Showing posts with label Wearable Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wearable Technology. Show all posts

June 22, 2015

Drones Made Easy


OMG, this is awesome.

This Lily Camera Drone is "throw and go" and simply lands in your hand. 

You can set it to follow you--almost like a guardian angel-- or to lead you where you need to go. 

Records video, sound, can do slow motion, and takes photos.

It has a tracking device.

It's waterproof.

Awesome for extreme sports or personal surveillance.

Would like to be able to communicate with it by voice command, and also see what it sees and hear what it hears with augmented reality glasses or on a smartphone or wearable.

Finally, if only it would come with a laser to zap anybody or anything bad that may come at us--that could be reassuring. 

Costs = $619 and ships in May 2016.

That was easy.  ;-)
Share/Save/Bookmark

September 21, 2014

Health Monitoring Ad Nauseam

So the new Apple Watch promises to monitor our every virtual health status as technology and person blend to become one.  

However, the question raised in the New York Times is whether this level of continuous monitoring is really all that necessary?

"One central rule of doctoring is that you only gather data that will affect your treatment?"

But how can more data hurt you?

- Change in measurements are often normal: For example, "blood pressure jumps up and down in response to thoughts, hydration, and stress."

- Data sometimes outstrips our ability to understand it:  So collecting more and more data may actually end up concealing the needle in the haystack, rather than culling the crucial piece of evidence we need for a diagnosis and treatment. 

- Data can sometimes belie the underlying truth: "Some patients die with 'Harvard numbers, [and in others] test results can can look bad even when the patient is fine."

- Obsessive-compulsive monitoring may actually stress us out: "If you were dieting would stepping on the scale 1,000 times a day help you lose weight?" Perhaps, the stress of monitoring every stat we generate may actually make us sick from fear and worry.  

The point is that as they say, "there can be too much of a good thing"--monitoring and checking is helpful, but not every minute of every day without some intelligent filtering and analysis. 

Perhaps, the technology will evolve to wear the monitoring is unobtrusive and where the artificial intelligence is there to more or less accurately decipher true warning signs from run of the mill changes in bodily functions, and where data is aggregated to get a holistic picture and diagnosis of the person rather than a snapshot of individual functions.

No one can live under a microscope and making ourselves sick with an endless stream of health tracking and worries is not helpful. 

However, in time, the technology will most certainly evolve to where it will be discreet, accurate, and truly lifesaving. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Share/Save/Bookmark

November 27, 2013

The Sony Wig Nut

Sony has so missed the mobile technology revolution.

In desperation, Sony has filed a patent for the SmartWig.

How incredibly useful (uh, not)?

Your faux hairdo can dial your hairdresser and make your next appointment for you.

It can locate via GPS the nearest salon.

And the SmartWig can even take selfies while you admire yourself in the mirror.

While Sony is goofing around again, and hasn’t had a hit since the to die for Sony televisions of yore (and let's not forget the Walkman from 1980s), Google is moving out with bravado on Glass.

Google is getting display space for Glass in eyeglass retailers, and working with opticians to make prescription lens eye-Glass.

Let’s just say one company gets wearable technology and the other is hiding under wigs in The Technology Hall of Shame.

Then again, one customer may be interested in talking with Sony—the CIA for undercover operations.

Maybe a Smart Groucho Marx mustache that automatically shakes out the soup after you eat would be a cool new product, as well--go for it Sony!

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Annetta)

Share/Save/Bookmark

June 2, 2013

The War Over Wearables

Google Glass or its wearable technology alternatives from Apple and others is going to be huge. 

This is one time that I disagree with many of the pundits interviewed by the Wall Street Journal (30 May 2013) that say that the future of wearable technology is still "out of focus."

Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, who is presumably playing catch-up with Google Glass says that Glass will be "difficult" to succeed with as a mainstream product. 

Similarly, another unnamed technology executive said "wearing Google Glass looked a bit silly and borderline obnoxious."  

I don't know about you, but I read a lot of fear and jealousy by these companies rather than disdain or contempt. 

On the pother hand, Mary Meeker, the famous venture capitalist specializing in computers and the Internet, gets it right when she says that wearable computers would be the star of the "third cycle" of the web, and that the world has already entered the phase of "wearables, driveables, flyables, and scannables"

The first two, Glass and driverless cars is where Google has its first mover advantage, and flyable drones and scannable 3-D printing are already having huge impacts in the War on Terror and industrial design and manufacturing.

When wearable technologies are combined with embedded chips, we are going to have a whole new augmented reality experience.

Apparently many interviewed by the Journal saw a "very large gulf between the current [wearable] technology and mass adoption," but Meeker who knows the Internet is one step ahead here seeing the potential of the emerging technology, rather than the short-sightedness of those without Glass. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Ars Electronica)
Share/Save/Bookmark