Tag Archives: Wearable technology

This Band-Aid-inspired wearable finger strip generates energy from your sweat, even when you’re asleep!

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Our bodies are an abundant source of energy to power new-age wearables; the only question is to figure out how to do it most practically. This thin Band-Aid-like energy harvester developed by the team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego, could be the answer to powering our gadgets in the future. Of course, there are other similar prototype wearables we’ve seen in the past, including some by the UC San Diego team itself, but this one is different.

The thin, flexible strip worn on the finger can generate energy when you are sleeping or simply doing nothing since the sweat from your body powers it. As the fingertips produce exponentially more sweat than any other body part, they are virtually an abundant source to put to good use. The strip has carbon foam electrodes that absorb the sweat, and a chemical reaction is initiated between the lactate and oxygen molecules. The result is electricity generation that’s stored in capacitors to power our modern power-hungry wearables. According to co-first author Lu Yin, “This work is a step forward to making wearables more practical, convenient and accessible for the everyday person.”

The strip comes equipped with piezoelectric material to generate energy in response to pressure. Activities like typing, exercising, driving your car, or opening the refrigerator also result in energy production. During the testing phase, the team tested to strip during 10 hours of sleep on a subject, and it produced 400 millijoules of energy. This is ample energy to power an electronic watch for 24 hours. Another experiment by the team tested the energy generated with casual typing and clicking with a mouse, resulting in 30 millijoules of energy. Yin emphasized the fact that “when you are sleeping, you are putting in no work. Even with a single finger press, you are only investing about half a millijoule.”

The team is working on improving the device to make it practical, efficient, and durable for everyday use. To this end, Yin added by saying that, “We want to show that this is not just another cool thing that can generate a small amount of energy and then that’s it – we can actually use the energy to power useful electronics such as sensors and displays.”

Designer: University of California, San Diego

Apple Glass AR designed to give homage to the retro glasses Steve Jobs wore!

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Antonio De Rosa and Apple concepts are the perfect smoothies we love and the Italian designer has surprised me again. This time Antonio has gone for a piece of concept that has a lot of nostalgia as well as the historical value attached to it. Meet the Apple glass concept that pays homage to Steve Jobs favorite pair of prescription glasses – the Lunor Classic PP. Apple co-founder was obsessed with this eyewear ever since he got influenced by the ways of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – who apparently shaped up Steve’s very thought process. After the turmoil of being fired by the board of Apple, he got the pair of circular wire-rim glasses to emulate his hero and ultimately returned stronger than ever as the CEO of Apple. Later on, Steve switched to the rimless brand Lunor Ideal i 380.

Combine that iconic piece of historical magnificence with the brewing rumors of the Apple AR eyeglasses, and it makes for a perfect case. Yes, this concept by Antonio makes even more sense since the world is expecting the augmented reality glasses by Apple to be announced as soon as this year. Having them in the Lunor Classic PP theme will be the apt strategy to go for if Apple is reading this piece. The AR glasses are in the second phase of testing since the start of this year and now this concept design weights its worth in gold. The rounded glass frame coincides with the rumor last year by trusted leakster Jon Prosser who claimed that Apple is working on Steve Jobs Heritage Edition AR eyeglasses.

These countered glasses look absolutely stylish for the generation next crowd- with the frame crafted from lightweight aluminum and the lenses made out of polycarbonate material. The technology of these wearables is honed by an array of six cameras with autofocus lenses, an eye-tracking system with HDR, and gesture recognition. The glasses even track your calorie intake and health status. Coming onto the cameras, two cameras are tucked in the nose-piece assemblies and the other two on the opposite side of each nose piece. Other cameras and sensors take a position in the crossbar connecting the two lenses. What I like the most besides the glasses is the AirPods style charging case for them!

Designer: Antonio De Rosa

Innovative smartwatch designs that are the perfect culmination of form, functionality and style: Part 2

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I love a good smartwatch, as do many of us. One of the most fascinating facts about smartwatches is, that we use them for everything other than telling the time! They go beyond simply telling the time, these multifunctional timepieces can now keep a check on our health, update us on the weather, function as an alarm clock, give reminders, cater to the blind, and even function as a case for your Airpods?! Designers are coming up with smartwatches that not only provide perfect form and functionality but also manage to look super smart when we wear them. The options are endless, so to help you pick a smartwatch that works best for you, we’ve curated a collection of innovative and cutting-edge smartwatches that will cater to everyone’s unique time-telling needs and requirements, and also totally deserve to be on your wrists. Enjoy!

Embodying Google’s playful-serious aesthetic, the Pixel Smartwatch concept comes in a traditional round format, and in a variety of quirkily named colors. The Android Wear OS logo displays clearly on the always-on display of the watch, transforming into a colorful set of watch hands every time you look at it to read the time. The watch comes with Google’s top-notch voice AI, all of Google’s native apps, and a heart-rate monitor on the back, which ties in well with Google’s plan of acquiring Fitbit and their entire fitness-tech ecosystem. I wouldn’t be surprised if this wearable concept were entirely waterproof too, just to fire shots at Apple!

The VOIXATCH made waves on the tech circuits especially after a demonstration at the Mobile World Congress last year. Grabbing eyes as the first smartwatch with a built-in Bluetooth headset, the VOIXATCH helped unveil a world where watch and earphones were part of a tight ecosystem as one single product that did practically everything your phone could, without you needing to take your phone out. The VOIXATCH smartwatch comes equipped with LTE and GPS, has its own SIM card slot, a Google voice assistant, a heartbeat sensor, a gyroscope, and a battery life of 48 hours. That, however, isn’t the most impressive bit about the VOIXATCH, because embedded within its bezel is a detachable ring that turns into a Bluetooth headset.

Introducing their own interpretation of Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatch, a California-based group of designers completely redesigned the electronic company’s smartwatch with a new display screen and watch bands. Opting for a tank case shape for their smartwatch reinterpretation, the team of California-based designers equipped Samsung’s Galaxy smartwatch with a curved, vertical display panel. Curved monitors are quickly taking over flat screens with a deeper immersive viewing experience and fuller screen with more vibrant colors and graphics. The team then conceptualized nine different ideations for their smartwatch straps, since the functionality of a smartwatch relies on customizing its watch bands. With nine lives, the detachable watch face would theoretically be attached to the different watch straps utilizing a lock-in-place method. Each rectangular watch face locks into the different watch bands by either sliding into laser-cut, metal incisions, or slipping into adhesive silicone slots.

Di-fuse is a smartwatch with a difference; as opposed to relying on a distracting display to communicate information, it uses a combination of sound and light to create a productivity-inducing accessory! Simply put, this smartwatch conveys all the information you need without any screen. The removal of the conventional interface leads to a beautifully simplistic and fuss-free aesthetic that is far less visually intrusive than the devices we are currently familiar with. However, at this point, you may be wondering what Di-fuse can be used for? Well, this wrist-worn accessory is still capable of notifying the user of social-related notifications, tracking their health status, as well as even being able to provide them with direction via voice cues. To elevate the watches desirability even further, it also features interchangeable lugs that the face satisfyingly snaps into, dramatically changes the visual aesthetic of this intriguing device!

The Nubia is to smart-watches what the plus-sized displays are to smartphones. The watch comes with an impressive 4-inch display that wraps around the upper half of your wrist, giving the Nubia the largest display on a smart wearable BY FAR. Designed to help lay the information out in a way that’s easy to see no matter the angle, Nubia’s vertical display is instantly eye-catching and is conveniently long enough so that you don’t need to scroll away on a tiny screen. It comes with a real-time heart-rate tracker, 4 dedicated sports/fitness tracking modes, the ability to accept and reject calls, find your phone if it gets lost, and summon your phone’s native voice assistant.

“Time

A few weeks ago, I covered a wifi-router concept that gave users the option to disconnect from the internet. In a similar vein, the TIME OFF! watch gives you the ability to mute your smartphone notifications. How does it work? Well, the process is pretty straight-forward. Similar to many smartwatches and Fitbits, the TIME OFF! has a companion app where you can control all the settings. With the app, you can choose which apps and alarms to mute during your “time off” mode. Once you save those settings, you can, at any point, silence those alerts by pressing the red button on your TIME OFF! watch. You don’t even have to pick up your phone. My favorite aspect of the watch is its simple design. Yanko has featured plenty of minimalistic concepts, but this one is the most minimal watch that I’ve seen. The watch consists of a solid-colored band and a face with a small LED sliver that displays the time. The screen doesn’t even fill the entire watch surface!

We have designer Reiten Cheng who has developed a concept Surface Watch which goes with the design language of Microsoft’s latest line of products. Reiten has boldly gone ahead and made the body circular. An approach that may not be congruent with the rectangular tile UI that Microsoft carries across all its devices and one that I don’t think the designers at Microsoft would take. Nevertheless, the form is quite appealing and the concept comes with some neat features other than the ones on the screen. The watch features a magnesium alloy chassis with Alcantara for the band. It comes integrated with a rim around the dial, which acts as an interactive input method. The adjustable band comes with a unique mechanism too. You can adjust the clasp by pushing the button, which is adorned with the Microsoft logo, which then releases the lock.

The Circle Watch’s body sits on the watch-strap at an angle, leaning towards the user. Designed to make it easier to read the time without tilting your wrist too much, the Circle watch’s own inherent 15° tilt gives you a clear view of the watch’s always-on display at all times. This tilt also creates space for a button right behind the Circle’s body, allowing it to remain otherwise thin and minimalistic. The button hides from view (unlike in the Apple Watch, where the crown forms a significant part of the watch’s aesthetic), giving you a smartwatch that just feels clean and sophisticated, and focuses on the good stuff with a convenient, tilted UX and a boundless, edge-to-edge UI.

A concept’s biggest objective is to open the mind to possibilities. To spark the imagination. So while I don’t know what to feel about this AirWatch concept, I can only imagine its immense potential. Here’s what Jiae Jung is proposing. Rather than storing your Airpods case in your pants, and rather than having a floss-box-shaped case that doesn’t do much, Jung’s revisited the entire product altogether. The new Airpods case houses a screen (a pretty small one) and has the ability to snap to a smartwatch. When it does, the Airpods case BECOMES the smartwatch, mirroring contents onto its own screen. The smartwatch sitting under the Airpods case comes with its own b/w screen that shows the time and date and becomes a true smartwatch only when you mount the Airpods case onto it. When mounted, you can read messages, track your fitness, and obviously listen to music. The band around your wrist not only transforms your Airpods case into something slightly more meaningful but also gives you a proper place to put it, rather than in your pockets.

The Dot Watch Braille Smartwatch has been designed especially for the visually impaired. It showcases the time using tactile clues, instead of visual ones. Weighing at a light 33 grams, and with four active braille cells powered by a li-polymer 400mAh battery, the smartwatch makes time-telling extremely easy for disabled individuals. It is compatible with both iOS and Android, and is the perfect integration of form, functionality, and style in an inclusive design!

Innovative smartwatch designs that are the perfect culmination of form, functionality and style!

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Smartwatches are slowly becoming everyone’s preferred means of telling the time! Gone are the bulky and gawky smartwatch designs of the past, they’re slowly being replaced by smart, nifty and not to mention fashionably stylish successors! They’re going beyond simply telling the time, these multifunctional timepieces can now keep a check on our health, update us on the weather, function as an alarm clock, give reminders, cater to the blind, and are even being used by firefighters to save lives! When it comes to innovative smartwatches, designers are leaving no stones unturned, and we’ve curated a collection of unique, inventive, and highly functional watches that will look super cool on your wrist!

Embodying Google’s playful-serious aesthetic, the Pixel Smartwatch concept comes in a traditional round format, and in a variety of quirkily named colors. The Android Wear OS logo displays clearly on the always-on display of the watch, transforming into a colorful set of watch hands every time you look at it to read the time. The watch comes with Google’s top-notch voice AI, all of Google’s native apps, and a heart-rate monitor on the back, which ties in well with Google’s plan of acquiring Fitbit and their entire fitness-tech ecosystem. I wouldn’t be surprised if this wearable concept were entirely waterproof too, just to fire shots at Apple!

The VOIXATCH made waves on the tech circuits especially after a demonstration at the Mobile World Congress last year. Grabbing eyes as the first smartwatch with a built-in Bluetooth headset, the VOIXATCH helped unveil a world where watch and earphones were part of a tight ecosystem as one single product that did practically everything your phone could, without you needing to take your phone out. The VOIXATCH smartwatch comes equipped with LTE and GPS, has its own SIM card slot, a Google voice assistant, a heartbeat sensor, a gyroscope, and a battery life of 48 hours. That, however, isn’t the most impressive bit about the VOIXATCH, because embedded within its bezel is a detachable ring that turns into a Bluetooth headset.

The Nubia is to smart-watches what the plus-sized displays are to smartphones. The watch comes with an impressive 4-inch display that wraps around the upper half of your wrist, giving the Nubia the largest display on a smart wearable BY FAR. Designed to help lay information out in a way that’s easy to see no matter the angle, Nubia’s vertical display is instantly eye-catching and is conveniently long enough so that you don’t need to scroll away on a tiny screen. It comes with a real-time heart-rate tracker, 4 dedicated sports/fitness tracking modes, the ability to accept and reject calls, find your phone if it gets lost, and summon your phone’s native voice assistant.

The Circle Watch’s body sits on the watch-strap at an angle, leaning towards the user. Designed to make it easier to read the time without tilting your wrist too much, the Circle watch’s own inherent 15° tilt gives you a clear view of the watch’s always-on display at all times. This tilt also creates space for a button right behind the Circle’s body, allowing it to remain otherwise thin and minimalistic. The button hides from view (unlike in the Apple Watch, where the crown forms a significant part of the watch’s aesthetic), giving you a smartwatch that just feels clean and sophisticated, and focuses on the good stuff with a convenient, tilted UX and a boundless, edge-to-edge UI.

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Sony’s Wena allows those true-blue analog timepiece lovers to accept technology without surrendering their favorite timepieces. The Wena is a tech-filled band that can fit on any timepiece that sports an OLED screen of its own that can show you notifications straight from your smartphone. The beauty of the band is the fact that it doesn’t replace analog artistry with state-of-the-art tech but allows them to coexist. The Wena comes with a screen that pulls notifications from your smartphone, along with the ability to make contactless payments. The band can easily fit on any pre-existing analog watch you have, allowing you to hold onto your precious timepiece but still have the future and its perks right under your sleeve.

The Dot Watch Braille Smartwatch has been designed especially for the visually impaired. It showcases the time using tactile clues, instead of visual ones. Weighing at a light 33 grams, and with four active braille cells powered by a li-polymer 400mAh battery, the smartwatch makes time-telling extremely easy for disabled individuals. It is compatible with both iOS and Android, and is the perfect integration of form, functionality, and style in an inclusive design!

PDF Haus has taken the concept of smartwatches one step further by creating the Pantech and Curitel Smartwatch. Inspired by the principles of the Pantech and Curitel Camcorder Phone, they decided to apply it to a new form factor- a Smartwatch. Armed with a thermal imaging camera, the Pantech and Curitel Smartwatch; a design by Kikang Kim is all set to transform the conventional thermal imaging experience into a more hands-free one. The result: a sleek smartwatch with a metallic finish and a strong rugged look, enabling firefighters to find an ignition point and save countless lives! The introduction of User Interface allows for the instant and easy capturing of images, without occupying any upper limb movement.

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For the fashion-conscious wearer, there’s the Coalesce C_001. It fuses the time-tested style of analog timepieces with the smart tech of today’s modern wearables. The pristine face is kept beneath a sapphire crystal glass dome, however, it’s not touch-sensitive. The idea is that the less contact the wearer has with it, the longer it will last. I’ve broken my phone enough times to know this is true! Instead, the crown serves as the primary interface. Similar to a classic watch, users can access and control a myriad of features by pressing, spinning, or tapping. The display screen itself is quite straightforward, keeping the watch face minimalistic and dapper. The face and hour/minute hands can also be color coordinated to match or contrast with a variety of leather bands in different hues.

The Esiva looks nothing like a traditional smartwatch, but does the job of one, delivering notifications, telling you the time, and tracking your fitness. The band comes with an all-metal design, featuring a minimal 3-part arc-shaped display. The display’s slim shape means a simple, bare-basics interface with only relevant information, along with a minimal interaction involving just tapping and swiping. Two crowns on the rim help you perform a host of other tasks like summoning your phone’s Voice AI. Ultimately, the Esiva forms an extension of your smartphone, delivering information to you in a crisp, concise, and charming manner… and even though it doesn’t have a large, square-shaped interface that you’d get lost in, its elegant design will ensure all eyes are on it!

The unique aspect of this smartwatch design is how the screen wraps around the wrist comfortably. Unlike similar products, which use a swipe feature to access the various widgets, this concept displays all of them on the same screen. How can they fit comfortably? Well, the display for this concept happens to be extra long, stretching past the width of your wrist. Also, instead of swiping through the different pages, the interface works by scrolling up or down. This is a newer design concept that works better for this type of device. You don’t have to swipe back and forth between multiple pages (everything is right there in your eye’s view).

The Drop Cache Display Valet EDC Case is perfect for storing your beloved smartwatch collection! Not to mention, it can also hold your other nifty EDC products like knives, wallets, pens and etc. Not only does it carefully stores your EDC items, but it also artfully displays them! A faux-leather exterior is accentuated by a clear acrylic top, allowing everyone to catch a glimpse of your EDC collection. It can hold up to three watches (pop in your favorite smartwatches!), seven knives, two pens, four flashlights, and your wallet. An added bonus is the USB cable pass-through channel, which ensures that your smartwatches are charged and ready for use!

The Top 10 wearable designs of 2020 that showcase the tech trends dominating this new normal

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Wearable tech designs make our lives easier and more efficient in multiple ways! From smartwatches, Fitbits to VR headsets, innovative tech designs can be valuable additions to our daily lifestyles. And, not to mention sometimes they’re really fun to use and trendy to wear. One thing we do know is that masks are not going anywhere – what we can expect to see are more futuristic masks that improve the user experience without affecting the efficiency, tech that makes working from home easy while you juggle the dreaded work-life balance, and finally, tech that keeps your health up front and center. We’ve curated the top ten wearable tech designs of 2020, and I’m sure you’ll be dying to get your hands on them!

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This ultramodern twist on underwater specs, called D-Mask, addresses many of the issues divers currently encounter. Secured around the forehead, jaw, and chin, the design may cover the full face, but the result feels less restrictive than traditional goggles. While it’s usable on its own, by simply connecting the unit to an air tank, users can breathe easily and more naturally without the need for a sealed mouthpiece. It’s also equipped with an innovative bone-conduction radio system that makes it possible to enjoy tunes or communicate with other divers conversationally – something that was impossible and limited to basic sign language before.

A portable, wearable, air conditioner is no more a thing of futuristic TV shows. The Reon Pocket is a smartphone-controlled personal gadget that was designed to be compact and cool. It works using thermoelectric cooling and can cool the user’s body temperature by 13 degrees celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) and raise your temperature by about 8 degrees Celsius (about 14 degrees Fahrenheit). Reon sits on the base of your neck in a special undershirt designed for it. It uses the Peltier effect which means a temperature difference is created by applying a voltage between two electrodes connected to a sample of semiconductor material. The heat is absorbed or emitted when you pass an electrical current across a junction to either lower your temperature or increase it without bulk or noise.

With an undeniably better form factor, and better image quality too, Panasonic’s VR glasses are classier and well, ‘glassier’ (as opposed to the massive ski-goggles that most VR headsets look like). Fitted with micro-OLED panels on the inside, the VR glasses can afford to be made smaller and have much better clarity too. In fact, unlike most VR headsets, you almost don’t notice the pixels in Panasonic’s product, allowing your VR world to be much more immersive because of its higher resolution. Panasonic also claims that they’re the first-ever VR glasses to support HDR, or a high dynamic range, allowing colors, saturation, brightness, and contrast to all be incredibly lifelike.

This wearable fitness tracker-looking ring is actually a mouse designed to be as lightweight as possible so there isn’t excess load on your joints. The ring mouse’s design works intuitively, it reacts to the movements of the fingertips and does not interfere with the natural movement of the wrist since it is a wearable ring. Due to its unique shape for a mouse, it makes the experience smoother while reducing the stress on your wrists as it won’t be awkwardly bent at an angle for hours! The ring has sensors that provide the functionality of a mouse such as ‘click’, ‘sweep’, ‘scroll’ through different gestures that are similar to how we use the trackpads on a laptop.

Embodying Google’s playful-serious aesthetic, the Pixel Smartwatch concept comes in a traditional round format, and in a variety of quirkily named colors. The Android Wear OS logo displays clearly on the always-on display of the watch, transforming into a colorful set of watch hands every time you look at it to read the time. The watch comes with Google’s top-notch voice AI, all of Google’s native apps, and a heart-rate monitor on the back, which ties in well with Google’s plan of acquiring Fitbit and their entire fitness-tech ecosystem.

NASA has designed Pulse, a DIY wearable necklace, that warns you when you are about to touch your face. It works on a simple mechanism – the necklace has a sensor that detects when the user lifts their hands towards their face and it will vibrate to warn them using power from a common button battery. This vibration is a reminder for the user to not touch their face and soon establishes the muscle memory required to turn this into a new behavioral pattern. All the necessary STL files, the list of the parts you’ll need, and the assembly instructions have been made freely available for anyone to make these.

The VOIXATCH made waves on the tech circuits especially after a demonstration at the Mobile World Congress last year. Grabbing eyes as the first smartwatch with a built-in Bluetooth headset, the VOIXATCH helped unveil a world where watch and earphones were part of a tight ecosystem as one single product that did practically everything your phone could, without you needing to take your phone out. The VOIXATCH smartwatch comes equipped with LTE and GPS, has its own SIM card slot, a Google voice assistant, a heartbeat sensor, a gyroscope, and a battery life of 48 hours. That, however, isn’t the most impressive bit about the VOIXATCH, because embedded within its bezel is a detachable ring that turns into a Bluetooth headset.

Halo’s most exclusive feature is the fact that it creates a 3D model of your body and tracks the emotional tone in your voice for an even more personalized wellness journey. Technology with EQ (emotional quotient) capabilities are rare and mostly seen in experimental robots. The existing trackers can probably get an idea about your feeling through heart rate but evaluating your emotions through your voice is new in wearables. Another thing that sets it apart from others in the market is that it doesn’t have a screen which indicates that Amazon wants to focus less on sports and more on lifestyle changes.

Hapbee is the world’s first wearable that lets you feel calm, alert, focused, relaxed, or sleepy on command! Will it be revolutionary or just take us one step closer to becoming androids? While it may seem like a device straight out of a Black Mirror episode, Hapbee (which comes from the word ‘happy’) actually wants to make life easier by giving us the capability to balance and control our emotions. It uses electromagnetic frequencies that are even lower than your phone’s to better your mental health without causing any permanent changes to who you really are.

The GOOVIS Young comes with a cable that connects via USB-C to a wide host of devices, acting as a display for them… much like how you plug a pair of headphones into your device for dedicated audio, the GOOVIS Young does the same, but for dedicated video. By cutting the clutter and not having its own CPU, motherboard, graphics card, and memory, and by purely being a high-definition display, the GOOVIS Young reduces its design footprint and comes in a slick form factor that folds up to be thin enough to slip into your backpack.

This smart ring controls music + shares your favorite songs with the flick of a finger!

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For music lovers, the ease of toggling through their playlist or changing the volume without much effort is a perk they’ll take any day. Wireless headphones or earbuds do have touch control buttons but you still have to lift your arm to do that. For someone who frequently changes songs or toggles the volume levels, this can be a bit of a hassle. Joel Meredith, a 22-year-old student at the University of Technology Sydney wants to radically change the way we interact with our music, making it hassle-free while being stylish.

That’s his idea for an accessory good enough to go with your style quotient and still being functional. Joel calls it the Melo Ring which sits pretty on your finger, and without even lifting your arm, you can interact with your music using touch or swipe gestures via the various sensors located all over the ring. Sharing songs with other Melo Ring users is also possible with the flick of a finger on the minimalistic piece of jewelry. Not only that one can add songs to a playlist, read out song name, or change the playlist without anyone else even noticing. Being more than just an accessory that you wear every day or probably never even take it off – turning it into something functional is the main motivation for the cool idea.

Melo Ring is one of the 3,865 entrants at the Red Bull Basement competition this year. Joel plans to create the early prototype of Melo Ring in early 2021 and tweak the design and its functions until he is finally ready to roll it out to the masses. His core idea is to have “attention less products and glanceable technology” that fits seamlessly in a user’s lifestyle just like a second skin.

Designer: Joel Meredith

 

This wearable speaker combines the best features of earphones and portable speakers

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Sure we’ve seen portable speakers but have you seen a wearable speaker? No, not a concept, this Tech-Life BoomBand is a wearable speaker you can actually own if you want to expand your audio and tech collection with the coolest gadgets. Why do we need a wearable speaker, we can just use earphones or use our portable speakers, right? Not quite, let me tell you why.

One of the most common reasons for accidents on the road is people wearing headphones or earphones while they walk, ride bikes or drive. Earphones and headphones cut out a lot of ambient noise and we often get lost in the sound which can be unsafe. Portable speakers are not something you can slip into your pocket or carry around in your hand – it is simply inconvenient. That’s when a sleek, unobtrusive, wearable speaker like the BoomBand comes into the picture to give you the best of both worlds – you don’t have to ‘carry’ it and you will still be able to hear important announcements while having your music within your reach.

It has six hours of battery life (more than any wireless audio earphones or headphones can claim) so you can actually get away with forgetting your portable Bluetooth speaker at a picnic if you have the BoomBand! Tech Life has designed this personal gadget to release crisp and clear sound while keeping the form as compact as a wristwatch, you can tune it to your desired volume or raise it if you’re the DJ in your social circle. This nifty device is lightweight, comfortable, and blends with your wardrobe seamlessly.

Designer: Tech-Life

With Vatican launched a wearable eRosary, is faith destined to meet tech?

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In an era where smartwatches tell us not only the time but also how much we’ve walked, eaten, our body temperature, our biometric details and at the same time allow us to respond to texts, make calls and basically anything else we can think of, it’s not surprising that the Vatican has decided to dip its toe into the vast pool of opportunities that is wearable technology.

The Vatican has launched ‘The Click to Pray eRosary’; an interactive and app-driven wearable bracelet, that can be used to learn how to pray the rosary. Comprising of 10 black agate and hematite rosary beads and accompanied by a silver smart cross, the device was launched by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and designed by GagdeTek Inc. The beads and the cross represent “the ever-enduring human faith”. Users need to make the sign of the cross on the interface of the smart cross to activate the eRosary.

Going beyond its aesthetics, the eRosary is also connected, logging the user’s progress and logs each rosary that is completed. You can sync the bracelet to its companion app “Click to Pray”, available on both iOS and Android. The app provides access to an audio guide, videos, and images, as well as “personalized content about the praying of the Rosary.” Three methods of prayer are offered to the user. They can either select the standard rosary, a contemplative rosary or thematic ones that are updated throughout the year in accordance with religious occasions and holidays. The Vatican did not neglect healthcare, and in fact added a feature wherein the eRosary tracks the user’s health data, encouraging users to “have a better lifestyle”.

“Aimed at the peripheral frontiers of the digital world where the young people dwell, the Click to Pray eRosary serves as a technology-based teaching tool to help young people pray the Rosary for peace and to contemplate the Gospel,” the Vatican said. They hope that this project “brings spiritual tradition and the latest technological advances together.” By incorporating technology with faith, it seems like the Vatican has taken a step towards inciting more participation and inclusivity when it comes to prayer activities. Though religion has been a part of our lives, will tracking people’s, especially the younger generation’s faith encourage them to be more involved in prayer and religion? Or will it just drive them away? With the independent attitude of the Millenials, it is quite hard to predict. A wearable device that records and tracks your daily prayers could lead to more inclusivity in faith, or it could prove to be a major stumbling block… that only time will tell.

Designer: GagdeTek Inc. (GTI) for The Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network 

The Best Smartwatches For Kids

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Best Smartwatches For Kids

The exposure to technology begins at a very young age these days, so why not use it to our benefit? There are some fantastic Smartwatches for children that help both the parents track activity and locations of their children, while the kids get to wear something cool, fun and educational.

Here are the finest products we could round up for you to be impressed with.

VTech Kidizoom Smartwatch

The VTech Kidizoom Smartwatch is the ideal touchscreen entertainment and educational system for kids from the age of 4 up to 7. It can take photos of up to 0.3 megapixels, has digital and analog displays with more than 50 clock face designs. has a voice recorder with five wacky voice-changing effects and comes with 4 learning games, although you can download more through VTech’ s Learning Lodge. It’s Available on Amazon.

Gameband for Minecraft

The Minecraft gameband allows the wearer to play the game on any computer while wearing it with their own mods and worlds that were designed on the home computer. It has an automatic backup to the entire Minecraft folder. The Game band is customizable to showcase messages, images and animation on the LED display. It’s available on Amazon.

LeapFrog LeapBand

The LeapFrog LeapBand is a very useful activity tracker made for kids, coming with 50 preloaded activities for kids like a mini game “Pounce the Lion”. Through the LeapFrog connect parents can set play times, challenges and more to control the activities. For those worried about their children becoming couch potatoes, it’s a perfect way to track their activity levels and motivate them into that. It’s available on Amazon.

Orbo Kids Smartwatch

The Orbo kids Smartwatch does a wonderful job of being a fun watch for small children and teach them a little bit about telling time. It has a built-in camera, talking hippo, time master and other fun, stimulating activities that teaches your kids about time, gives them an early learning experience and provides it with quite a lot of fun. There’s a penguin time master to read out the hours and minutes aloud and 15 other different activities. It’s available on Amazon.

FiLIP 2 Smart Locator

The FiLip 2 Smart is nice and clever locator with voice for kids, which gives parents the ability to give their children some freedom without being worried about where they are. The FiLip allows five predetermined numbers to call and receive calls from it, while also providing an app to view location information, set alerts, and send one-way text messages to their child. It’s available on Amazon.

Hereofamily

The hereO is a GPS watch for kids, and the world’s smallest real-time cellular-connected GPS tracking device. It allows to check current locations of the wearer, receive notifications of when they arrive and leave specific locations, sends an immediate alert and exact location to all family members when a panic alert is triggered and allows to send messages to all family members with a single click. For big families it’s one of the more comfortable solutions to keeping track of everyone. You can preorder here.

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Smart Pin: A Pin For The Digital Age

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Pins Collective Wearable

The following article is brought to you by The Tech Info Group. -Ed

Everyone has those awkward years where they left their house wearing some obviously regrettable off-trend fashion. Now that the hipster culture is back in style, everything old is new again and some poor fashion decisions you made in your earlier years are now trending. For example, think about the old-fashion graphic pins you probably wore on your clothes, backpack, or wherever else that you could think of. Pins were a great way to easily express yourself and show the world what you liked without saying a single word. Now, thanks to our vintage culture, these cute little buttons are back to being stylish again.

There is a company in Stockholm, Sweden, that is taking the classic wear-ability of a basic pin, and hoping to give it a makeover for the digital age. This Kickstarter company, Pins Collective, has some high hopes for their new Smart Pin. Digital devices that can be worn on the body are surfacing on the market, such as the Apple watch. However, even Apple has had a difficult time making tech wearable’s popular. Mostly business professionals and tech companies like TTIG are the ones benefiting from current wearable technology. Pins Collective hopes to engage a larger spectrum of individuals. They are relying heavily on nostalgic appeal in hopes that individuals will choose to fund their product.

The smart pin will look very similar to non-digital pins, but of course it will go far beyond what any plastic pin could ever do. On the front of the pin where the picture would normally be, there will be a small LCD screen that will display your chosen icons. After a sync with your smart phone, you will able to choose exactly which image that you want to project to the world via your smart pin. Additionally, you can also choose to turn your smart pin in an animated GIF pin. Sadly, the smart pin is not projected to be thoroughly waterproof. It will also need to be charged through a micro-USB cord. The smart pin will hold a charge for about 74 hours, but GIFs will drain the battery in about 2.5 short hours.

In order for the smart pin to become a reality, the company is asking potential backers to donate the relatively small amount of $75,000 towards the project. The smart pin is projected to cost $99, but backers will be able to pick one up for $49.