Google has shed some light on one of their latest endeavors and this one looks to help the one in every 19 people in this world that has diabetes. Uncontrolled blood sugar puts people at risk for a range of dangerous complications, some short-term and others longer term, including damage to the eyes, kidneys and heart. Not only do you have to keep your sugar levels under control but the process to monitor your glucose level is disruptive and painful.

Google is now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturized glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material. They’re testing prototypes that can generate a reading once per second and even looking into integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds.

Multiple clinical research studies have been completed so this smart contact lens is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality. Talks with the FDA are ongoing and they’re exploring partners that can leverage this technology for a smart contact lens and develop apps that would make the measurements available to the wearer and their doctor.

The Google Translate app just got a massive upgrade, giving users some new features that will really make communicating with others a breeze when you’re traveling. For example, the new Word Lens feature lets you translate instantly without Internet or data by just pointing your camera to a sign or text. This currently supports French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. You can even just snap a photo, highlight the text, and get a translation across 36 languages with Camera Mode. When you’re in conversation mode, there’s no need to pick the two languages being used as automatic language detection does all the heavy lifting. Couple these new features with existing tricks like being able to star your favorite translations for quick, offline access and you’ve got a pretty amazing translation app. Head to the Android Google Play store or the App Store to get the latest version of the Google Translate app.

Introducing the Bang & Olufsen BeoSound Moment, a new home music player from the Danish brand. It’s got a beautiful design that features touch-sensitive technology and the ability to learn your music preferences and adapting along the way. Not only can it make selections based on tracks you like, but it can also tweak based on time of day. The “MoodWheel” on the player is great as it makes selections based on which side of the device you touch. Along with the BeoSound Moment, you get a year subscription to Deezer Premium+, giving you ad-free music even when offline. The Bang & Olufsen BeoSound Moment launched on January 30 via B&O retailers as well as online.

mophie has announced their juice pack line for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The protective battery cases come in a few variations, with the juice pack air for iPhone 6 delivering more 100% extra battery, juice pack plus for iPhone 6 packing 120% more battery, and the juice pack for iPhone 6 Plus provided more than 60% reserve. The figures are tremendous and will give users up to 17 more hours of talk time, up to 12 more hours of web browsing, up to 13 more hours of video playback, and up to 60 more hours of music playback. Beyond extended use, each case provides high-impact protection. Quick-charge and pass-through technology are incorporated into each model, so users can charge and sync their phone simultaneously and at a much faster rate. The mophie juice pack line for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus is now available on Amazon:

 Though we’ve seen plenty of private data storage apps crop up, Keeply has done a great job of impressing still. The app allows you to protect your private files, photos, notes and passwords through an easy-to-use interface that doesn’t let anything be saved off the cloud. Where an app like 1Password focuses primarily on saving website passwords, Keeply’s the one-stop shop for everything from credit card numbers to private notes, pins, and photos. And it doesn’t hurt that the design of the app is just downright beautiful. One of our favorite features is Keeply’s ability to snap a photo of anyone who unsuccessfully tries to access your data. The fake pin feature lets you put in a second bogus pin that will open the app with no information. Best of all, Keeply is free and available now through the app store.

Is this real? Yep. Introducing the Blackberry Classic smartphone, a return to the days pre-iPhone and Android. If you still daydream about having a physical keyboard then you’ll be happy to hear that Blackberry’s bringing this design back with a 3.5″ screen that runs Blackberry 10 OS. Email’s quicker than ever and there’s an 8 megapixel camera and 16GB of internal flash storage onboard as well. Beyond getting BBM again, you’ll also have the ability to install Android and Blackberry apps on this device. Good play, Blackberry, good play. The Blackberry Classic is available unlocked through BlackBerry and Amazon’s online stores for $449. Local carriers worldwide have already picked up the device while Verizon and AT&T are confirmed to be jumping on board in 2015.
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It’s been said that when a technology is free to use, you are not the customer, you are the product. That remains true – but now with apparel company Under Armour’s acquisition of health tracking app MyFitnessPal, there is an additional dimension. Your thoughts, behaviors, and actions can also be used to improve other products, sometimes in entirely different industries.

What these companies have done represents an ambitious step forward in the use of personal information for product design. We’re familiar with our online behavior being used to optimize a website or news feed. We’re less familiar with our behavior online being used to optimize a retail product. It’s soon going to become commonplace for the largest brands in the world to want to know incredibly specific details about you in the physical world, just as they do online.



Technology has steadily eroded the traditional boundaries that define what companies do. The improbable is now expected. A search engine makes thermostats and cars. Entrepreneurs are working to replace or embed all of the items that make up our daily lives with computers. The objects around us are increasingly generating and collecting huge amounts of information. This has completely transformed how products are marketed and sold – increasingly too, how they are designed.

It is therefore both surprising and obvious to read that a clothing company has acquired the fitness data of over 100 million people. In a press release, Chairman and CEO Kevin Plank has stressed the importance of “understanding the evolving needs of our athletes – how they interact, how they consume, and ultimately how they strive to live healthier lifestyles.” This move will allow Under Armour an unprecedented picture of their customers’ habits.

For Under Armour, harnessing this data effectively could prove to be a significant competitive advantage. The information that users have given to MyFitnessPal is extremely rich – it shows what types of people eat what, how active they are, and how they struggle with the issues they face. The granularity of detail is unlike anything a clothing company would be able to collect on their own. This is not just personal information, this is more than patterns and trends. This is intimate knowledge of an individual’s mind, body, and health.

For users, it’s a more complicated picture. MyFitnessPal is beautifully designed and has already helped millions of people improve their health. Having the resources of a major company can help them reach a larger audience. However, despite agreeing to the terms of service, most of the app’s users probably wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of their data changing hands. The mobile app industry rewards growth over revenue. As a consequence of that, the real value for companies is in their ability to capture and retain the attention and information of their users. What Under Armour really purchased wasn’t the code, it was the community.

The pioneers of the “quantified self” movement have long wrestled with thorny issues of access and ownership. Those questions are only growing in importance as the answers become more complex. The sheer amount of companies seeking to collect health information is astounding; the Apple App Store and Google Play store have more than 100,000 health and fitness apps – it is now the fastest growing category. Apple and Google are set to battle over their own massive health tracking platforms too. And regulators arewatching closely.

Like many other developments in technology, it appears that users will need to dive in first before the rules are established. The difference for these early adopters is that this time the data in question is extremely sensitive and revealing. At the same time, the promise is also far greater. Mobile health apps and hardware could hold the key to living better lives, making high-quality care accessible, and even reducing our national debt.

There is the risk that the government will step in too early and quash innovation, but there is a greater risk posed by entrepreneurs and companies that may act recklessly with privacy issues. Unlike social media or search, healthcare has a long history of consumer protections. Under Armour must tread carefully balancing these issues. Having now become the largest digital health and fitness platform in the world, the onus is now on them to behave responsibly so that the ecosystem can go on to achieve its potential.

Not so long ago we covered a miniature, ant-sized computer chip designed to be embedded in everyday stuff to make it smarter. Instead of a cumbersome battery in need of constant recharging—the chip is powered wirelessly by radio waves.

Now, the same Stanford group, led by assistant professor of electrical engineering Amin Arbabian, is working on a sister chip destined to be implanted in the body to keep tabs on internal biological processes and distribute drugs and other therapies.

To date, medical implants bristle with wires or, when they’re wireless, are made bulkier by onboard batteries. Ideal implants would be wireless and battery-free.

Unlike chips to be embedded in inanimate objects, implanted chips need to be fully compatible with the human body and present minimal health risk. To that end, Arbabian chose ultrasound to power his chip. Ultrasound is already safely used for sensitive procedures, like fetal imaging, and can provide the needed power.

How does it work? The chip houses a special piezoelectric material that flexes in response to incoming ultrasound waves creating a small amount of electricity.

"The implant is like an electrical spring that compresses and decompresses a million times a second, providing electrical charge to the chip," says Marcus Weber, a Stanford graduate student who working on Arbabian’s team.

Arbabian’s team found their device responded to targeted ultrasound through three centimeters of chicken meat—their human flesh analog.

As it’s powered, the chip is designed to translate ultrasound to power, process commands for particular actions, and send back confirmation by radio. Such tasks might, in the future, include biosensing or delivering electric shocks to relieve pain or ease the worst symptoms in neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease.

Currently, the chip is about the same size as the end of a ballpoint pen. The team is working to make the next generation of chips a tenth that size. The hope is such tiny implants might one day form a sensory network for in vivo brain research.

Arbabian’s chips may well prove forerunners to such implants, or the team’s wireless power tech might be combined with other cutting-edge implant designs.

Recently, for example, we wrote about a new graphene biosensor. The sensor is extraordinarily thin (four atoms across), transparent, flexible, and biocompatible. Because the graphene chip allows light to pass through, it lends itself to brain research using traditional imaging methods and cutting-edge optogenetics.

Whichever technology, or combination of technologies, wins out, it appears a new generation of digital technology is poised to be implanted—and that’s exciting news for pure research, medical diagnostics, and the humane therapies of tomorrow.

Ever bought a king-size box of colored pencils and marveled at all the names? Burnt sienna, cerulean blue, tuscan red. The world is overflowing with colors, too many to count or name. What if you had a single pen that contained them all?

The Scribble color matching pen (or stylus) uses a color sensor and LED illumination to sample and upload colors (say from your wall or a piece of clothing) to a mobile device or computer, and then reverses the process, allowing you to draw in any color.

The pen works like a handheld printer, using its ARM 9 microprocessor to digitize colors and mix the inks in an onboard CMYK cartridge. Scribble can reproduce over 16 million colors—100,000 of which can be stored on its 1 GB onboard chip. It runs on a rechargeable lithium ion battery and connects by Bluetooth or micro USB.

Scribble not only offers multiple colors all in one package, it also offers multiple stroke weights with its replaceable nib and six tip sizes. The pen works with iOS, Android, PC, and Mac and is compatible with Photoshop and Corel.

It should probably be noted this isn’t an entirely new idea. It's been floating around for awhile—see thisconceptual design by Jinsun Park, for example. But no one (as far as we can tell) has yet succeeded in making it into a tangible product for sale.

Though the Scribble team has a working prototype, they needed Kickstarter to fund creation of the final product. If all goes to plan—and often it doesn't, as nailing down a manufacturing process can be a sticking point—it'll be available late next spring.

The team has big expectations, saying in their first press release Scribble is “cutting edge technology that’s on the verge of becoming a household gadget.” They may be right. The Kickstarter was funded in five hours and is currently closing in on $300,000 with more than a month left in the campaign.

But going from Kickstarter to household gadget won't be easy. For one thing, $149 (more than an 8GB Kindle Fire) isn't cheap. And refill cartridges ($15 to $30 each) will add to costs, maybe appreciably, depending on how quickly users run out of ink.

Scribble may be too expensive for kids or technophobic crafters. Also, the pen can store lots of colors, but how easy it is to find and switch them isn't clear. Is an external device required every time you want a new color? What's the pen's interface like? Depending too much on a nearby computer or mobile device might limit some of its perceived utility.

For half the price, the stylus which lives more exclusively in the digital world (and no ink required), might be better value. Designers could sample colors for clients on the spot or match mystery paint on the wall. The color blind could use it to identify colors. These presume a degree of accuracy, but they seem like reasonable applications.

At the same time simple color scanning functionality can already be found in free smartphone apps. Maybe they aren't as accurate, but such apps using smartphone cameras are available for Android and iOS. And smartphones may soon come stock with new visual sensors. Google Tango or this new Microsoft Research device show that the visual powers of mobile devices are poised to move beyond simple cameras.

Will Scribble become a household device? Or will some of its powers be usurped by smartphones? We don't know. In any case, it's still a cool example of miniature tech going mobile and miniature sensors providing a two-way link between real and digital.