Paul Smith will be launching his first luxury collection of Swiss made wristwatches for Women by the end of this year.
Some of them will include personalised limited editions sketches by Paul Smith himself on the case backs, all of which are randomly selected across the collection.
There will be three styles of watches for women. The first would have a sporty feel to it, the second Classic and the third, a more feminine jewellery version.
Gizmodo writes about HP’s flexible plastic LCD panel that will one day surely be on our wrists:
Although it’s far from being put into a commercial product, HP Labs showed off a flexible plastic LCD panel Monday in London that they hope will be used in signs and other static display devices. It’s not fast enough for video yet—it takes about half-a-second to switch to a new image—but it does have the advantage of being bistable, which is to say that it retains its image even when not receiving power. The sample shown is just 3cm by 4cm, but HP obviously hopes to make something more of it in the future.
If you’re mildly interested in watches, you might have heard about Basel, the premier show for watches, well, this is the other big one - The Hong Kong Watch & Clock Exhibition with up to 800 exhibitors from 15 countries or regions and we’ll be there to cover it blow by blow.
Its going to be from September 1st to the 5th so stay tuned for daily reports.
It just seems like yesterday that Fossil was selling retro watches in tin cans, and now it’s bought Michele watches for a cool $150 mil, roped in designers like Philippe Starck and finally spotted giving hickeys to the likes of Pelikon - one of the leading Interface Display companies, pledging to “change the face of watches”, and change the face of watches is what they’re going to do, by replacing the face display with one of Pelikon’s SEL display that is ten times thinner than the LCD and from the looks of Pelikon’s working prototype, very flexible too.
The Pelikon’s display is very flexible
While it looks all promising at the moment, it still isn’t without its drawbacks i.e. the displays are emissive and aren’t suitable for viewing in direct sunlight, they don’t have a great lifetime which is inversely related to its brightness and its not very robust. Plus, given that blue is its strongest color, it doesn’t leave much room for other colors. Still, it is the Model T of its kind and we’ll see more of these in the future as the technology improves.
Other SEL applications include this SEL cell phone prototype
Huddled in the corner at this year’s DoCoMo booth at “Wireless Japan” exhibition was a prototype for the “future of cellular phones” or as we would like to call it a possible “watch interface of the future”.
Named the “UniButton”, the watch works by detecting vibrations in your body. The prototype on display could switch the light on and off by snapping the fingers.
While the cell phone’s most overlooked killer app has been the little time display on the top corner of your screen (Think of all the people you know who don’t use their watch anymore to tell the time), its set to make another leap with applications like Fluid Time.
Fluid Time allows people to use their cell phone to negotiate their time, like for example, deciding how to share a washer or getting to a bus stop on time.
The system is still in the development phase with the current prototype exploring how the value of location based services can be increased when they are connected to people and information.
We think this is what the Microsoft wristwatch should’ve been, not the wrist ticker tape that it is.
While the previous RFID watch doesn’t really do what we talked about in an earlier post, this one does.
CPS (Cambridge Positioning Systems Ltd) and Xion announced plans to collaborate on the development of a new wristwatch-based child safety communicator and locator, so its pretty far from the prototype stage right now.
Named the Sentinel Watch, it will be based on a tri-band GSM engine and consistently deliver 100m accuracy in urban, suburban and rural areas.
In addition the Watch can be tracked and located indoors and metal framed buildings.
Other features include:
- parent/child communication via SMS/MMS
- a warning for parents if the child moves outside a designated or defined area
- a panic button which sends an immediate alert message to the parent
- security clasp and security strap the alert the parent when the watch is removed without authorisation
gaming facilities
Sorry, we don’t have a picture, but during this year’s Embedded Systems Expo and Conference held at Tokyo Big Sight, Professor Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo unveiled the “UC-Watch,” a radio frequency identification (RFID) reader developed by the YRP Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory that Sakamura directs.
The UC-Watch features a function to read data based on “ucode,” an RFID numbering system that the Ubiquitous ID Center standardized. Scanned data is transmitted through weak radio waves.
The watch has a screen of 120 x 160 dots. The time and date each are displayed as a clock function, and background images and menus can be changed. It weighs around 100g without batteries. The company is working on reducing the weight.
Name: AJ3136 Clock Radio Designer: Annemieke Fröger, Philips Design, The Netherlands Contact: +31.40.2759066 (email) Credit: Philips, China
This year’s IDEA awards features only one time related entry - A Philips Clock Radio that got a bronze in the consumer products category. According to the brief, the round device features include easy-to-hold-and-use interface that allows personalization of wake-up sounds, called the “Roll Me Over” function. The display rotates as the clock is rolled over thanks to a directional sensor.
Its interesting to note how the core watch industry generally seems to be isolated from the larger product design community, otherwise we would’ve probably seen more entries.
