News Roundup – November 2014

The fashion community is again partnering with tech companies for strategic alliances or simply for the Christmas season. Coincidence? We don’t think so. However, that’s not all that happened this month. Read below what mattered this November.

Michael Bastian and Hewlett- Packard

High-tech meets high-style in the MB Chronowing Smartwatch that derived from the partnership between luxury American menswear designer Michael Bastian and American Software and Hardware maker HP. The timepiece has no touch screen to swipe, no microphone to speak into and it can’t track your steps or measure your heart rate, it in fact looks as if it is just a regular watch. It has the gentlest of vibrations to alert you about texts, emails and notifications from apps of your choice and it has a clock dial on the face.. The watch’s monochrome LCD display can also show messages, the weather, stock prices and other info. Swipe-accustomed people will probably wonder about the three buttons, which can be used to navigate the watch’s old-school menus, activate a built-in light and control a phone’s music player. Battery life is an estimated seven days.

Victoria Secret

We won’t talk about the Fashion Show that Victoria Secret will be hosting here. No. Victoria Secret entered the Wearable space with a high-tech Bra. It looks like other generic sports bras on the market but with a difference, it’s a bra embedded with built-in sensors that measure heart rate together with a clip-on heart rate monitor and a stylish touch!

But Wearable Tech does not stop at fashion brands. There are new crazy product for cows, not even one but two!

The first one is the Cowcam which is like the GoPro for cows. This Swiss company just finished their book “Cows photograph their world”. With 224 photos took by cows over 7years in different parts of Switzerland, this camera was developed from a basic one used in key hangers. It is as a life logging camera, it shoots photos automatically. The other one is like Fitbit for cows. Silent Herdsman is a monitoring system for cows and heifers based on a neck mounted tag (collar). Silent Herdsman continually monitors a cow’s activity and automatically detects changes in normal behaviour, indicating patterns related to parturition. Silent Herdsman identifies the cow’s cycle,the result is an increase in the identification of cows in these states. To prolong the collar’s battery life, Silent Herdsman flags an alert only when cows enter their critical states. Fertility, milk yield and operational efficiency are therefore maximised.

Health Insurances want you to live longer and healthier

Generali one of the largest global insurance provider has partnered with insurer Discovery for the launch of the Health and Protection Vitality products. Vitality is a behavioral-based shared value insurance model that encourages and rewards customers to improve health and wellbeing creating powerful health and protection offerings. The Vitality solution has been designed around three main principles: Rewarding healthy behavior with benefits and promotions ,personalizing client relationship to motivate them towards activities that improve their lifestyle , providing a new bond between the insurer and the customer through an engaging shared value offering.

MEDICA 2014

From November 12 to 15 WT was for the 5th time represented at MEDICA in Düsseldorf. The tradeshow was attended by about 130.000 visitors who had the chance to meet more than 4.800 exhibitors from 100 countries. At the WT | Wearable Technologies pavilion more than 20 international WT partner exhibitors showcased their latest developments covering a wide range of wearable and digital health topics. But see yourself:

14th Wearable Technologies Conference 2015 Agenda Revealed

The 14th WT | Wearable Technologies Conference is coming – and this next edition will be held in Europe again, more concretely in Munich. The program and most of the speakers have been revealed and WT team is ready! The following companies will be speaking at the event : Adidas, Sony, Jawbone, Baidu, Bragi, Bitbite, Handicap International, Google, ETH Zurich & University of Zurich, STMicroelectronics, Vivalnk, Earlens, Novel Devices Laboratory, University of Cincinnati, Flextronics, 3DLive, Formatec and Gemalto.

Stay tuned for more news on the speakers and other surprises. Hurry and save your spot now – seats are limited!

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