Thanks to the fantastic WordPress plug-in WP Touch you can now view talk2myShirt on the go with one of your smart phones as long as it has a touch screen, be it the iPhone, Android powered devices or Blackberry touch screen models.

WP Touch makes it a breeze to create a smart layout for smart phones and tablets. With just a few clicks all is set and ready for the big show.

Check out talk2myShirt next time you are out and about, a sleek, eye i-Device interface and super fast navigation.

That’s another of the little housekeeping activities I am undertaking right now – stay tuned for other tweaks showing up right her.

Disclaimer – I am not going to get paid for writing loving WP Touch, I am a very happy user of that great plug-in.

Reporting back to duty on talk2myShirt after some forced out-time on my side. I missed the daily blogging, hunting down the latest and greatest inventions but most of all, staying in touch with the community.

But the dark ages are over and I am happy to be back into the sunny side of wearable technology. Much work has do be done, a lot of creativity was flowing over these past few month and I ma now in a catch-up mode.

To celebrate my home-coming I have made some slight changes on the blog layout, ‘modernized’ a bit and cleaned up some dusty stuff. Any other feature you would like – please shoot them via the comments.

The most important update on the blog is the addition of the eTextile Lounge page which helps you to connect each week eerily to the fabulous online-live video/audio textile meet-up on uStream.

In case you don’t know yet – eTextile Lounge is a weekly show founded and moderated by Lynne Bruning with the aim to connect wearable technology enthusiasts around the globe to share experiences, talk about know-how resources and to introduce the latest innovations and projects.

Click over to the eTextile Lounge page (the link is also at the top navigation area) and check out what  happened in the past and join one of the future shows.

To bridge the time between each show I will make sure you get your daily portion of eTextile news right here on talk2myShirt.

‘Haute Tech’: Turning the Lights On is the headline of a recent article in the Fashion & Style section of The New York Times, featuring the fashion illumination designs by Moon Berlin, a Haute Tech fashion design house founded by Brigitte Franken and Christian Bruns.

It looks to me as wearable illumination technology is putting a spotlight on wearable technology,  generating greater public awareness. Not really a surprise to me – presenting textile illumination never fails to ignite excitement and imagination of people.

Clothing with active light elements that radiate instead of reflect light, light elements that response to movement of the wearer or other stimuli touches peoples emotions, pleasant emotions such as surprise, curiosity, joy and smiles.

I am not a fashion expert who evolved into a hybrid between the two worlds, the technology and fashion but may vision of the past might become soon reality as I can clearly see that certain theologies like the textile illumination will become soon part of a fashion designers tool/material box to choose from when designing the next collection.

Moon Berlin’s first collection includes skirts, blouses, dresses and even handbags each featuring beautifully designs illumination elements giving them a sophisticated, techno-savvy look perfectly blending into our digital age society.

According to the NYT article the prices range between €1,000 for a silk shirt and go up to $2,750 for a gown. A price point not for the everyday outfit but these are gorgers looking high street fashion designs and the price is not (only) related to the integrated technology.

source: The New York Times

The fascination, the desire to add sparkle to clothing has a long history going back decades if not centuries of fashion design. Throughout fashions history designer came up with ideas to add different materials to their designs, materials that reflect light and add emotional as well as style sparkle to our wardrobe.

Thanks to the recent developments in wearable technology and the creativity of a new generation of fashion/techno designer these passive, light reflecting sparkle elements can be transformed into active style elements, painting aesthetic and mood reflecting transformation on clothing.

One of the many examples on how young designer embrace the wearable technological possibilities is design student Laura Andrews who created together with her engineering boyfriend the Umi Hotaru or’Firefly of the Sea’ dress with discrete light elements that creates mystic light effects, diffused by layers of chiffon and tulle fabric.

A unique test is the addition of a sling bag with integrated solar panels collecting solar energy during the day and connects to the dress in the evening to bring the sparkle of the dress to life. No fossil fuel resources are needed, it uses clean energy on a beautiful styled dress that is pleasantly to look at by day an night.

For many people it is till somewhat alien to have active style elements on clothing. We are used to the fact that clothing is static, does not interact with the wearer or the environment.

Sometimes humans can not follow the speed of technological development but over time humans always evolve and embrace the possibilities of new technologies. Active clothing that matches our personalities, that adapt as we adapt to our environment will become as natural as our love to glass, metal and paint glitter elements we love on our clothing today.

via: Electricfoxy

Regular reader of talk2myShirt will have noticed the long silence at this space. This is not caused by a lack of information and updates on wearable technology but related to my inability to manage my time between increasing workload on wearable tech projects I have running and spending time to update talk2myShirt.

To cut a long story very short – I have figured out a way to make it possible to post on a more regular basis again about all the great things that happen in research, product launches and the amazing work done by the creative and DIY community.

talk2myShirt is back (online) with the promise to keep you updated on all the happenings in and around wearable technology.

I have to disclose first: I am contributing to THINK Magazine, an innovative and stylish  online magazine covering the beautiful things of life like art, design, fashion and technology. You guessed it – my contribution is mostly about wearable technology.

The latest issue of THINK Magazine relates almost entirely to the future perspective of fashion, from technology to sustainability including an interview with Moritz Waldemeyer.

Making a prediction on the future of fashion is an highly speculative endeavor as fashion is widely related to the mood swings and social developments which are as well difficult to predict.

Having said this, the collection of articles in THINK magazine take basic trends like the need for a more sustainable lifestyle and the advancements in technology and highlights their possible influence into the future of fashion.

Have a great time reading THINK Magazine and wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

The benefits of wearable technologies to add functions to clothing for therapeutic use will are huge. For a starter, integrating monitoring function into clothing without altering the wear comfort enables patients to be more independent from stationary observations.

This in turn reduces the need for hospitals to provide space and personnel who otherwise have to look after, to care for stationary patients.

Too often i hear the argument that such technology enhanced clothing is too expensive when compared to the very simple hospital gowns used today. That is fully correct, but it does not compare apple to apple.

When comparing costs one have to take into account not only the cost of hospital gowns but also the cost a patient will incur for occupying a bed and the care giving costs. Costs that are not directly related to the monitoring function but are costs to serve the purpose of monitoring. Such cost are rather high as anyone can confirm who has had to unfortunate event of staying in a hospital.

Another highly interesting area is the preventive action technology enhanced clothing can provide for people with early symptoms. Better to start at early stage to counter act then to end up one day with costly ‘repair’.

Technology that is seamless and unobtrusive integrated in everyday garment can be use more discrete than very technical looking aids as they are often used today and out of this reason rejected by many.

One such example is the Posture Sensing Shirt. It alerts the wearer of improper posture to help prevent neck, back, and shoulder pain. As many of us spend more time in a chair behind computers it is difficult to maintain a healthy sitting position and most of us ‘slouch off’ over time.

The shirt has an electronic sensor attached that detects the increased tension in the shirt’s built-in micro-filaments and vibrates once the posture is not optimal.

Unfortunately this product is not anymore available. A similar design concept we posted about 2 years ago seems did not make it to a commercial product either.

Why do hospital managements and insurance companies not see the whole picture and take the real costs into account when assessing wearable technologies for therapeutic applications?

My fabulous friend Lynne Bruning who organized last weekends eTextile Fashion Show at Maker Faire compensated for my misfortune of not being able to attend this exiting event myself by sending a wealth of information which I am sharing with the talk2myShirt community over the coming days.

For everyone who couldn’t visit this event Alexa Smith, founder of artfuture.com (website will relaunch soon) covered this event on video for our viewing pleasure – thanks Alexa.

To kick off my followup coverage of the eTextile Fashion Show I take the highly interesting observations Lynne collected while she spoke with late teens and early 20-somethings who plan to study, preferably under Leah Buechley, at MIT the topic of eTextiles. Based on such strong interest into this field Lynne rightfully questions: Are there sufficient graduate school positions available for such strong demand? Where are these people going after graduation? Are there sufficient jobs available in the industry? Is the educational interest outweighing the industries interest into this field?

Having myself one foot in the research and development of wearable technologies and the other foot firmly in the industrialization area I am able to have insights into both areas seeing the enthusiasms and expectations at each side but I am also aware of the fear and roadblocks that slow down a larger scale of commercialization.

To my opinion the current status of most wearable technologies and concepts coming from research activities, one-of-a-kind designs by artists and DIY projects are essential for future developments and the introduction of mainstream wearable technologies.

Wearable technology represents  a new, unknown area in terms of manufacturing, marketing, design and most important – consumer experience.

In the past, revolutionary new developments have been made behind walls in engineering departments – top secret – and came only into public view after years of development, testing, trial and error until all stakeholder in a company have been convinced this new technology will have commercial success.

Wearable electronic on the other hand has gone public at a very early, highly experimental stage which triggered an avalanche of imagination not only by technologists and designer but by everyone who touches the topic of wearable electronic.

Wearable electronic has the sound of a magicians spell – it fascinates, it creates high expectations.

We could say the development of wearable technology and in parallel the creation of a business model is completely open and public with it’s positive side of mining the most innovative minds on the planet with the downside of having little coordination among all this activities.

This lack of coordination, of structuring and standardization is a big no-go for the industry which needs strict rules and parameters to produce in a reliable and cost effective way.

One of the biggest gaps I see right now is the link between inventing new, sexy interactive fashion concepts and the production floor. Companies, persons or organizations that carry the concept ideas and demonstrators through a application development cycle to sort out the fit and strong ideas, translating them into manufacturing specifications and designs.

Such application/product building companies would be in great need of people educated into these new type of technologists and designer only … such companies do hardly exist right now.

The call is out to pioneers, venture capitalists and companies that are willing to invest into the commercialization of wearable technologies.

More updates like interviews Alexa made with designers after the eTextile Fashion Show and more in-depth articles about some of the creative people who went on stage with their designs based on the rich update I got from Lynne will come soon – stay tuned to catch the latest news and trends about eTextile developments.

Thanks to constantly advancements in medical health care and our general knowledge about healthy lifestyle the percentage of older people increases rapidly around the world.

This group of people is in need of new types of products that do mostly not yet exist. One of these areas of need is particularly interesting for wearable technologies: the life enhancing and life saving wearable monitoring systems.

Having in this case thoroughly smart, sensing clothing has the very much desired benefit to conceal the fact these people need some monitoring of their body.

Incorporating sensor functions into different type of clothing enables 24/7 monitoring without compromising the lifestyle with with otherwise highly visible if not stationary, conventional monitoring systems.

The are countless initiatives sponsored by governments, communities, and other organization to speed up, to advance the research, development and testing of wearable health monitoring systems.

One of the leading Research Institutes in this field (and the wearable technology in a wider sense) is the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.

Projects like senSAVE or the Personal health assistant are just some examples of their large list of wearable, medical technology developments.

While these and the many other projects we have posted about over the past years carry out highly promising groundwork for ‘wearable electronic guardian angels’ in form of smart clothing, the time it takes to actually see them on the market seems very, very long.

The world population of people reaching age 50+ is growing rapidly which should give a sense of urgency. Technological developments in this areas over the past years produced highly promising results but getting them into a product is painfully slow.

During discussions among the wearable electronic community I hear often the remark: ‘what will be the killer application for wearable technologies?’

I can see in the health monitoring and health care area plenty of opportunities for a killer application – killer in this sense as business opportunity.

Today is a special day for talk2myShirt: we reached our 1000 posting. To celebrate this milestone we  add another, hopefully useful, feature for our reader and members.

Looking back to 1000 blog postings also means looking back to countless hours spending with Google, Yahoo and other search engines to hunt down all the news and information about wearable electronic floating around the Internet.

While Google and other search engines are one of the most essential tools when it comes to researching information, they index every bit of information available on the world wide web.

But having everything is sometimes not as helpful as it sounds. The huge amount of raw data has to be filtered, check and drilled down to reach the actual topic of interest.

weSearch, our wearable electronic Search engine is designed to save you some time while researching wearable electronic, eTextiles, Interactive Fashion and the like.

You can always use the search box on our blog but it will only scan through our now 1000 blog postings. weSearch is going out into the WWW indexing the most relevant Websites and presents in the search results only information around our favorite topic. Type any common word like yarn and you will conductive yarn or other technical yarn but not the millions of common yarns available in the market.

We do not claim to be as big and mighty as Google or Yahoo in terms of search capability but we can offer you a specialized search experience for information about wearable electronics, eTextiles, smart fabrics and related topics.

The talk2myShirt weSearch engine is designed to serve as first line search tool for quick and accurate information mining but we strongly suggest to use more powerful search tools like Google or Yahoo for searches across the whole internet.

Currently we have around 10,000 pages indexed and we continuously update with new pages as we come aware of them.

Our wearable electronic optimized search engine can be found via this link, a weSearch bar on top of our Blog page and on the front page of our Connection site.

If you like to integrate the wearable electronic search bar into your Website or Blog, just insert the following HTML code at the position on which you want to show the search bar:

<!– talk2myShirt weSearch Box HTML Start  –>
<iframe src=”http://www.talk2myshirt.com/search/search_c.php”
name=”talk2myShirt search” allowtransparency=”true” scrolling=”no”
frameborder=”no” height=”80px” width=”330px”></iframe>
<!– talk2myShirt Search Box HTML End  –>

If you have any suggestion, proposal or wish to see or not to see on weSearch, we will be glad to pick up your comments for further updates.