Wearable Computing & Fashion News - Page 9

Apple actually made a wearable accessory for the Mac back in the 80s called the "WristMac" and it was made by Ex Machina Inc and Seiko, and now one of them is up for auction and could fetch up to $100,000.

The WristMac would've stored phone numbers, and executing or recurring one-time alarms, taking notes, exporting those notes to a text file, and then onto a disk. Users could've programmed their WristMac, and it would've worked -- and been tweaked on your -- Apple Macintosh computer.

NASA actually used the WristMac back in 1991, using them to communicate with a Macintosh Portable and Apple Link software on the Atlantis space shuttle. One of the super-rare WristMac wearables is now up for auction on ComicConnect, where it will be sold for somewhere between $1000 and $100,000 but given how rare the WristMac is, I don't think it will sell for a handful of Benjamins but rather some bundles of Benjamins.

Amazon has officially been granted permission from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to use radar technology that is designed to monitor you while you sleep.

Amazon filed a request to the FCC on June 22 for a waiver to be granted for section 15.255(c)(3) of the FCC's rules that would allow the company to implement "field disturbance radar sensors", or "Radar Sensors" into products. Amazon goes on to say that the radar sensors would be used for "sleep tracking" and would provide "awareness and management of sleep hygiene".

Amazon also states that the radar sensors would be able to assist "persons with disabilities" such as "mobility, speech, or tactile impairments." On July 8, the FCC has granted approval for the technology to be implemented into products, stating that Amazon intends to "use the radar's capability of capturing motion in a three-dimensional space to enable contactless sleep tracing functionalities."

Samsung will be unveiling its new Galaxy Note 20 family of smartphones, the re-branded Galaxy Z Fold 2 foldable smartphone, and the Galaxy Watch 3 at its Unpacked 2020 event on August 5.

Ahead of that though, it seems Best Buy has received their shipments of Samsung's unannounced Galaxy Watch 3 wearable. Android Authority received some photos from one of their tipsters, with some retail package photos of the Galaxy Watch 3 on the sales floors of a Best Buy.

Android Authority reports that the tipster "did try to buy one" but "Best Buy staff refused and moved the locked rack off the sales floor".

A key feature of the current generation Apple Watch wearable is its ECG function that has discovered heart conditions in people all around the world who had no idea they had the condition. Recently, an 80-year-old woman in Germany was warned of a heart condition by her Apple Watch that the hospital had missed in an ECG that was performed previously. The woman had visited the hospital at the University Medical Center Mainz of Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany with what the medical team called "typical angina symptoms."

The woman had experienced situations where she almost lost consciousness due to the reduced flow of oxygenated blood to the brain. The woman had previously been diagnosed with arterial hypertension, paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, and she previously had a pulmonary embolism. Doctors at the hospital ordered a 12-Channel ECG, which didn't see any evidence of ischemia, which is a restriction in blood vessels that can restrict the blood supply.

The medical staff was reportedly convinced that the woman had some sort of issue due to previous ectopic heartbeat episodes that were recorded using the ECG function of her Apple Watch. The physicians opted to treat the woman based on the recordings that the Apple Watch made. In a nutshell, the Apple Watch was able to diagnose an issue that the hospital's equipment didn't find.

Some new details have leaked that are for a next-generation Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, but exactly which model remains a mystery. What we know is that Chinese regulators are testing a Samsung smartwatch with two versions codenamed SM-R840 and SM-R850 listed. The mystery is that no one is sure if these are different sizes of the Galaxy Watch 2 or if they are the Galaxy Watch Active 3.

The assumption with two codenames is that we're looking at both a 42 mm and a 46 mm version. Other leaks have mentioned two different codenames, including R845 and R855, that are believed to be the LTE versions. The wearable is tipped to come in black, silver, and gold colors.

Rumors also suggest that the devices will have 8 GB of internal storage. That is a healthy gain from past Samsung Galaxy smartwatches and will be useful for people who like to store music on the watch for listening off-line. The battery reportedly increased in size to 330mAh, which is a significant gain from the 247mAh battery used on the Active 2.

Samsung Electronics announced today that the Samsung Health Monitor app was cleared by the South Korean Ministry of Food and Drug Safety as "Software as a Medical Device." That designation makes the Samsung Health Monitor app government-cleared as an over-the-counter, cuffless blood pressure monitoring application. The app has to be paired with the Galaxy Watch Active2 to allow users to measure and track blood pressure on the go.

Samsung says that the app will give users the ability to measure and track blood pressure using the app to provide further insight into health and to allow them to make more informed decisions. Samsung notes that the Galaxy Watch Active2 does have to be calibrated using a traditional blood pressure cuff to begin with. The user can measure their blood pressure anytime, anywhere, using the watch after the calibration.

Samsung says that the Active2 wearable can measure blood pressure using pulse wave analysis, which is tracked with the heart rate monitoring sensors inside the wearable. The app analyzes the relationship between the calibration value and the blood pressure change to determine blood pressure readings.

Hideo Kojima's collectibles are usually pretty expensive, but this Death Stranding jacket takes the cake. But it's actually pretty damn tactical and would serve any post-apocalyptic Amazon delivery man quite well.

The new jacket is already sold out, but it costs a hefty 1752 Euros (about $1900 USD) and is guaranteed to protect you from Timefall rain. Joking aside, the jacket is actually high tech and is something Sam Porter Bridges would be proud to hear. It's made by German "apparel and systems design" company Acronym, and comes packed with a ton of features. To be clear, this is a custom Bridges version of ACRONYM's J1A-GT jacket system (yes, it's a system due to its complex amount of zippers and straps) that was created closely alongside Hideo Kojima and game art director Yoji Shinkawa.

The jacket is made of next-generation GORE-TEX tech and comes with 9 pockets, a storm hood, a back sling to help secure backpacks and cargo, a dual front zipper, a flak pocket, and a myriad of buttons. There's even gravity pockets and sleeve zippers too. And more...a lot more.

Google and a Dutch startup company called Envision have teamed up together to create a new pair of smart glasses that have the potential of making many people's lives a lot easier.

These new glasses are called the Envision glasses, and they are powered by artificial intelligence that has the capabilities of reading out loud what the user is looking at in the environment. The glasses are aimed at making blind people, and the lives of visually-impaired much easier, and they can do this by extracting large quantities of visual information and describing it back to the user. Examples of this include reading a recipe from a cookbook, analyzing friends, and describing immediate surroundings such as hazards.

Envision claims that the glasses have the fastest and most accurate optical character recognition technology available at the moment, and that the glasses are capable of reading any text from more than 60 different languages from any surface. In a way, if blind people or the visually-impaired are having the world described to them in real-time, then they are 'seeing', but just not with their eyes. Instead, they are using pieces of information to accurately organize their imagination together of what the world would look like if they could see. While it might not be the same as seeing with eyeballs, it is certainly a start.

In a rather bizarre but not surprising move, Nintendo has teamed up with Levi's to make officially branded Super Mario clothes.

Levi's is making Mario jeans, shirts, jackets, scarves, and hats, complete with a stylish flair right out of the video game series. Some of the articles in the Super Mario x Levi's collab are bright, colorful, and extremely eye-catching, especially the jacket that comes packed with a ton of old-school Mario characters.

This cross-brand promotion will turn fans into walking advertisements for Nintendo with a stylish flair to boot. It's a great way to increase visibility, especially during this year's vital Olympics in Tokyo. Nintendo is also opening its Universal theme part attraction, Super Mario World, in Japan this year.

Nike's original self-lacing shoes gave Back to the Future fans as close to what they wanted: self-lacing shoes that Marty McFly had in 2015, with the original Adapt BB shoes dropping in January 2019.

But now Nike is preparing the next-gen self-lacing Adapt BB 2.0 shoes, designed by Ben Nethongkome. The new shoes feature fore-foot Zoom, compared to the Cushion used in the original Adapt BB shoes. The midsole stack height has been re-jigged for improved heel-to-toe movement, too.

You can see from the above photos that the design of the Nike Adapt BB 2.0 shoes is been improved, and they look awesome. The shoe is also even easier to put on, with early adopters of the original Adapt BB shoes saying that while they were awesome (come on, self-lacing shoes) they were annoying to put on.