The smartphone has made technology very personal. It's a supercomputer that we keep at our side and use every chance we get. The devices continue to become more powerful, more connected, and more personal inside and out. We customize them with on average 80 installed applications, colorful cases, ringtones, and backgrounds. But it is only the beginning of how technology is becoming even more personal.
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Wearing a wireless headset in public, while not on a call, no longer seems odd. The headset is probably the most accepted and mature device in the wearable technology category. Bluetooth made this a viable solution several years ago, but both Bluetooth technology and headsets continue to evolve.
Last year, Plantronics implemented capacitive sensors in the headset, enabling it to sense when it is being worn. The Voyager PRO UC headset can route calls back to the handset or pause music when not on an ear. Now Plantronics has issued an SDK (Spokes) that exposes these sensors to other applications. Specifically, applications can determine when the headset is being worn, user proximity to their PC, mobile call state, and with whom the user is talking.
"According to Gartner, the three technology forces of mobile, cloud, and context are together shaping the future of our business and personal lives. Plantronics has long invested in mobile with a portfolio of intelligent products that support consumer and professional use," said Jeffrey Siegel, Vice President-Strategy for Plantronics. "What's new today is the introduction of how business applications are leveraging Plantronics contextual intelligence to deliver better collaboration experiences and more reliable workflow routing."
Presence and availability had huge ramifications for enterprise communications, but it was fundamentally flawed, as it determined presence by keyboard activity, which actually reveals very little about our true work status. Typing on a keyboard does not indicate availability, and with simultaneous ringing and mobile devices, the entire notion of associating presence/availability with a desktop keyboard is obsolete. Bringing the sensors to the headset could offer improved visibility and accuracy that could yield increased productivity in a variety of business scenarios. For example, Five9 is using the contextual presence information of the headset to determine call routing and agent availability in the contact center.
The new Bluetooth 4.0 specification consumes a fraction of the power of previous versions, thus enabling long term wireless connections. The new Wahoo Blue HR heart rate sensor could enable a remote doctor to monitor a patient's heart rate while exercising, or when the patient starts a new prescription, via a share feature of the smartphone's application. If more information is needed, there’s the BodyMedia Patch, which can be worn for up to seven days. It can track calorie burn, steps taken, activity levels, sleep patterns and more. BodyMedia says it collects more than 5,000 data points each minute.
If that isn't intrusive enough, last month the FDA approved the MobiUS ultrasound wand. For about $8,000, the smartphone-based ultrasound system can be used for ultrasound imaging, analysis and measurement in fetal/OB, abdominal, cardiac, pelvic, pediatric, musculoskeletal, and peripheral vessel imaging.
Looking ahead, there are several new technologies in development:
* At CES, Panasonic was showing a concept for a future wearable camera. Video is rapidly becoming pervasive, but won't a camera near our eyes provide the most accurate point of view?
* Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. These tattoos will carry micro-LEDs and can turn skin into an interactive screen. Skin will appear normal until the display is turned on, but once on, keyboards and other interactive controls will appear.
* The New York Times recently reported that Google is planning on launching an Android based set of glasses which can be used to augment reality. "Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot--but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor."
Wearable technology is becoming easy to find in the consumer space with items such as Bluetooth-enabled sunglasses for audio, the JawboneUP body monitor, the LunaTik bands that convert an iPod Nano into a wristwatch, and Nike+ shoes. It is very likely this trend will expand into the enterprise. Apple received a new Smart Garment patent on wearable technologies just last January. Additionally, Kinect-like gestures and Siri-like voice commands, is poised to make technology much more personal and intuitive. It isn't just a matter of speeds and feeds anymore, but sizes and colors.
Dave Michels is a contrinbuting editor and maintains a telecom blog at TalkingPointz.com
