SEAL is a waterproof necklace that essentially monitors your child and warns you if your child is drowning. The system can monitor several children at once so it can be used in a public pool setting in elite country clubs if families can afford the $150 price tag per kid. 

SEAL is currently seeking 85K on Indiegogo. 

There is very little information on the technology but I'm assuming it's a combination of an accelerometer to detect if the child has stopped moving as well as a water sensor that detects if the child is submerged under water for a period of time. 

Besides the price point (which of course will decrease with volume), SEAL is not really designed for kids. Regardless whether or not it is ergonomically designed, it simply does not look like…

The iHeart Locket relieves any tween from anxiety that her secret innermost personal thoughts will be discovered by a sibling or, even worse, a parent. The diary itself is, of course, an iPad app which can be locked and unlocked by simply pressing the lock button on the gold wearable locket. 

The IOS app allows the user to customize her digital diary with a choice of paper options and stickers and record secret thoughts via digital voice recordings, images and text. 

The content of the journal can also be stored in the cloud so you can revisit your childhood musings in 2050.

via …

Notendo Glitch Blankets by Glitchaus

I designed this 8bit glitch blanket with my prepared Nintendo Entertainment System. The pattern is a composite video capture which was dithered in order to be rendered as a 50/50 merino wool, soft acrylic blanket.

The design is knit at a 1:1 pixel to knot ratio, preserving the correlation between textile and pixel art. The result is a 6x5’ glitchy blanket.

Check out glitchaus.com for more and follow on twitter and tumblr for updates!

With the launch of AOL's latest online show "Hardwired" it is evident that "wearable technology" is the tech world's latest muse. As expected, the first episode covers fitness tech: the Jawbone Up and the Adidas heart rate monitoring sports bra.

The show's host, Justine Ezarik, takes her fitness data to experts and asks the quintessential question: What does mean? And the basic answer is "You're healthy and normal." And there lies the problem with all these tracking devices. They don't really offer most of us much in terms of actionable feedback beyond pretty bar graphs. They don't educate us on how to interpret this data over time. And the motivation mechanics are weak at best. In short, the industry has focused keenly on getting the algorithms right to interpret a step from a bump in the road while driving and very little on the user experience.

I imagine that in this next year, the Fuelband, Fitbit, and Jawbone will begin to distinguish themselves not by their sensors and improvements in algorithms, but by how to make this personal data meaningful and actionable.

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Organized by eTextile masters Mika Satomi, Hannah Perner-Wilson, and Meg Grant, the eTextile Summer Camp (taking place in Poncé sur le Loir, France) is an intense hands-on 5 day workshop that is not to be missed. 

You will get a chance to work with some of the most talented e-textile aficionados so drop whatever you are doing and apply today!

Deadline Extended to May 20th.

Details below: 

The eTextile Summer Camp 2013, Call for eTextiles Practitioners!

The eTextiles Summer Camp (eTextile-summercamp.org) is a five day event that brings together expert practitioners of eTextiles and Soft Circuitry in one place to…

After the recent Bangladesh's garment factory building collapse, it seems an urgent time to rethink fast-fashion production and consumption. Kate Fletcher, author, educator, and pioneer in the field of sustainable fashion, in her recent book “Fashion & Sustainability: Design for Change” charts the ways in which the landscape of fashion production, consumption and use could be re-tooled with the aims to improving both sustainable uses of materials, and better social and economic livelihood of those involved in the making of our garments. Her book covers a number of avenues to asses the current modalities of fashion making and buying, as well as proposals (and limitations) on how our habits as designers and consumers could factor in more socially and environmentally sound practices.

BACKGROUND

Q: What is your background?

Textiles and design for sustainability.

Q: What led to your interest in fashion & sustainability? Was there an “ah-ha” moment that told you “now” was the time to get involved in having a voice in this issue?

I’ve always loved clothes… and made many of…

Thanks largely to 3D printing, prosthetics have been transformed to custom-designed wearable pieces of art. No longer used to disguise a disability, bespoke artificial limbs can now be crafted to reflect the wearer's personality and tastes. By turning prosthetics into fashionable items and design objects, a prosthetic becomes an object of empowerment, choice and identity.

The Alternative Limb Project, directed by Sophie de Oliveira Barata, is an atelier offering up remarkable one-of-a-kind couture limbs. From fashionable limbs bedazzled with Swarovski crystals to a surreal, mythological snake arm, Barata crafts imaginative prosthetics that empower the user and reflect his/her…

There is a bubble in the tech world and Pebble is to blame. With Pebble's unprecedented successful Kickstarter campaign last year ( a record 10 Million raised), a gaggle of other entrepreneurs have decided to deep dive into the Smart Watch pool. 

Following Pebble's steps, most new smart watch launches (remarkably) have successfully raised funding on crowdsourcing platforms. Whether these products will be a one hit wonder or grow to become an economically viable and sustainable company will highly be determined by: (1) If they can deliver the full promise of their product on time earning the trust of their initial investors (all thousand of them). (2) If they can continue to dream up and deliver new products and services that are truly more exciting than current offerings, especially once the big players  Apple, Samsung and Google cannonball into the pool. 

Below are a few products that have successfully been funded. Which do you think will survive? 

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This is has been quite a busy week for wearable technology filled with speculation around the future of wearable technology and ultimately the impact it will have on our lives and how we inhabit the world.

Manisha Mohan, a young woman studying aeronautical engineering at SRM University in Chennai, India has developed a product called SHE (Society Harnessing Equipment) in response to the recent escalation in female violence in India – most notably the Delhi gang rape of December 2012. The product, which is still in development stage, is designed to help other young women living in India fight against rape and violence in their country. Together with fellow students Niladhri Basu Bal and Rimpi Tripathi they developed a bra which shocks an attacker at 3800kv. This project and the creators are inspiring and illustrates the need for the development of wearable technology throughout the world. 

And something a little light hearted and slightly intriguing developed by Durex called Fundawear. Fundawear is underwear that is designed to help keep long-distance relationships 'connected' via  app-enabled vibrating knickers and boxers controlled by one another’s phone. See the video below for a better understanding of this project.

An interesting video done by by PBS as part of their…

I'd like to introduce the New project "Knitting Machine Hack and Glitch Knit"

Glitch Knit is an art project for extending the fabric making, information tech, and fashion.

The member Nukeme is a fashion designer uses the method named "Glitch Embroidery". Glitch Embroidery is constructed with the special broken data for sewing machine. Nukeme glitches the data with binary editor and stitches with computer sewing machine.

Nukeme's "Glitch Embroidery" received the "Jury Selection" in Japan Media Arts Festival 2013. 

In order to hack the our Brother KH-970 Knitting Machine to "Glitch Knitter", we chose the Arduino Due instead of the original circuit board. And a member So Kanno built up a control software with processing.

This project is supported by Emi Yamamoto (FabLab Shibuya Tokyo) 

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