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Wearable Customizable Displays
igargoyle writes "France Telecom has done some fun R&D to display pixilated images from your cellphone on your shirt or sleeve. These raver garments can even be used as a standalone device that can animate based on sounds and gestures. With better resolution, designer memes and logos might become the hot intellectual property being shared by the young hipsters. Then again, maybe it will just be another place for advertisers to exploit."
Could be cool to wear a demo or a game of life :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
This could be very handy for medical purposes. In normal uses, you can do whatever you want. But sensors inside the wearable can pick up that you're having a heart attack for example and provide the appropriate display on the wearable, eg. "I'm having a heart attack, call for help" etc.
If you suffer a grand mal for example, it could give life saving instructions to people around on how to assist you in such a scenario.
Then again, maybe it will just be another place for advertisers to exploit
People are already paying for the apparent privilidge of advertising nike and Abercrombe and what not. If anything, it'll just become the rotating billboard of the fashion industry, every thirty seconds it changes to another advertisment. Now, the real problem is when the wrong types of ads flash across your chest. Think about it, you're trying to pick up chicks and an add like "Levitra helped me with my erectile dysfunction" comes up. Bad news all around.
If these were available widley, I have no doubt that people would link them up to mp3 player and walkmen so an avatar would bop to the music for all to see as they walked around, or the name of the song floated across.
But how long before we see people walking around with T-Shirts displaying scrolling Benneton or Nike logos, animated unpaid advertisements, possibly updated wia the same AP that loads new avatars displaed on the side. We already have logos on our cloths anyway? maybe some would be proud to a 30 second commerical arounf with them
Sooner or later, your shirts will display softcore porn ads as you eat breakfast and wait for the bus. Along with bilboards, TV, radio, signposts and probobly the pavement as well!
May the Maths Be with you!
Yeah, and maybe Microsoft would love to see SCO win their case with IBM...
Is there really any question that marketing people would love to exploit something like this? Any surface they can manage to slap a brand name onto, they'll use.
I'll leave you all with a little Bill Hicks:
The Free desktop that Just Works
Two videos are available here. The page is in french but you can easily find the videos.
Only in blue
Ummm, why the hell would you expect the clothes to have camaras, yet alone support the execution of custom software?
Is this a knee-jerk reaction to find an excuse to put on your tin-foil hat? It's nothing more than a semi-intelligent display which will let you upload an animated GIF. And even if they did have cameras (I still have no clue where that came from), they will be less flexible than your average mobiile-phone or digital camera. AFAIK my digital camera is NOT spying on me and my family because I didn't run adaware on it (!)
Looks kewl in the R&D stage, but a 16x16 pixel LED display has obvious technical problems.
Lets take the image in the photograph. It has about 3/4 of the 256 pixels illuminated. Thats 192 LEDs. Assuming the image is remain visible outside, in sunlight, rather than in a dark room, you would need bright LEDs, each consuming an average current of at least 2mA.
So that's 384mA current consumption. To get through a 12 hour day (hardly impressibe battery life), you would need a battery with a 12*0.384 = 4.6Ah capacity. Your average huge+chunky laptop battery won't provide more than 2.5AH.
The shirt is a great idea, but if I need to carry around a backpack with a car battery, or plug myself in to recharge every hour or two, I say no-thanks.