ON SMARTER "SMART APPAREL".
KEY SIGNALS
A lot of us geeks have been eagerly awaiting the promise of "smart apparel". An example of this in mainstream 
science fiction would be the self-drying jacket worn by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future II. A prosaic example of this in the real world, would be this T-Shirt from Think Geek, with a built-in Wifi detector:
"The glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the surrounding wi-fi signal strength fluctuates. Finally you can get the attention you deserve as others bow to you as their reverential wi-fi god..."
A bit geeky, no doubt...but wouldn't it really be helpful to know if there's a Wifi signal around for your new iPhone, 2G or otherwise, for $30 and have a shirt on your back? More choices on the same idea here, if this one doesn't quite do it for you.
On a shirt? It isn't a fashion statement and functionally the output is in a poor position to use by the wearer. Wouldn't a wrist band be more useful if you really wanted to know the strength of a WiFi signal? Wouldn't the best way be to have your iPhone display the signal strengths, just as the wireless connection utility does on your PC?
My suggestion for geek wear is to display something about the social milieu - such as where your immediate friends are, are there strangers near you with matching interests and change color to signal you match, are you interested in conversing with strangers about those interests? I could see this as a fashion alternative to those badges at conferences, especially those with sticky tag labels that O'Reilly likes to use.
Posted by: Alex Tolley | Sunday, July 06, 2008 at 02:24 PM