“A San Francisco company hopes women will ditch the Fitbit or Apple Watch and forget about having to use an accessory to measure your heart rate and steps,” Jefferson Graham reports for USA Today.
“The OMbra, the worlds’s first ‘smart’ bra, introduced here at the Consumer Electronics Show by OMsignal, aims to measure your biometrics through a piece of clothing already worn daily,” Graham reports.
Women gravitate towards wearables, but they don’t want an item they have to put on or worry about every day.., [and] f they’re going to be wearing it all day, they want to get more information. — OMsignal chief marketing officer Shaz Khang
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Interesting 😉 yet it’s far more convenient to have your fitness data (and your music, messages, email, etc.) right on your wrist than stuck on your iPhone (or bra).
Don’t worry, guys, you don’t need to grow a pair of moobs to get into some smart apparel. OMSignal makes “OMshirts,” too:
More info about the development of the OMbra:
Smart breasts, a tech nerds dream come true. 😉
So I’m supposed to buy 7 of these as I tend to always wash my bra after each use.
Only $1050 for a week’s worth of bras. I think I’ll stick to keeping my iPhone 6 on me.
Perhaps you need to go ‘sexy’ French to solve your problem and just stick with one bra!
I used to work on the Max Factor advertising account and the client commission some research. The finds were that the Brits washed and didn’t wear perfume, the French wore perfume but didn’t wash and the Americans washed and wore perfume! Since then I’ve viewed the French in a different light.
I’m surprised MS wasn’t on top of this years ago.
A smart bra to hold up Ballmer’s man boobs.
Jumping the shark, once again. However if this is for medical diagnostic, then I would hardly call it a bra.
The good: A multitasker
The bad: Calling it a bra
I see no difference if they were to make under where the same way, but be gender neutral.
How long until it gets hacked and it tells the user she really needs to take it off. Right now.
More narcissistic bullshit, if you ask me.
And if it short circuits? Smoke starts coming out of their jubblies! (attempt to paraphrase Austin Powers explanation after he encountered the FemBots).
This is certainly uplifting news. It could give new meaning to the term ‘tech support’.
What exercise did they show were you couldn’t wear the watch?
Just PLEASE don’t turn ordinary clothing into IoT (Internet of Things) gear. We don’t need to turn everyone into hacked, BitCoin crunching, DDOS perpetrating BOTs.
I’m referring to the fact that, so far, the security of the IoT has been abysmal, if present at all. It’s like handing a baby a loaded and cocked gun. DUH.
Though I understand the problem, I don’t see anything too sinister with IoT devices that only allow you to send them either a request for info or a diagnostic command. Setting changes can be limited to requiring physical access since the frequency of such an occurrence should be very low.
For example, Crowley and Bryan examined the Veralight, which plugs into your home computer network and allows you to control and manage many types of household appliances. By default, it required no username or password to access the system, and they say they found numerous ways to bypass authentication even when it was turned on. More recently, Crowley and Bryan discovered how easily one could get a music-playing toilet called the Satis, which is controlled by an Android smartphone app, to flush itself repeatedly or play loud music. They recently discussed their findings at the annual Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517931/more-connected-homes-more-problems/
The Veralight and Satis examples both produce a physical effect, I just said that I don’t see anything sinister with IoT devices that accept only requests for info.. I guess you can argue that the diagnostic command may result in some physical effect, that was not my intention though should it happen for diagnostics, I would expect the effect to only last a short duration. I could also argue that the IoT devices you used as examples were not designed to detect unusual usage.
The issue is that the companies making these IoTs are blowing off security in order to get the shiny new product rushed to market. Then the stupid general public buy and use them being absolutely clueless about them.
70% of IoT Vulnerable to Attack
http://community.hpe.com/t5/Security-Products/HP-Study-Reveals-70-Percent-of-Internet-of-Things-Devices/ba-p/6556284#.Vosqd-lED8w
Of course, I agree with you. I went all bombastic because I’m used to seeing odd things like refrigerators implicated in IoT botnets. If someone’s bra is sending out data to their MD’s patient monitoring network, the thing could potentially be hacked to join a botnet and send out out DDOS attack packets. Paying attention to potential abuse of any Internet connected technology is a responsibility of any IoT gear developer. If they can’t be bothered to consider the security of their IoT device, I would gladly contribute some CPU cycles to reverse DDOS attack such devices (or some such hilarity) and keep them OFF the Internet. I was just conversing with ‘Herself’ about the ever present problem of Technology Ignorance. If someone is going to create gear that uses the Internet, attention to security is Rule #1. Otherwise, toss your IoT junk in the trash bin. Please.
IoT is serious business and I would feel safer if even if the devices were hackable, that it would require physical access to do so making it extremely difficult to create large botnets on any particular platform. Given that the idea of IoT is that you can have many of them around, reducing any means to automate hacking of the devices is currently IMO the best deterrent.
Woman: “It’s not working.”
TechGuy: “Let me check your bra. I see the problem. The sensor on your bra is not snug enough against your skin. Let me adjust it for you. (groping and squeezing) Don’t worry, I’m a professional ma’am.”