Enlighted Designs Inc. has developed a scrolling message LED bra. About time wearable technology and underwear got married. This ultimate attention drawing piece of clothing doesn’t come cheap though. Custom made and at $500 and up there’s not a high risk of running into another ‘ticker’ bra at a party.
It uses the same technology is the “block letter hat” and is powered by a 9V battery, which lasts for about 6 hours.
Denim News reports to have sighted a denim jacket equipped with solar panels at the CeBIT, the world’s largest technology trade show in Hanover, Germany.
The jacket is designed by Willy Bogner, a well known and exclusive (sports) fashion design house and is said to be able to recharge mobile devices such as ipods and cell phones.
We-make-money-not-art has interviewed Ryan and Francesca from CuteCircuit, an “Interaction Design and Product Development Lab, specialized in the development of wearable interfaces for telecommunication, interactive environments and art installations.”
CuteCircuit has developed wearable technology prototypes, such as the Hug Shirt (pictured below), a shirt with integrated Bluetooth that allows people to exchange the physical sensation of a hug over distance.
Another of CuteCircuit’s project is the Mystique dress, a dress that changes color and shape depending on the time of the day.
(photos:CuteCircuit)
LinuxDevices has published an article about a wrist worn PC (WWPC) developed by EuroTech. The device weighs about 200 grams and features a 2.8 x 2.2-inch touchscreen LCD display. SD cards will serve as a storage medium and offers connectivity through integrated Bluetooth, WiFi and USB ports. The WWPC is powered by an AMD AU 1100 CPU and, according to EuroTech, will be capable of performing basically like a normal PC.
The WWPC will support both Linux and Windows CE as operating systems.
The WWPC will be available in June for around 2000 US dollars.
Globeandmail have road tested the Delphi Myfi XM2go (picture courtesy of XMRadio) portable satellite radio.
Satellite radio in a portable device sounds very appealing because it gives you superb audio quality, a huge number of channels and switching between channels is as simple as choosing a song on your mp3 player.
They write: “Satellite radio is, in a sense, a suburban invention: ideal for people who spend long periods of time in their cars or at home, where they can install the docking station and antenna. With good reception, the sheer amount of music you’ll have access to puts MP3 players to shame. But it falters as a gadget to bop around town with. There’s nothing worse than losing a song halfway throughespecially when you’ve decided you really do like bluegrass.”
Forbes has got an article on how innovative designers merge technology and fashion to create what could be the next generation of wearable technology. Some experiment with new fabrics that will retain their shape (bye bye clothes iron) and elasticity. Pictured here is a spray on shirt out of a can, that creates a fabric on skin contact out of non woven cloth. Smart clothes that can change their shape or form according to weather and temperature conditions, such as the long sleaved short that can automatically ‘roll up its sleaves’, are being developed at the MIT media lab.
A more traditional approach of marrying fashion and technology is the Japanese nylon jacket with inbuilt fans for better temperature control, also pictured in the article.
According to the article, wearable technology and smart clothes only make up 1% of the fashion retail sales in the US so far, but solid growth has been experienced in the last few years. At some stage wearable technology will become everyday item, but once more products become available, they will initially be most popular with early adopters.
Seiko recently auctioned off an “Electronic Ink” watch on Ebay UK, to support the ‘Help a London Child’ charity.
Unlike a traditional electronic watch, the electronic ink watch is “a watch where electronic pulses are shot across an ‘electronic page’ to form the numeral display; there is no ‘mechanism’ as such.” The result is an ultra light and stylish wrist watch with an extremely thin display that is bent to fit the shape of your wrist.
This watch will be a very rare buy with Seiko only having produced 500 of them.
The electronic watch went for £1,551.90 and is the only one that will ever be sold in the UK.
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