Anders Nelson, Fos is a lightweight, Velcro-lined fabric strip of lights with a nifty customizable display. What sets it apart from Erogear’s other wearable options is the fact that it’s controlled by your mobile phone. The LED grid can be programmed to double as your very own turn signal (useful for nocturnal bike-riding), advertise sponsors or even brag about how many calories you’ve burned while running. Coming it at around 32 grams (roughly the weight of a golf ball), this illuminated patch packs an LED matrix driver, 32-bit microprocessor, flash memory and a power supply in its 2mm profile. The Kickstarter campaign is offering a choice of three designs to backers: an 11 x 3 inch strip, an 11 x 5 inch version and a black leather belt for those times you feel like literally shining at the club. Though the demo package is currently Android-only, iOS and desktop versions are potentially on the horizon. A pledge of $125 will net you your very own Fos kit, and units are scheduled to start shipping in February of 2014, provided the campaign hits its $200,000 goal. To learn more, check out the video after the break or follow the source link to Kickstarter.
Filed under: Peripherals, Wearables
Source: Erogear, Kickstarter
A little bird at the FCC just tipped us off to a low-cost fitness band that’s about to hit the market known as the Bowflex Boost. Like competing devices, it promises to track one’s daily activities, calories burned and even quality of sleep, but as a key differentiator, it’ll cost only $50. Similar to competitors such as the Nike FuelBand, Fitbit Flex and Jawbone Up, it’ll also come with a companion iOS app, which syncs fitness data over Bluetooth and helps users stay accountable to their fitness goals. The Bowflex Boost was first announced this month during the earnings call of parent company Nautilus, which will leverage its direct-to-consumer sales channels to bring the bracelet to market in September. We’re still curious to see what sort of sacrifices you’ll need to make in exchange for the lower cost, but it seems that all will be revealed next month… perhaps in an infomercial.
Filed under: Wearables
Source: FCC, Bowflex Boost, The Oregonian, The Columbian
To some, Google Glass is nothing more than a notification machine, but there are others who see Glass as an AR headset waiting to happen. OpenGlass is among those looking to give Glass augmented reality powers, and it’s figured out how to implement simple AR in real-time. The trick was accomplished by sampling the imagery pulled in by the headset’s camera and extracting the portion of that feed that corresponds to the size of Glass’s display. That feed is then sent to an OpenGlass server that overlays digital annotations provided by another users onto the video feed to augment the wearer’s reality.
There’s a video after the break demoing the AR functionality, but it’s rudimentary and laggy in its implementation. Essentially, the system serves as a telestrator that superimposes scribbles into your field of view. It’s a good proof-of-concept to show that Glass can do real-time AR, but there’s a lot of work to be done before Glass can become a fully-fledged augmented (or mediated) reality headset.
Filed under: Wearables, Google
Source: OpenGlass
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