Alison Lewis, author of Switch Craft, a fabulous book about textiles, fashion and electronics and producer of Switch is giving away a copy of her book together with a 10" x 10" swatch of fiber-optic lighted fabric from Luminex.

The only thing you have to do is to spend round 10 minutes and answer a questionnaire for Switch Blog as they want to find out how better to serve the wearable electronic interested community on Switch Blog.

The contest is open until February 1st - don't waste time, click over and with a bit of luck you will get the book and a textile swatch to light up your next high-tech outfit.

With the begin of the new year we formally and actively open our new community system called the talk2myShirt CONNECTION. We would like to thank all of the early bird members who greatly helped us to stabilize our first version of this rather complex system but we are now confident the talk2myShirt CONNECTION is strong and stable enough to walk out into the WWW and serve the wearable electronic community in getting together, linking up and to cooperate where wished.

As with any new system of this complexity, there will be some teething problems but we will do our possible best to keep interruption to a minimum - if any at all.

We encourage our members to be active, to ask and advice, to propose and complain - where needed - and to help developing a dynamic inside our community which will then benefit everyone.

Our aim is to provide the best possible connection and communication infrastructure for the wearable electronic community, to give everyone, students, designer, researcher, manufacturer and brands interested and involved in the growing field of soft, wearable technologies to link up for sharing ideas and to find together and work on projects, be in in the public view or protected in special areas our CONNECTION system will always be able to follow your needs of connecting and creating.

Billabong launched earlier this year a wetsuit called the SG5 Surfing Wetsuit which uses Billabongs new solar mesh panel that acts the same way as a real solar panel - almost.

It does not convert sunlight into electrical energy as it is done in Photovoltaic solar cells but by absorbing the suns heat and trapping it within the cell structure of mesh making the wetsuits neoprene fabric 5-30% warmer than any nylon covered neoprene. 

It's an interesting material which I would like to know about more but I couldn't find any infos yet. If you have more details on how the solar fabric is build up please lave an note in the comments.

Welcome to my small but growing world of technology enabled clothing and Hello wearable electronic world. 

The 'hello world' is the famous line used since the earliest days of computing, of creating smart, interactive electronic devices called computer. As soon as the computers shrank in size, down from occupying a hole house to a room and finally to fit on a medium size desktop, people started to think about making the ever smarter computers wearable.

The term 'Wearable Computer' was born. Initially, the looks have not be a big concern, fashion and even 'wearability' was not on the top of the priority list but functionality. A wearable computer design had to be functional, giving the computer user more mobility and tear apart the chain to the desk.

Parallel to the computer evolution, the consumer electronic world went through a similar transition, making big steps towards miniaturization of once called transportable to portable, large tape machines to smaller and smaller devices like todays solid state player, commonly known as MP3 player, fitting in the smallest pockets of our clothing.

As we, the consumer, developed more sophisticated lifestyles, demanding more individualization and personalization, the electronic industry had once again to adjust their business strategy and adding a new for them element into the development process of personal electronic devices: the emotional, fashionable design of such products which have until the late '90s come only in two colors - black or silver - and once size/shape fits all - square boxes as they have been easier to produce.

Electronic devices have to be now next to functional also fashionable, allowing a certain degree on personalization - just like we are used to do it for a long time with our clothing. Although clothing is manufactured in larger quantities we still manage to mix and match the different clothing elements to fit our personality, our style and hardly see two persons having exactly the same outfit.

Fashion and clothing, personal and portable electronic come together in the view, the perception of consumers, us.

New technology developments blur the boundary between technic and clothing, wearability and function, a mixture out of which wearable electronic emerges.

Join my on my journey in to the world of fashion and technology.