Jacquard by Google transforms clothing
atap.google.com
atap.google.com
Specifically tailored with the urban cyclist in mind, the Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket was designed for getting around the city. The jacket features articulated shoulders to provide extra room to maneuver, reflectors, and a dropped hem to keep you covered as you ride. You can easily access your digital world because Jacquard technology is woven right into the sleeve.
Tiny electronics contained in the flexible snap tag connect the Jacquard Threads in the jacket’s cuff to your mobile device.1 The snap tag lets you know about incoming information, like a phone call2, by giving you light and haptic feedback. Inspired by a strap that you would see on a cuff, it looks and feels like it’s a part of the jacket. The tag also houses the battery which can last up to 2 weeks between USB charges.3
Customize and control your jacket with the Jacquard app. Abilities let you control messages, phone calls, navigation, music4, and more. Assign and reassign different abilities to the gestures you want to use and decide when you want to be notified by LED and/or haptic feedback.
And so on...
"Tiny electronics contained in the flexible snap tag connect the Jacquard Threads in the jacket’s cuff to your mobile device. The snap tag lets you know about incoming information, like a phone call, by giving you light and haptic feedback. Inspired by a strap that you would see on a cuff, it looks and feels like it’s a part of the jacket. The tag also houses the battery which can last up to 2 weeks between USB charges."
In collaboration with Google Inc., Levi's® has reimagined their iconic Trucker Jacket to create an interactive, connected garment that allows wearers to access a variety of mobile services tailored to the needs of an urban commuter. Control music, get your next direction, and screen your calls & texts by swiping or tapping the jacket sleeve. Touch and gesture data is wirelessly transmitted to mobile phones or other devices through the Jacquard snap tag.
https://support.google.com/jacquard/?hl=en
It’s a jean jacket with a touch sensitive left sleeve cuff that talks to your phone via a tiny BTLE dongle that snaps onto the jacket. Requires Android 6.0.1 and a supported phone.
When we will get some decent applications, instead of enhancing the form
Frankly most of what people do on "smartphones" today that is not work related could be done on featurephones a decade or more ago.
This is almost surely wrong but you made the intentionally vague comment so it’s not so easy to point out where you’re wrong. You might claim, for example, that tasks like email or internet browsing existed but they did not work as well.
Also, we certainly haven’t run out of things to do with mobile. We’re talking watches, phones, and tablets, etc right?
I agree in part, just think that the jacket needs to be paired with a HUD or maybe have control/button labels that can shine through the fabric in order to open up that innovation.
This would be huge for things like heart monitors and emergency phone calls. A lot of room for "cool social apps for teens", and almost definitely for gaming/VR.
Wasn't there mention of light and haptic feedback?
Things take a while to converge.
A: Sorry, I forgot my jacket
C: Oh, we have some convenience nike bio-gloves if you want ...
A: Not biosynced to me.
C: Oh. Uhmm ... face scan?
A: I'm not American, I'm not in your DB.
C: Bitcoin?
D: No jacket.
C: What do we do then?
D: Do you take cash young robot?
C: You mean like paper? No, it's 2040. Paper cash is unhygienic.
D: So no coffee?
C: I guess not. Sorry. Next.
Do you think they contemplated doing visual ID of the shopper, or would it just be too creepy to walk into the store and have it say "Hello Dave, I'll put it all on your tab!"
Not all cars/phones/media can do handsfree.
However, what I do usually if I have to get directions just use my built in phone speakers.
Even with the best isolating headphones (around 25db; most non-IEM models offer much less isolation), you can still hear ambiant noises (unless your hearing is damaged to the point where isolating headphones do make you deaf). And with the standard set of Apple style headphones, they won't dampen the outside world at all.
Losing the ambiant noises will only occur when you overwhelm them out with your music, podcast, or navigation.
And running earbuds that loud for an extended period of time is a good way to lose your hearing.
Etymotic ER-4's are 35-42 dB; I've put mine in and not heard the bus zooming through the crossing I was about to stroll across…
ER4-XR's for me.
So the answer is, "yes." Not, "It depends on if you have ESP."
That said, some noise cancelling headphones offer modes that specifically let road noise through, and folks have hacked them to improve directionality of weak sound signals, and amplify voices. The Parrot Zik firmware comes stock with a 'street' mode.
It's entirely possible to have these systems function as hearing aides. MIT lab folks have demoed small wide-angle optical object detection that's then translated to directional feedback in a haptic belt.
We definitely need to get beyond smartphones and into more ubiquitous form factors so we don't evolve into creatures with our upper backs and necks contorted downwards.
I always liked this UI from Mission Impossible 5: https://imgur.com/6H1dJ2n
A fun feature it had that I would love to have on real clothing - you could pop up a slider and change the color of the suit.
EDIT: here's a video of its various features:
Subtle as a giant hearing aid looking thing attached like a shiny black cucumber slug on the outside of your jacket’s wrist?
Jacquard only puts limits on you as it's stuck on that specific denim jacket. Apple Watch on the other hand works with any jacket. You don't even need a jacket with Apple watch, you can wear whatever you want, whenever you want, and it would still work compared to Jacquard which wouldn't.
However, it does need to use a standard api for communication between the snap tag, phone and jacket, and use a standard physical connector. I'm not going to spend $350 for a jacket that can only be used with one company's proprietary technology, and which has to be replaced when the next generation snap tag / dongle comes out.
/s
You could have said that about a device that knows exactly where you are every minute of the day - but here we are.
Your comment fails as a rebuttal.
https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/01/for-more-poor-americans-smar...
Poor Americans are not the poorest people on the planet. And talking like they are casually dismisses the existence of billions of people.
I am pretty darn poor for an American. I was homeless until recently. I am well aware that even homeless Americans frequently have cell phones. My latest Tracphone is a smart phone because the Walmart didn't have a dumb phone when I went to get a new phone.
Still, the fact that some Americans are poor and also have a cheap smart phone does not negate the existence of poor Americans who don't have a smart phone, who may not have a phone at all.
The comment I replied to suggested that ALL clothing will someday have this tech. I think that is unlikely. Perhaps "all" (aka most) clothing of fairly well off Americans, but certainly not all clothes on the entire planet.
That may be "pedantic," but the essence of classism, racism, etc is that people glibly say "all people" when they really mean some subset of people. That subset winds up being the only subset that counts. The needs and realities of other people outside that subset are utterly ignored and if you try to bring them into the conversation, you get shouted down, downvoted, etc.
I think there are situations where it's clearly not OK - for example, it's wrong for a government to limit access to voting based on race. But if you're, say, developing a new technology, then almost always it will be initially expensive and limited to wealthy users. Still, if we hadn't had an iPhone for rich folks in 2007, it's hard to imagine we'd be living in a world with decent $40 android smartphones in 2017.
Would you agree with that logic?
You seem to be reading in intent which is not there.
what does this even means in this context?
Do you really think it is literally true that the goal is every single piece of clothing on the entire planet will connect to the internet? Or just the clothes of the relatively well off?
Because when you talk like it will be completely universal when that seems rather far fetched, you implicitly deny the existence of those people for whom this is highly unlikely to be true.
Do you really want to buy a new jacket every time you upgrade your touch gizmo or vice-versa? Do you want vendor-locked clothes? It's very user-hostile IMO.
"I wasn't masturbating, officer, I swear. I was just swiping through my contact list"
Indie folks have been doing this for years, and it's getting quite small. Interested parties are both homebrew hackers and folks working at improving the lives of sensory impairment.
To answer my own question: because then you can't sell an expensive jacket that does what's already possible without it.
> Jacquard by Google transforms clothing. It’s an entirely new take on wearables that lets you do more than ever with the things that you love and wear every day. With Jacquard technology woven into the very fabric of your clothes, you can connect to your digital life instantly and effortlessly. With a literal brush of your cuff, you can navigate your life while living it.
I can't tell — is this some sort of late or early April Fool's joke? Or have I finally just become such an old fogey that I'm yelling at those goshdurn kids to quit sequencing their nanites on my lawn?
Basically, you can make various gestures on the jacket cuff to control things like playing/pausing music, having an incoming sms read aloud to you, etc.
Maybe useful if you're riding a bike, or other situations where interaction with a screen isn't practical?
The other scenarios still assume that I'm wearing earbuds - which arguably brings it's own risks (i.e. when riding a bicycle)
I understand MVPs, but if you're going to actually integrate stuff into fabric, make it something more advanced than a single touchpad.
No clue how to pronouce Jacquard btw. :(
a gaff, bad marketing, or dead on arrival?
/ˈjakərd/ https://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/20160317/ja...
EDIT: Link - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom#Importance_in_co...
I'm kind of more interested in clothing that doesn't collect my data.
"Note: You can wear the Jacket in the rain, but if the Jacket becomes too wet it may not reliably detect gestures. Allow the Jacket to dry and resume using. The snap tag is resistant to rain and splashing, but it is not fully waterproof"
Sure it's really "Specifically tailored with the urban cyclist in mind"...that's one wet, smelly, denim jacket after a few rides in the UK.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/levis-ceo-ex...
Did I miss the part where they say cyclist?
They call their bike-specific pants the Commuter line.
With decency, they could at a minimum have acknowledged his creations, influence, and inspiration. Their about page [2] does not acknowledge Jacquard's existence. Even worse, Google has trademarked the name "Jacquard", to appropriate that name in relation to tech-infused weaving [3].
Contrast with the Pascal programming language -- Blaise Pascal was honored explicitly when this language was named after him; the creator, Niklaus Wirth, never dreamed of using this name without explicit tribute, since the naming was intended as a tribute.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Marie_Jacquard
There's really no need for this to control music. AirPods now have touch and voice controls built in. Smart earbuds are a much better solution for audio control than smart clothing that controls dumb earbuds.
And if you're getting turn-by-turn directions you'll probably have your AirPods in as well, and you can just ask Siri for updates. That's so much more flexible -- you can ask for so much more than you could via preprogrammed swipes.
That pretty much just leaves the use case of haptic notifications for people who don't want to wear a watch / wristband. I think if you care about this you'll at least put on a fitbit during your commute. And that works with all clothing.
https://support.google.com/jacquard/answer/7537511?hl=en&ref...
Many products create a waste burden that is an after thought. Clothing has a good disposal path - reuse, recycle or just throw out.
But what about wearable clothing? Since it is fashion it will have a short life cycle.
The jacket contribution is threads to act like a touch pad.
In this case, I guess this is a real thing, but reading the website it seems like it could just as easily be a joke.
Kinda like the Antifa spoof pages on Facebook, which were hilarious if you knew what they were spoofs.
They need a "killer" use case for this, but everyday jacket wearing folks can pass on this without missing much
I don’t care about controlling music player from my shirt, my phone already dies that.
Okay. Sure. But they'd better not cut corners in the security of the handshaking and integration or someone's going to be able to hack your pants and make them buzz forever.
Now you can wear google.
What we might want from clothing:
+ Self cleaning + No need to iron but still feels like cotton, not plastic + Synthetics that are breathable like cotton + Cheaper + Can change colour/styles
Damn you malnourished SF hipsters (I guess you cant afford to eat with Bay Area prices, also you keep buying new phones instead of food).
San Francisco is actually pretty lite on the hipsters compared to, say, Bushwick or Portland.
> Why is this only in skinny
Skinny seems to be the default jean size, these days. Walk into a Uniqlo or something and the main thing you see is skinny.