If Home Depot sold watches, these would be it - Stanley has launched a line of wristwatches with built in tools. So whether you’ve always wanted to carry a measuring tape or a screwdriver in your pocket, now you can with these handy gizmos.
Designer Gina Reimann looks to the past for inspiration with her nomination for concept watch of the future. Billed as a sundial for the 22nd century, the Orbit use natural sunlight to tell the time with the help of a simple compass interface. At night, pushing a button illuminates a bright LED that simulates the sun’s shadow. And if that isn’t enough, there’s also a digital display of ‘world’ time - a hypothetical international time without time zones.
No word on whether this will will ever see the ‘light’ of day.
Here’s one that’s long overdue - Hitachi is planning on launching a sensor node watch for the elderly in the next three years that will allow one to monitor the health of their loved ones. The device will have three sensors. One for pulse, one for temperature and one for measuring the owner’s movement.
The first time I came across the Time Tag, a similar time clip, I didn’t realize how popular these little mini time devices were among people who didn’t normally wear watches. So when I came across the Stik, I naturally sat up and paid attention - Billed as “part tattoo, part sticker, part watch”, The Stik sticks everywhere including your body. Unfortunately, the watch face isn’t very inspiring with a retro bland look that only a mother would love. The stickers don’t help much and, atleast for me, it just reeks of cheap chinese imitation.
The latest gem at Bulgari’s permanent stable at Baselworld 2005 (Instead of a regular booth, Bulgari has a seperate permanent exhibit/store at the Basel district) was the Ipno, another in a line of luxury digital watches, wrapped in a ceramic and diamond case with a satin strap, complete with a rotating ring that activates the backlight.
Zone is New York based design group Intoto’s prototype travel watch that allows you to quick refer to time in different cities. We’ve no word on whether this will ever get manufactured on a mass scale.
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.
Follow the rabbit further down the hole and you’ll find that any discussion about the future of wrist watches will somehow lead us to cell phone technology - whether it may be about atomic clocks, next generation materials, newinterfaces* , or time applications, it seems as if their destiny is intertwined, which if you give it a moment’s thought, isn’t surprising given how ubiquitous they are as a personal technology today. **
So when Sony Ericsson put together a concept phone design competition, it wasn’t exactly a stretch that one of the entries would be a wrist-watch/phone concept. In fact, I’m somewhat disappointed there weren’t many more***, but since this is the classiest interpretation I’ve seen, I think it makes more than up for it.
So every wednesday, the good folks at Engadget crawl out of bed, throw in some pop tarts in the microwave and drag themselves to their pc so they could post their weekly wristwatch feature where they check out every mutated half breed gadget watch they can find i.e. The Linux Watch or the Decision Maker Watch.
We, on the other hand, swoop in and select the ones we like - like the three featured below:
The Truth Detector
A Mini Lie Detector Watch that actually works! Just ask the person you want to test to hold their index and middle fingers against the bio-feedback sensors on the watch, ask them a question and then take a look at the chart on the watch. The more bars appear on the screen, the less likely they are being honest with you.
Seiko’s Frequency
Seiko continues on packing in the gadgets with it’s “Frequency” watch - A retro Nineties wristwatch that comes with a built-in beat box!
Nixie WristWatch
Nixie Tubes use glowing bottles of ionized gas to form letters and digits, and are usually found in gear from the former Soviet Union. This is probably the first time we’ve seen it in a Watch.
