This Week in Wearables: Are ‘Ingestibles’ the New Wearables?
Designer Yves Behar talks smart locks, wearables and Apple (Q&A)
via CNET by Shara Tibken
Yves Behar, one of the most famous industrial designers of the past two decades, has a lot to say not just about the way products should look, but what problems they should solve. Since beginning design house Fuseproject in 1999, Behar has worked with companies such as Apple, General Electric, Herman Miller, Movado, Prada and Samsung. He is chief creative officer at fitness-band maker Jawbone and chief designer at charity program One Laptop per Child. Behar is also a co-founder of smart-lock maker August, which on Wednesday introduced its newest products. The company’s latest smart lock works with Apple’s HomeKit software and lets owners of an Apple device ask their Siri digital voice assistant to lock their front doors. A new doorbell includes a camera to monitor who’s at the door. A keypad lets people unlock their August locks by typing in a PIN.
Can Wearables for Women Unite Creators and Consumers?
via Sitepoint, by Cate Lawrence
It would be fair to say that the first wave of women’s wearables had a shaky start with products that showed promise but failed to create a retail revolution. There’s been no shortage of glowing and glittering bespoke gowns and garments that have gained media interest to languish in museums and galleries as prototypes never reproduced in a ready to wear line. I feel there’s been a move from products designed for men with women as an afterthought, to women-centric designs and developments, many created by women, for women. Now wearables for women have the potential to resonate with a growing consumer market and this article looks at the recent wave of devices, encouraged by progress in electronic textiles and mobile technology.
‘Ingestibles’ could become the new wearables faster than you think
via Mashable , by Alicia Marie Tan
Wearables have made people obsessed with tracking their personal data — from fitness to sleep to even sex. We’ve been retrieving this information externally, but can data also come from within? At the Code/Mobile conference, Hosain Rahman, CEO of leading wearables company Jawbone, said they’ve looked into ingestibles as the future of wearables. They’re sensors that “pass through you” and collect data.
Intel’s itty-bitty Curie CPU for wearables is coming to Arduino early next year
via PCWorld, by James Niccolai
School kids and hardware enthusiasts who want to start tinkering with Intel’s tiny Curie chip will be able to get their hands on it early next year in the form of an Arduino development board. Curie is a new chip module that Intel showed at the International CES in January. About a centimeter across, it includes a 32-bit microcontroller, Bluetooth Low Energy for connectivity, a small amount of RAM and Flash, and a six-axis sensor with a gyrometer and accelerometer.
ARM Announce Wearable-Focused Mali-470 GPU
via Android Headlines, by Tom Dawson
As with a lot of industries, there’s a big player behind the scenes in today’s mobile industry, enabling the likes of Qualcomm and Samsung to produce the processors that keep your smartphones ticking. ARM, the UK firm that designs the Cortex-A line of processors that the Snapdragon 810 and Exynos 7420 are ultimately derived from also designs a GPU blueprint, the Mali series. The Mali line of GPUs, the part of the overall processor package that focuses on just graphics, has become incredibly successful, with 114 licenses now issued to manufacturers all over the world. With the new Mali-470, ARM hope to deliver rich, 3D experiences to both wearables and embedded solutions (such as Internet of Things appliances) without the associated power drain. I recently got the chance to talk to the folk at ARM and to learn more about what this new silicon will all be about.
LG and Samsung unveil new battery tech for future wearables
via Android Authority, by Rob Triggs
LG and Samsung have been showing off a selection of new flexible battery cells designed for wearable products at an exhibition in Seoul today. Given the limited space inside wearable products and the long life time demanded from smartwatch consumers, new battery technologies are seen as a key to help drive the market forward.