Why You'll Soon Be Wearing Your Technology

Your clothes can do more than make you look cool.

Want to track your fitness goals, or have Google available at every second? If so, you might be ready for wearable technology: gadgets worn on the body, like belts, glasses, and t-shirts, that can do anything from monitor personal performance and movement to just be fashionable (such as an LED tie with voice-activated blinking lights).

As wearables evolve and appeal to the mainstream market, they are being accepted by more than geeks and gadget freaks. Last year, the focus was on Fuelband, Up, and Fitbit: wrist bands that collect personal data and sync it with your phone. A companion sleep-tracking app (a function of the Up and Fitbit bands) helps you to understand if you're sleeping well, or waking up through the night.

The focus on health and fitness helps us to perform better by collecting our data and identifying our personal patterns.

When Google Glass made a splash in early 2013, the wearable market gained still more traction. Google Glass can take photos or search the Internet. It also uses augmented reality to create a virtual layer (like where the best restaurants are) and then adds it to what you're seeing in real life when you wear the glasses and activate the functions.

Although Google Glass isn't slated to hit the mainstream market until later this year, developers are taking Google’s lead: They're creating competing products and assuming that the opportunities will continue to expand.

As of now, the wearable technology market is still undefined, and major players could emerge as more innovative products are unveiled. It may also take a while for individuals to adopt wearables that seem “distracting” or “funny looking.” Whether or not they are accepted in the marketplace will depend on something old-fashioned: the value these technologies bring.

The original version of this article was written by Jen Cohen Crompton and published on SAP.

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