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Ultra-Cool Wireless Wearables
moonboy writes "I just saw this story linked to from Ars Technica. Motorola and Frog Design have recently released information about some awesome new prototypes for wearable computing with wireless capability using Bluetooth technology. The wearables group will include a WDA (Wearable Digital Assistant) which will serve as the communications hub, the Wristable, Goggles, Digi-Cam, Comport, Radio-button, and the Intelli-pen. Very cool stuff!" Prototype seems a strong word....
Somebody with a high-gain antenna will just immediately "see" what you are seeing. fuck spy-satellites; just let everyone do the spying for you (well, sell a lot of those glasses first, anyhow)!
Stalkers are gonna have such a blast with all these.
On the other hand, I predict that shit like this will be embedded into our bodies within no time.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"The Wristable serves the same function and has the same technical description as the WDA, but it is worn on the wrist. The display is black and white."
Now where does the full-colour-display picture
come from?
What happens though if I forget to charge the batteries? Will I still be able to use my clothing? If we put computers into everything, everything just might start crashing, at least if it has anything to do with MS. Pass me that linux tie!
Am I the only one that thinks the wearable market, at least for right now, is a little overrated? Most people will admit to at least a small amount of suspicion that technology is taking over our lives. Many mention that they leave their cell phone's and PDA's *behind* when they want to be more productive, and express concern about the amount of technology (like cells, complex radio setups) that distracts drivers.
But HUD's in glasses, wireless pens, etc... isn't this all just geared more towards satisfying the cliche markets? Is there anything useful out there?
I can imagine a purpose for current PDA's--they're an appropriate size, and with a screen that can display a substantial amount of information, all with an acceptable battery life. And I can imagine that Bluetooth would be useful in a portable PDA-like system, but it seems like just like buzz on these "prototypes."
"plans to bring a product based on the design to market within two years."
Ericsson showed similar devices years ago, and most other producers have had concept products similar to these ones. Lets just hope they start showing up in the stores for real this time. 2 years is a long time.
On the less negative side, there is potential for coolness. My Mac is already Bluetooth-capable so after donning all this electronics, I could watch DVDs with the HUD while on the can, or write on a pad in bed with the pen motions captured and translated into an electronic document. Whoa.
"Goggles: Integrated into the frame of exciting, stylish sports eyewear"
"Stylish" and "geek toys" like this are mutually exclusive aren't they?
a Microsoft-powered Wearable Personal Assistant...
oops you're electrocuted!
"Brings your porn wherever you are"(tm)
I guess these are the next steps to full-on gargoyle mode (everyone on Slashdot has read Snow Crash, right?)...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
I've heard much talk about "wireless computing" and "computing on the go" and communication anywhere and I dont believe in any of it. It may be great to carry an entire computer with you wherever you go but i'd never want to. I would hate my company being able to get in touch with me wherever I go (they can be quite of a bother sometimes!) and I'd hate my wife being able to contact me to on a guy's night out. It is more trouble than worth if you ask me. I'll just stick with my good old Motorolapager i've had since 1997 and get in touch with whoever needs me when _I_ want to.
worked on the bus. Or the plane, or train or long haul travel when you want to look out the window as well as read a book.
they might even be good to cut down the building wide phone PA paging that used to interrupt me so much that I cut the speaker cable in my desk phone. It could ring (flashing light) but it couldn't speak.
It might even be useful in hosptital if it didn't interfere with the life support.
I think a heads up street map might be handy. Especially in my town, where street signs seem conspicuously absent.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
The new motorola pda/calculator/cellphone/wap-enabled wristable also works as a high frequency contraceptive offering coverage up to 100 meters (UK) away.
____
ATS11=0 the secret to beating everyone else to a 1 line board.
The goggles look really cool, and with a 800x600 display I can think of numerous applications.
;)
Imagine going to an art museum and instead of borrowing a tape-recorder that tells you what you are looking at, you borrow a pair of goggles and information pops up next to the item.
Or - you're trying to find your way around in an unknown city. Large arrows directing you in the right direction will emerge (based on your GPS)
Last, but not least, I can go online with my GPRS phone and follow all my favorite IRC channels while skiing
Bill's wearable watch: Bill, you've got mail.
Bill: Damn! Couldn't you find a better time?
[Removes watch and flings it away.]
Bill: Ahhh, Traaaaaacyyyyyy......
Tracy's babel fish: No matches found. Did you mean: 1) Trace 2) Tracing 3) Racy
Tracy: Shit!
[Removes babel fish]
Bill remembers just in the nick of time that his goggles are connected to the internet! And he's turned the firewall off, which means that anyone that connects to port 23484 on his goggles can see what he's seeing!!! [Takes goggles off]
Bill starts scratching Tracy's back. Immediately, her intellipen software kicks into action and tries to figure out what he's writing.
[2 hours later]
Bill and tracy are finally done spurning all the advances from their various bluetooth devices, at which point they realize they forgot to switch off the webcam...
Cheers,
-j.
This is interesting future, but certainly we'll have to make some kind a "failsafe" encryption, that at least is wery difficult to break. If you make this common, you could risk that someone cracked your watch, to get out some , lets say, passwords. Then he maybe could get further into the high security devices you wore. And since it is wireless, it would be wery difficult to find whom that had taken it. A PAN network cant be that small that it only reaches a feet or something. Usually they go at least 20 feet, and at that range, it would be difficult to see who's monitoring you. Of course, you could have a limitation on one foot, so that you had to put your watch up against the main transmitter or somthing, but then half the point would be gone. So, at least I think so, most people would be suspicious as long as it was a possibility that some other person was reading your scheudle.
Anyway, the problem is not your scheudle, but for example if they could get your passwords or something, or even, if you were at a high posisition, get the "top" secrets of your company. And when you moved around, the governement could track you. This would give big brother a new dimension. Read the story written by John Bing , called "Big brother's carneval" for more (funny) abbrevations on this topic.
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
This is hardly innovative. Gauntlets, PDAs, and HUDs have been around on the market, in sci fi, and cobbled together by hobbyists for decades to varying degrees.
The most significant hurdle for wearables is not styling. It is in developing a user interface and applications designed to be used while walking around, not sitting at a desk or standing still.
Real innovation will be when someone develops the wearable equivilent of the desktop metaphor and wearable equvilent to the mouse for input control. Sorry, current PDA menuing and compass navigation is insufficient.
When the industry gets serious and looks to marketize products like this, I hope they have more vision than simply re-purposing existing user interface mechanisms (and hire me to design the embedded UI). Wearables could be the next killer app.
"You have liberated me from thought."
Now, we may have it. Of course, he wasn't really a gadget man per se, nor were technology and gadgets his driving force. Founder of the NSF, he saw technology as an enabler to furthering the human condition, improving it's access to information, ultimately making us smarter...
Will this do it? No, but we'll be able to walk around for a bit and show how cool it is to have a $2000 wearables rig strapped to us that doesn't overfill a fanny pack.
(must remember to hit post anon option before clicking submit button...)
I think there's numerous applications for wearable technology. The whole desktop/keyboard paradigm has evolved from machines which took up an entire basement - even the best PDAs are still basically trying to fit a conventional office setup (phone, organiser, calendar, word processor, etc.) into a tiny little magical electric gizmo. No wonder people end up leaving them behind when they want to relax. At the other extreme, personal stereos are a great example of wearable technology. They don't read email, they don't browse the web - hell, most of them even use a good old-fashioned cable to connect the player to the headset - but they work, they're useful, and they've gained enough acceptance that you can wear headphones on the train without looking like a freak.
I was reading recently (don't recall where, sorry) about a set of goggles with a build-in camera and HUD, that would OCR Japanese characters on notices and signs and display their English translations. Even if it only worked with basic words like 'hotel', 'metro', 'toilet', this would be of huge benefit to English speakers lost in downtown Tokyo. This sort of angle could be a major selling point for wearable kit once it matures. With GPS, wearable hardware would be able to tell where you are and which direction you're facing - you wouldn't need a keyboard or voice interface to tell it where you were, 'cos it would already 'know'. It'd be like those infrared audio guides in museums, only it would work everywhere. Imagine wandering the streets of Prague or Athens, looking at some wonderful old building, and being able to find out who built it and when without having to dig out the guidebook and hunt through the index.
My point is, everyone's thinking about wearable tech as a way of taking things with you - email, phones, internet access - and missing the potential killer apps which you just *can't* do with desk-based hardware.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
I think at this point, Moto is in an 80's Chrysler state. They are putting out ok stuff, but not innovating in design and especially advancing standards or creating new concepts. Chrysler finally learned this wasn't the way to go and started producing the Prowler, the Viper, The PT Cruiser, and even the concept car from 5 years ago, the Atlantic; was WAY AHEAD of it's time. Some of it's features will be in the soon to be released Maybach. But alas, they were purchased by Mercedes. This is possibly the way Moto will go. I think a conglom like Masushita (Panasoinc) or maybe even Sony will buy them out within the next 5 years. Both of those companies have diverse needs for embedded processors, Moto's real money. Sony has always seen merit in the Apple side of computing and could make HUGE inroads with such a purchase. Sony Pres (see mac web sites) recently said he wishes he could buy Apple and has wanted to for a LONG time.
Which segways into this; Moto best exemplifies what I'm trying to say by the lack of innovation and forsight into the PowerPC processor that is used embedded in Cisco routers and as the G4 in Apple products. Motorola single handedly has cost Apple market share. They locked Apple into the processor and made the PowerPC such a proprietary RISC implementation that no one even wanted to copy it. Finally, they have released the Altivec core technologies to IBM, one of the PPC AIM partners. I beleive the muscle and R&D at IBM will bring great things to the PPC line and soon with the Power 4 and Power 5.
Another segway. Truthfully, these products are almost here in some form and two years as the article states for these "revoltionary" products to be realeased will be behind the curve. Moto will just be another player in the market and probably even higher priced. Moto isn't as recognized the name as it was for the 30's 40's 50's generations and few see why they should pay a premium for their products rather than say a Sony something or other.
The pen is basically here from Logitech (bluetooth ink and digipen), the Glasses are basically here from Sony (glasstron), the watch has been here without a big company or mass apeal for nearly two years, the PDA by means of the Zaurus or iPaq, maybe now the Sony P800, and the wireless headphones already exist in close to the same form factor as the article pitched. All of the things I mentioned now have bluetooth too!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
So, yes, these kinds of products will eventually appear. They will probably be boxy and more traditional looking because people likely feel silly running around with gadgets that look like sex toys or sunglasses that are appropriate for a three-year-old. And their release date will depend on such mundane factors as when their power consumption will be low enough that they will be usable. What good is a futuristic wrist PDA, after all, if it only runs for 15 minutes?
Personal thoughts: I got an M1 head-mounted display, but I found it to be too cumbersome (heavy on the head) and it distracted other people. Not a hardware hacker, so I haven't done any of the covert mods. Anyway, I switched to a monaural headset (just a single earphone+mic, looks like a handsfree kit) and am using Emacspeak for sound output. I still occasionally get confused, but it's pretty decent. I use a Twiddler for key input. The whole thing is pretty unobtrusive. I look like I'm listening to music and/or texting.
OK, I'm as much a geek as the next guy, but you won't catch me anytime soon strapped to one of those things. The cell phone and the laptop are enough. And contrary to most people here, I do make liberal use of the OFF SWITCH and am not bothered too much by being on an electronic leash.
In the end, most people would prefer something like on Startrek. Unintrusive devices like the computer you can talk to. The PAD. The communicator. I think that's all I want.
On the other hand, manufacturers will introduce these things and see what sticks. I do reserve the right to change my mind later on.
I know I will be buying my girlfriend some Windows pants.
As often as those go down I'll be getting it all the time!
Why is it that the terms "ultra cool", "wearable", and "computing device" always seem reasonable to string together until you actually see someone wearing this stuff, and then you realize it's not?
Call me when you can implant the HUD emitter on the inside of my iris, the input device under the skin of the inside of my forearm, and the speech synthesizer in my earlobe. =)
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny