What a success! My congratulations to CuteCircuit for the Time Best Invention price this year!!! I hope that it will make a great idea famous! The Hug Shirt integrates wearable technologies and the social interface to create a really really new experience.

The new design features a very comfortable mix of smart textiles, cotton and micro-fiber that make it very soft and pleasant to wear. And yes! Is completely washable!

I'm so happy that a Techwear product made it on the frontpage!

Choose your own favourite here!

Via the CuteCircuit Newsletter and here: CuteCircuit Blog Archive Time Best Inventions of 2006: Hug Shirt

A next intermediate step in wearable electronics - a Dick Tracy like watch that is packed with features:

Check out this ultra-modern timepiece from Brando, squeezing MP3, video playback, a voice recorder and, yes, even the time and date onto your wrist!

While talking about Casio-watches from the 80ies the last days this watch could have been from them too. A funny little thing for under £50.

Via T3 - Lights, camera, wrist action!

How to get a name into the press that is relevant not until 2009? Create a strange but cool fashion show! Rocketplane Kistler is one of the (US) companies that plans to offer space tours for the usual tourist. That is the reason why they asked students to create a special space fashion. The results were presented in Japan:

The show featured models dressed in clothes designed for travel in weightless conditions. Some of the show's participants included a group of Japanese fashion designers who took part in the Hyper Space Couture Design Contest.

The clothes employed special designs suited for zero gravity, such as ruffles that expand under weightless conditions or small air-jet propulsion systems in the sleeves, which help the astronaut change direction while floating.

(such a pitty that I found no pictures yet...)

Via All Headline News

Picture via Space Service International

Please take a minute for the following fast survey:

What is the best wearable product today?

Just click here at Products - then you get a list of all entries in the category product. Choose what you think is the best product in the list and then vote it (At the bottom of every entry.)

Thanks for your participation! Right now I have 100 entries in this category - that means that the market has evolved in an impressive rate. It's time to check what you think will survive or become successful or just is a great idea!

I will report the results here next month. If a product is not listed - just leave a comment. AND - please tell everybody!

sincerely yours,
Michael

A new use for RFID tags within a museum was honored for it's innovative idea - and the idea is simple enough: The Tech Museum of Innovation wanted to personalize the museum experience. To do so they use "TechTag": TechTag automatically creates a personalized webpage with photographs and activity results that visitors can access online after they leave the Museum.

Here is a bit more about the system:

TechTags take advantage of recent advances in radio frequency identification ( RFID ), networking, and data storage to create a more personalized and longer lasting educational experience for museum visitors. 50 interactive exhibits in the Museum utilize tag readers, and 24% of visitors are following-up their museum experiences on their personal webpage, (my.thetech.org ).

Read on @ MediaNewswire

Casio is back :-) Do you remember the 80ies? Unthinkable without digital watches from Casio. And now they are back with 21century technology: GPS. Of course within a watch - what is a remarkable tiny system for GPS. The watch is called GPR-100.

But what is it good for because you're not a car? For runner:

The GPR-100 is the result of Casio's ongoing development efforts, boasting an ultracompact GPS antenna (19mm in length), compact, high-performance GPS module (12mm x 11mm) containing the u-Nav GPS solution. The GPR-100 displays distance, speed, and pace data in real time on the run. It also displays the exact time anywhere in the world automatically using satellite data.

Via MarketWire

The tiny GPS maker: u-Nav Microelectronics

Circumferential visibility is exact what a new wearable technology offers. Canoe Money writes "from wearable video glasses to a wearable helmet". Yes, the helmet is huge and not what we mean with wearable like with glasses. But thats the reason I sorted it under "Technology" and not "Products". A 360degree view is simply cool. Everyone who ever played a video game with that view knows what I'm talking about..

an omnidirectional image is be projected on a 40 centimeters across screen inside a 2.7-kilogram helmet in accordance with the wearer's head position as detected by infrared sensors

Event right now it would be perfect for SecondLife...

via canoe money

Is it more then design only? Korean scientists at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute developed a shirt that measures bio data and looks not like a tech-parc...

The BioShirt is composed of two parts: a specially designed shirt and a monitoring system that weighs about just 20 grams including a battery.

"Next year, people wearing BioShirt will be able to know their temperatures, heart rates and speeds while running on a real-time basis using a wristwatch-type miniature computer enabled by Bluetooth," Kim said.

However, the shirt looks like it integrates the usual technology and only adds Bluetooth for the data transfer to the watch. If you look closer it seems that the typical transmitter chest strap is woven into the fabric.

Via Medgadget

The article in the Korea Times

Another entry at Engadget

So what is Ambient Intelligence? It's like Techwear - but - with objects instead of clothes. The main idea stays the same: build sensors into something and connect it to something else.

Here is a current example: the multi-manager chair from Dauphin. "Manager" does not mean it's for business, it means that the chair itself manages the light, the heat or something else in the room. The main use is to save energy and enjoy a bit more convenience. The function is realized with a sensor inside the chair that knows if s/o uses the chair or not and sends a signal to whatever source you can think of (like the air condition).

The press release is on their german site only - I have no idea why there is no english release. Any idea?

The Philoneist brought my attention to a NASA lab with an interesting field of research. The lab's name is Ames Research Center. Sure, at first I thought this is SciFi because the project he talked about was "how to read my mind and communicate". Is it signals from nerves or muscles - our body operates using electric signals - and the lab has the technology for direct reading.

Jorgensen and his colleagues are also developing bio-electronic interfaces that use muscle signals to customize physical-electronic interfaces across a wide variety of situations, from helping the disabled regain mobility to moving robots with one's eyebrows.

You can call it ubiquitous communication.

read on @ the Philoneist

Looks like I found the killer-app for the over-stressed manager of today (and many other within the "burn-out-zone"). Medick Healthcare has launched a personal heart monitor called MHM 100. With this appliance you can watch the heart rhythm while smoking, having a coffee or doing exercise... Serious, it track all important ECG data and sends it to a website. But more important there is a complete service included:

The subscription-based reporting service features an easy to understand traffic light system and allows users to download the results of their tests. The reports are analysed by physicians who specialise in the reading of ambulatory ECGs. Furthermore if any specific issues are identified, the report is then passed to a cardiologist for further analysis.

I would say that this is the first time you can have your Electrocardiogram everywhere. Great. Simply great.

Via MTB Europe

Picture via Chadwickmedical

An interesting idea from scientists is to get energy from biological processes. Now they extracted a protein that may be used as a micro-reactor to produce energy within a biofuel cells.

According to the reserachers, these preliminary findings suggest that these protein have the potential to be used in developing small biofuel cells:

Using pure protein opens up the possibility of shrinking biofuel cells to power small electronic devices, Squier said. Whole-organism biofuel cells require engineers to design a space-adding membrane that prevents unwanted reactions between fuel, the charge-transporting agent and the electron-accepting metal, the latter being the electrode that carries the electricity to the device.

Via The Biotech Weblog

Imagine a dress that reacts to your body and emotions. Just like in a fairy tale you would immediately think that magic comes true would'nt you?

This is what designer Berzowska from Montreal calls Kukkia:

... the magical clothes a Canadian researcher has developed, clothes with animated flowers on its neckline, shirt sleeves that make sounds in tune with your body language, and a hemline with a mind of its own.

This dress will be part of a workshop in Australia next year - here are some first information about how it works:

Flower petals are made of silk and felt, and contain thin wires of Nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium. When the wire heats it shrinks and pulls the petals together, closing the flower. As it cools down, the wire relaxes and the petals open. The system is run on rechargeable lithium polymer batteries which are embedded in pouches in the dress.

via fibre2fashion

The Sentinel Online writes a kind-of-review about the Techwear market. It's not complete but faces some interesting details.

Let's start here:

Intelligent textiles, variously known as smart fabrics, electronic textiles, or e-textiles, have attracted considerable attention worldwide due to their potential to bring revolutionary impacts on human life," writes a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit on an international scientific symposium held in Japan last year.

Funny names - e-textiles etc. - even more I love the word Techwear. The focus will be the technology like in hardware, software, techwear ;-)

It's goes on with a number I did'nt know till now:

...jacket from Rosner and INFINEON Technologies is reportedly even washable. ....
The initial production included only 600 units priced at about $760 each.

And an interesting market expectation:

Nonetheless, the companies claimed that, by 2007, total sales of "intelligent textile" products the world over would exceed $1.25 billion annually.

But even more interesting was a first user feedback - people who hassle with all-day problems:

Krips says he enjoys his music, but doesn't see the point in specifically marketed music devices such as the Oakley Thump, an $400-plus product that combines of ocular sun protection with an in-the-ear DJ.

"I'm afraid I'd break it," he adds.

I was afraid about just that too - and the lack of sound quality...

via the Sentinel Online