Your Wearing Apparel

Your Wearing Apparel
Wireless is also making its way into your clothing. Researchers are already
experimenting with so-called wearables — the merging of 802.11 and
Bluetooth directly into clothing so that it can have networking capabilities.
Want to synch your PDA? No problem — just stick it in your pocket. MIT Labs
has been showing off some clothing that looks more like a Borg from Star
Trek than anything practical, but there are all sorts of companies working on
waterproof and washerproof devices for wirelessly connecting to your home
wireless network.
Wireless technology will also infiltrate your clothing through radio frequency
identification tags, or RFIDs, which are very small, lightweight, electronic
read/write storage devices (microchips) that are half the size of a grain of
sand. They listen for a radio query and when pinged, respond back by transmitting
their ID code. Most RFID tags have no batteries because they use the
power from the initial radio signal to transmit their response; thus, they
never wear out. Data is accessible in real time through handheld and/or fixedposition
readers, using RF signals to transfer data to and from tags. RFID
applications are infinite, but when embedded in clothing, RFIDs will offer
applications such as tracking people (like kids at school) or sorting clothing
from the dryer (no more problems matching socks or identifying clothes for
each child’s pile).
A technology of great impact in our lifetime is GPS, which is increasingly
being built into cars, cell phones, devices, and clothing. GPS equipment and
chips are so cheap that you’re going to find them everywhere. They are used
in amusement parks to help keep track of your kids. Some shoe manufacturers
are talking about embedding chips in shoes.
Most GPS-driven applications have software that enables you to interpret the
GPS results. So you can grab a Web tablet at home while on your couch, wirelessly
surf to the tracking Web site, and determine where Fido (or Fred) is
located. Want to see whether your wife’s car is heading home from work yet?
Grab your PDA as you walk down the street, log onto a nearby hot spot, and
check it out. A lot of applications are also being ported to cell phones, so you
also can use those wireless devices to find out what’s going on.
GPS-based devices — primarily in a watch form — are available that can
track people. The Wherify Watch, shown in Figure 19-2, is a great device that
allows you to track children and the elderly (such as Alzheimer’s patients)
who might wander off. The caretaker can then go to a Web site, view a map
showing the wearer’s location, and easily find the wanderer.

You can actually replay the signals received from the device over a period of
time — sort of like a Family Circus cartoon showing the path of the little kid
bopping around town. Watches are pricey, running about $300–$400 apiece
plus monthly monitoring fees of $10–$50.
Check out companies like Wherify (www.wherify.com) and Applied Digital
Solutions (www.digitalangel.net) for their products. Applied Digital has
developed VeriChip (www.adsx.com/prodservpart/verichip.html) that
can be implanted under the skin for people in high-risk (think kidnapping)
areas overseas. This chip is an implantable, 12 mm x 2.1 mm radio frequency
device, about the size of the point of a ballpoint pen. It contains a unique verification
number.
Although watches are a great form factor for lots of wireless connectivity
opportunities, they have been hampered by either wired interface requirements
(like a USB connection) or an infrared (IR) connection (which requires
line-of-sight to a specific on-ramp). Expect these same devices to very quickly
take on Bluetooth and 802.11 interfaces so that constant updating — like
with the Microsoft Smart Personal Objects Technology (SPOT) model
(www.microsoft.com/SPOT/) — can occur. Watches are also popular for
Taking pictures: The Casio (www.casio.com) WQV10D-2 Color Wrist
Camera watch with color liquid crystal display (LCD) lets you snap up to
100 images in JPEG format. A 2X digital zoom enables you to get closer to
your subjects, and IR transfer enables you to share your pictures with
other Casio wrist cameras and your PC. An RF option is surely on the way.
Looking up phone numbers: The Casio BZX201SCR PC Unite Watch is
equipped with infrared capabilities, plus enhanced PC synchronization
functions. In addition to being able to exchange personal information
manager data with a computer, the PC Unite also can link with Microsoft
Outlook and even exchange data with a portable terminal such as a PDA.
Creating wireless connectivity via jewelry bears its own set of issues because
of the size and weight requirements of the host jewelry for any wireless
system. The smaller the jewelry, the less power that the wireless transmitter
can have to do its job. The less power, the shorter the range, and so the more
limited the bandwidth and application of the device.