If your company’s mission statement talked about “radically rethinking what the modern mobile lifestyle is”, It wouldn’t be such a stretch to assume that they’d have a wristphone lurking in their portfolio, as in the case of Thinking Material, a Swedish company that showcased their prototype at the “Fashion in Motion” fashion show held last year in Atlanta.
The watch comes with a wireless headset, and a keypad that is only half fixed to it’s wrist band, so that it can be lifted up for thumb-typing.
Also, the company plans to shy away from plastics. Instead, they hope to try out fabrics or color-changing textiles in order to grab the fashionistas market.
Introducing the Safe Sex Watch - a watch that hides a condom in a little compartment so that you can store one away for a rainy day when you’re back on the market and your ex-girlfriend, in a fit of rage, takes out all your trousers and sews them shut.
Sure, it’s gimmicky and a bad gimmick at that, but I like the bit about how the company / designer setup the site to fish for pre-orders, so that he can manufacture it once he reached hundred and twenty units, which made me wonder aloud -> Wouldn’t it be interesting if a watch manufacturer setup a site where designers could submit offbeat designs and the public got to choose which one got manufactured with pre-orders?
Not exactly the kind of name you normally see when it comes to watches - “Snakey”, is Designer Max Giorgetti’s new watch for Alfex.
It uses a special light and flexible anti-alergic material called the Elasten 3000, that elegantly wraps around your wrist and fits with a simple pressure clasp that raises the case a bit and supposedly makes it easier to read the time.
In the near near future, you’ll reach for your gold plated, diamond studded pocket watch that you received as a wedding gift, and press a button to select another song from your playlist.
Until then, you could go out and get the bare bones version of the Samsung Mp3 pocket watch. No confirmation yet whether they are going to do go ahead with their plans for the gold version, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, Those of you who are thinking: “what’s the big deal, my phone can switch between a watch face”, this is the first of many new wrist convergence devices that we’ll see in the future and so far it looks like they might just look like everyday watches of yesteryears.
addendum
I know we’ve already got mp3 watches. It’s just the idea of a mp3 pocket watch otoh seems more interesting given that the pocket watch is a thing of the past.
If you are travelling by air in the United States and wear a Casio, you might just have your brand loyalty tested - The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have issued a warning that Casio watches with built-in altimeters can be used to detonate bombs:
“Recent intelligence suggests al-Qaida has expressed interest in obtaining wristwatches with a hidden butane-lighter function and Casio watches with an altimeter function. Casio watches have been extensively used by al-Qaida and associated organizations as timers for improvised explosive devices. The Casio brand is likely chosen due to its worldwide availability and inexpensive price.”
However, the watches will not be banned from planes. Instead, screeners will probably make you go through additional screening if they find your Casio a bit suspicious, so leave it behind if you’re going to be late for a flight.
Dick Henry, Johns Hopkins University proposed the Calender and Time Plan
Sometimes all it takes is a frustrated professor named Dick Henry, annoyed with the task of recreating the schedule every year, to create a more efficient calendar system in which every date falls on the same day of the week every year:
The current calendar, which runs for 365 days, was instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582 to bring the length of the year in line with the seasons. But because the Earth actually orbits the Sun every 365.24 days, a 366-day “leap year” must be added every four years to account for the extra fraction of a day. In this Gregorian system, a given date (such as New Year’s Day) falls on different days of the week in different years because 365 is not evenly divisible by seven. (more…)
This gives new meaning to the word “Wall Clock” - Three designers from the Royal College of Art (The very same university where the designer behind the Paper Clock was from) have come up with an innovative use of heating elements and ink that allows graphics, words and numbers to be displayed within a concrete.
Nickel chromium wires are set beneath the concrete surface, which heats up when an electric current passes through. When a certain temperature is reached, the concrete above the wire changes color, thus creating the visual.
Of course, the display of graphics and information depends on the arrangement of the wires.
Using new materials has always been encouraged in the watch industry i.e. Tissot’s Wood Watch (A watch entirely made of wood made in the eighties) So, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone drugs Nicholas Hayek, the swiss watch baron (AKA Mr. Swatch) and steals a sample of his bone cells, only to harvest it in a lab and grow a limited edition watch out of his bone.
Of course, such a scenario has only been made possible by Tobie Kerridge and Nikki Stott, who have combined biotech and jewelry to give us the first “Bio-ring”. Atleast its less painful than a tattoo.
Cuckoo IP is a mischievous messaging system. Use your mobile to leave an announcement, then choose any time in the future for cuckoo to emerge and replay your rant.
Rather than focus on just telling time, Japanese design gurus, Nendo’s time products focus on the passage of time - First up is their Key Calender, which is basically a calender with key holes that indicate months, weeks and days. By inserting each key, the design expresses the feeling of opening a new door everyday.
Name: CIBONE Time Material: Ceramic
CIBONE, on the other hand, is a dishware collection with colors at the bottom back of the cups and plates. The colors vaguely appear through the reflection on the table.
Each dishware has a different color and it changes during the course of the meal, from orange to red, purple to blue like the colors of the sky in the evening. The designers call it “the compass of the urban adventure person” - for people who tend to lose the feeling of time and can thus link the progress of time with the change in color.
