Wearable Computing & Fashion - Page 22

Computex Taipei 2013 - Just when you thought you knew a company, they bust through your imagination and go that little bit further. ASUS have done that quite a lot to the public over the last 24 or so hours, and their new Republic of Gamers (ROG) Nomad Back Pack is no different.

As you can see from the images above, and below, it looks like a normal back pack, but in the traditional ASUS ROG black and red color scheme. It looks great, is highly detailed, and looks like it would be the perfect accessory for lanners, or fans of ASUS' ROG line in general. The ROG Nomad can fit a 17-inch notebook inside, with its 17-inch notebook suspension system and padded pockets. There's ventilated back padding that keeps you comfortable on the move, and durable ballistic nylon that keeps your gear safe, and dry.

In an interview with ZDnet journalist Violet Blue, adult app maker MiKandi confirmed rumors that it is working on an adult app for Google's Project Glass. MiKandi has recently grown to become the largest adult app developer for Android and features its creations on its own app store, the MiKandi Store.

"Google Glass Porn has been making its rounds, and while studios are intrigued, no one seems to be doing anything about it, we picked up our Glass and, yup, we're making content for it," said Jennifer McEwen, co-founder of MiKandi "As far as I know, we're one of the few, if not the only, adult companies with the device right now. So far, it's really fun!"

She went on to say:

Recently Google's Larry Page took a trip to Samsung's OLED production facility and was so impressed that he agreed to a deal that secured Samsung as the official display provider for Google Glass. This news comes via The Korea Times, where an official of a parts supplier for Samsung Display said, "Samsung will supply its high-end OLED screens for Google Glass."

This statement seems to be backed up by hints dropped at a recent keynote speech given by Samsung Display CEO Kim Ki-nam who explicitly referenced Google Glass several times during his talk on the potential uses of Samsung OLED product. With recent advances in flexible OLED technology, we can only hope that we will see a bendable, hard to break screen in the production version of Google Glass.

In other Glass news, Google announced this week that the winners of its #ifihadglass contest will start receiving their headgear soon. For the rest of us, there's still about a year to go until we will be able to don the title of official Glasshole.

Google is going to have a fight on its hands to make Glass a popular product. According to a survey conducted by BiTE interactive of 1,000 US adults, 45 percent of respondents said they wouldn't wear the glasses due to their aesthetics or because they thought the device would be irritating.

44 percent of those who responded saying they would wear Glass said they are most interested in the camera capabilities. 44 percent said they would wear it to take pictures, 37 percent said they'd wear Glass to take video, and a total of 39 percent said they'd want to be able to make calls with the device.

Joseph Farrell, EVP of operations at BiTE interactive:

We're a bit in love with Google Glass. We're closely following along the progress made by Glass and are happy to report that it is receiving a software update that brings with it a bunch of new features. According to Google, the update brings with it a host of changes, including crash reporting.

One interesting change worth noting is that background syncing now requires the device to be on a local Wi-Fi network and plugged into power. We imagine this is to increase the rather short battery life, but can't confirm this as the reason. Other notable changes include the addition of Google+ notifications.

If you have an Explorer Edition in your possession, simply plug it into a power source and Google should take care of the rest.

At least one Google Glass Explorer Edition owner has been doing some digging. Jay Lee, a hacker who got his hands on a pair of Google Glass, managed to connect Glass up to Google's ADB software and dig through the debug data to find out what operating system and hardware was powering the wearable device.

According to the ADB printout, Google Glass Explorer Editions are running Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich. They are powered by an OMAP 4430 CPU, which is a dual-core in the same family as the processor used in the Galaxy Nexus smartphone. The ADB printout returned that the system has 682MB of RAM, though Lee believes it's more likely 1GB with some reserved for hardware.

We'll surely be getting more information as Glass gets into the hands of more developers and hackers. Until then, feel free to dig through the information Lee has posted on a Google Drive.

If you're looking forward to taking video with your shiny new Google Glass headset, I've got some bad news. According to Robert Scoble, a user with the Explorer Edition of Google Glass, shooting video can drain the battery in as little as 30 minutes. "One six-minute video I did took 20 percent of the battery."

This could end up being a deal breaker for a large majority of customers. Google has maintained that the Explorer Edition of Glass isn't for the mainstream consumer. As such, it's not the final version and still has bugs and issues to work out.

Google does have an issue with regards to battery life. They need to squeeze the most out of the smallest battery they can. If they increase the size of the battery, that extra weight takes away from the comfort during wearing.

Wearable computing is really taking off this year, first we have the launch of Google Glass later in the year, but we're also going to see smartwatches gain some serious traction in the coming months. Market research firm ABI Research are predicting that smartwatches will see an explosion of sales this year, where they expect sales of 1.2 million smartwatches in 2013. Senior analyst Joshua Flood said:

Will you be buying a smartwatch this year? Personally, I'm not a watch wearing type of guy, but Google Glass? Shut up and take my money.

Google have finally unveiled the full specifications of their Glass tech, which is actually a bit better than what I thought we'd receive in the final consumer units.

We have the display first, which is a high-resolution display being the equivalent to a 25-inch high-definition screen eight feet away from your eyes. Camera-wise, we have a 5-megapixel camera for photos and 720p capture for video, there's some adjustable nosepads with a durable frame that fits any face. There's also two extra nosepads included.

We have a Bond Conduction Transducer for audio, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth for connectivity, 12GB of usable memory synced with Google cloud storage, 16GB of flash memory total. Battery life should be good, with Google quoting "one full day of typical use", which includes Hangouts and video recording which are more battery intensive.

Google Glass isn't even here yet and we're already seeing lawmakers make their movies. West Virginia lawmakers are trying to push in a new bill that would make it illegal to drive while "using a wearable computer with head mounted display."

The news comes from CNET, from a piece by Chris Matyszczyk, where he received an e-mail from Gary G. Howell, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature. The e-mail read "your article on Google Glass prompted this bill." Matyszczyk asked Howell how this had all of the sudden transpired, but Howell isn't totally against Glass, telling Matyszczyk:

Howell believes that "when I choose to use the Google Glass and cross the center-line of the road because I'm reading a text, then my actions affect someone else." This is fair enough, but the same logic can be applied to smoking, eating, talking, on a smartphone or tablet, and many more activities when walking. Howell himself isn't sure if this bill will pass, but he is convinced that other legislatures will follow his lead.

Samsung has made it no secret that it intends to go head to head with Apple in everything it does. This time we are getting reports that the Korean make-everything giant is planning on entering the Smart Watch game... again.

Samsung's executive VP said in an interview with Bloomberg today that "We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them." He went on to say that between Apple and Samsung the "issue here is who will first commercialize it so consumers can use it meaningfully."

This is not the first time Samsung has taken on the role of Smart Watch builder, just back then we did not call them smart watches. The S9110 "Watchphone" debuted in 2009 and a decade earlier, it released the SPH-WP10 "Watch Phone". Who do you think will win the Smart Watch war? My bet is on Samsung, but in reality all we can do is sit back and watch.

Last summer at Google's annual tech conference, Google I/O, the company opened up the "explorer" edition of its Project Glass headset for pre-order to IO developer and early adopter attendees. At the time you had to fork over $1500 for the early access to the headset.

Google is re-opening the pre-order program for its headsets, with one caveat. You must be a "Creative Individual" and enter the #ifihadglass competition, being held by Google now. If your entry is chosen, Google will allow you to pre-order a pair of Google Glasses.

The competition is open to US residents only who are of the age of 18 or older. Applicants must impress Google in 50 words or less which explain what you would do if you had Glass. Entries must start the essay with the hashtag #ifihadglass, can include up to five photos, and a 15 second video. The pre-order will still cost you $1500 if you are chosen. You can find the competition at the source link below.

With Google saying that their "Explorer Edition" of their augmented reality headset would arrive early in 2013, it looks like they're finally here as they're sliding through the FCC.

Now that they're hitting the FCC, we can see some specs - 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, and the latest Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy technology. The charging method appears to be a USB charger, but another listing tells a story of a "barrel" connector.

Something else that has been spotted is that Glass looks to feature a "vibrating element" that would provide the wearer audio "via contact with the user's head". We don't know exactly what this is, but it does sound like bone conduction technology, which would suit Glass quite well.

Google's Project Glass is the next thing in tech, at least according to most analysts and tech enthusiasts. Google is hosting two Glass Developer Conferences, one in SF and one in NYC. For the rest of us who didn't put down $1,500 for an early pair of glasses, we're stuck scrounging around the web for coverage of the events.

Unfortunately for us, there won't be any as all the attendees of the events had to sign NDAs preventing them from talking about the event. ReadWrite managed to get a look at the NDA that was required to be signed and has paraphrased and reordered them in order to prevent Google from identifying who gave them the peek.

Only one part of the NDA actually gives us hope of actually starting to see more of Glass, and possibly not controlled by Google:

For those super early (and lucky) developers who were able to get their hands on early access to a Google Glass unit - for a cool $1500 - are now invited to two hackathon events which are dedicated to the wearable augmented reality unit.

The events will take place on January 28 and 29, which will be held at Google's San Francisco office, but on February 1 and 2 the Glass Foundry in New York will house the second, and last hackathon. Registration opens on January 18 and I'm sure those seats will be snapped up quite quickly. Developers will learn about the Google Glass Mirror API, but Google engineers will also be there to help out and answer questions.

The full letter is below:

Head trauma in sports has always been a major concern in impact sports. In 2012 we saw the NFL take a lot of heat over its current and former players experiencing multiple concussions. Reebok and mc10 have developed a wearable head impact detector that makes it easy for medical staff to see where the impact took place.

Called CheckLight, the device resembles a skull cap and is worn on the head under protective hear such as helmets. The sensor itself is actually an array of flexible force sensors that are connected to a micro controller that illuminates three indicator LEDs. One LED is a battery indicator, one flashes yellow if the impact was mild, and the third flashes red for severe blows.

Verizon, Intel and Ridell all have similar systems in the R&D phase, but CheckLight is the first to hit the market. What sets it apart from the rest is that coaches, training staff and even other players can get somewhat of an indication whether or not a player has suffered a serious hit and needs to be taken out of the game.

As the Android and iOS flame wars continue on an hourly basis, there's one thing we could all agree with: our fingers are freezing when using our phones in the winter. Temperatures below zero and using touchscreen phones don't mix as having your delicate fingers out for too long can result in some seriously cold digits.

Touchscreen-compatible gloves have been available for for years now, but what if you want to use your phone while outside of the classiest of classy parties and cotton gloves would look silly? Then you may be interested in Mujjo's Leather Touchscreen Gloves.

Yes - these are leather gloves that are compatible with touchscreen devices. Mujjo has infused its nanotechnology into their leather gloves while still keeping the integrity of the gloves in tact. Unlike other gloves that give users the ability to use their smartphone with just their first and middle fingertips, Mujjo gives its glove uses the ability to use all of their fingertips and even the palms of their hands.

Next time you're walking around a store checking out what the mannequin is wearing, it may just be checking you out back. A new mannequin is being sold by Almax SpA called the EyeSee. This new mannequin differs from the traditional mannequin in that it has a camera in its eye that feeds back data to facial recognition software.

It's similar to the technology used at airports by police, however, these fashion companies aren't looking to catch criminals. Instead, they want to gather as much data as possible so that they have a fighting chance of keeping up with online retailers. Online retailers currently have access to loads more personal information than traditional stores do.

It's really a bit creepy, actually. The facial recognition software logs the age, gender, and race of people who walk by. It probably logs other information, such as people who stay in front of the mannequin for long periods of time. According to the manufacturer, companies have already made changes because of the data.

I imagine these new lights are going to be popular with teens across the world, with Philips announcing a new iOS-controlled LED lighting system that can display almost any color, personalizing the lighting experience with a wide array of dimmer and scheduling options.

Philips believe at the new "hue" light bulbs would reinvent "the way we think about and experience light in our homes". Philips elaborates:

The company are also working on new features such as geo-location to automatically turn hue on or off when the owner would approach or leave their homes, as well as integrating other media such as video and audio.

Always chasing the latest fashion trends? A fan of 3D printing? Why not combine the two? Well, now you can. A company is offering 3D-printed shoes and they will only set you back $900. The collection is named "strvct" and "uses innovative materials to create fantasy-inspired designs." Take a look:

The shoes aren't just for decoration; they can actually be worn thanks to the durable nylon they are printed from. They also feature a synthetic rubber sole for traction and a "patent leather inner sole." They say that the "triangulated spin on the classic wedge pump...brings to mind Cinderella's glass slipper in its transparency" but I'm not convinced.

Theoretically, these shoes could be made at home on a 3D printer, all you need are the designs. But, more importantly, it puts existing technology to cool new uses. The shoes are made to order so they could take a bit of time to be delivered, not to mention $900 seems a bit high to pay for a pair of shoes. Nevertheless, they are cool.