Catching up with wearable electronic news I came across the email counting T-Shirt made by  Chris Ball and his wife Madeline. It’s actually a DIY project we usually bring Saturdays but this one is so good – I can’t hold back that long.

This high tech T-Shirt will indicate in binary form via LEDs the number of received and unread emails in your inbox.

The T-Shirt receives the information of incoming and unread emails from an Android phone kept in the pocket.

Software running on the Android phone checks continuously for new emails and sends the information to the LilyPad via bluetooth. The LilyPad turns on the corresponding number of unread emails. Neat, simple – cool.

Sure there are ring tomes, buzzer and vibrators to alert of incoming messages and emails but hey – this one is hugely expandable, letting one alternate the outfit in response to your inbox.

We all claim to be connected all time – this T-Shirt just shows everyone how connected you are.

There is one catch with this email indication: it can only show unread emails up to 127. If you are very far behind in opening your emails you would need to extend this binary indication – just kidding.

Check out the project site of Chris and grab the source code for the Lilypad and Android phone and look at the video on how to stitch the LilyPad and LEDs together – it fairly simple.

Every few month, ThinkGeek integrates another technology into T-Shirts it’s kind of a tradition already. The latest techno Shirt is called Locked ON – a proximity sensing T-Shirt featuring a radar like decal made of EL technology, on the chest.

If all your friends wear a Locked ON T-Shirt it will be easy to find them in crowded places. Just look at your shirt. Two or more T-shirt wearer are required to come within about 3 meters, the maximum range the proximity detection can cover, otherwise your radar screen will stay empty.

The proximity sensing is done via radio frequency transmission/detection and runs on 3x AAA batteries ‘for hours’. The EL decal is removable during cleaning of the shirt.

It’s another amazing interactive fun shirt from ThinkGeek, which never misses to be the center of attention when walking around wearing one of those. The price point for one shirt is $19.99 but keep in mind, you need two of them to have the fun.

If you can convince your bioss to wear such shirt he/she will come on your radar even before he/she can sneak up on you – oh well, need to stop now before going to exited about the possibilities a personal radar system on my shirt can give.

[via: Webelow Wear]

Portuguese Digital Arts student Inês Petiz envisions T-Shirt’s that exchange part of our identity with others having a smart T-Shirt as well. Sounds like MySpace or FaceBook for clothing as we exchange quite a bit of our identity on such platforms by posting on each others wall.

Inês ‘See u in my tee‘ project uses clothing to communicate our visual identity. This is nothing new in itself, especially T-Shirts are used to express our identity and to shout out a message. No other clothing item is so interwoven with our identity as the T-Shirt we are wearing.

The ‘See u in my tee’ goes one step further and replaces part of the T-Shirt’s static print with a dynamic, changeable portion. When two of these interactive T-Shirt wearer come close on the street or a party, the T-Shirts will exchange part of the visual pattern from each others shirt, the pattern of a T-Shirt we select because we do identify with the message it sends out to the rest of the world.

For all eTextile wizards among our readership: the ‘See u in my tee’ project is using the LilyPad Arduino, a LED matrix, an Arduino Diecimila connected to a Xbee and a power source. The Arduino controls the LED matrices and the Xbee establishes the communication between the T-Shirts, allowing the animation exchange.

Here is the link to Inês (in Portuguese) project blog documenting the making-off ‘See u in my tee’.

I very much like the idea of this concept which adds not only an additional layer of a more dynamic T-Shirt design but also an additional layer of the identity carrying and in this case also sending information, a function each and every T-Shirt is used for.

ThinkGeek did it again, integrating a musical instrument into a T-Shirt. First there was the Drum-Shirt and now comes the Guitar-Shirt. A T-Shirt with a fully playable guitar, not a toy that plays pre-canned music.

All major chords are recorded from a real electric guitar. A magnetic pick detects your strokes via magnetic induction simulating the stroking of real guitar cords.

An included mini amp clips to the belt and gets plenty loud with great sounding amplification circuitry. The tone knob on the amp lets you adjust the sound just like a real guitar.

The Rock Guitar T-shirt sells for $29.99 with everything included except the 4x AAA batteries which drives the T-Shirt and amp.

Oh yeah, the T-Shirt is washable after taking out the electronic components.

Combine this with the Drum-Shirt and add some additional light effects to the shirts and future musicians can go on stage with as little as their T-shirts to rock away.

Check out the video below and tune into the future of wearable ROCK:

Don’t use the fake, printed stuff on your T-Shirts, use the interactive stuff to have more fun.