i call the first thing you were talking about geotility

http://farisyakob.typepad.com/blog/2008/08/geot...

but i'm not sure about lanyards

A while back Nokia was putting out concept work for a flexible screen band that functioned as a phone when snapped out flat, but that you 'stored' on your wrist as a curled up watch. Their ideas are maybe a little ambitious for the near future, but it's fascinating to see what they're aiming for.

I don't think we need to assume that wrist mounted computing will be either metallic or honking. Or, for that matter, that Branch 1 will stay separate from Branch 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs

The range of things that people are realistically willing to wear is already well defined by the fashion industry. The only example of popular wearable technology that didn’t already exist as an acceptable fashion accessory (that I can think of) is the bluetooth headset, and that was a fad that has definitely fizzled out. (And perhaps doesn’t count, now that headsets have been relegated to the outer edges of corporate fashion.)

Women wear a lot of things that could be merged with augmented reality technology, although for whatever reason ‘ladies’ tech is always developed after a product has achieved wide-spread acceptance.

I’m hoping augmented fabrics and contact lenses will be the breaking point for wearable technology (because, awesome), like the iPhone and Blackberry for mobile internet. (And then implants and body modifications, towards one already imagined future or another.)

I think Head mounted displays are going to come soon. What we need are light weight, portable and stylish see through displays. OLED displays are clear and thin and flexible and would be great for this, except humans can't focus on things that close to there eyes and the lenses needed to make it easy and comfortable to both focus on the screen and things behind the screen are pretty bulky.

I just today thought maybe we could use lasers! shoot the photorecepters in your eye directly with lasers! Lasers solve everything.

http://androidcommunity.com/forums/f7/android-e...

I finally just petitioned the MIT IDEAS campaign and they soon began work on the gestural interface, though they got several aspects wrong:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_...

Firstly, projecting everything is inadvisable. People want privacy when they are looking up stuff because often being ignorant on a widely-understood topic can be embarrassing, or just general interest in something that gives away what I call “observer condition”, where looking up something makes you look like a weirdo or inconsiderate simpleton (for not remembering someone's name for instance), having your computer then project the info. onto their shirt is not going to make you look like a thoughtful person. The watch trick is cute, but silly. it would take less time to flip open your cell phone from your pocket. The point of the arm interface is that there is a nice screen right at your arm, you only have to project things you want to share with people, plus tracking technology can project images just as if they were coming from your torso now, we do not need direct line-by-sight interferometry thanks to image-skew programs and some cheap triangulation software.

Secondly, as mentioned, who likes to wear heavy equipment around their neck? I dislike wearing ties, lanyards, and ref. whistles, I don't think that carrying an entire digital camera and projection array is going to be much better. An arm system, once again, is just around the arm, so it is not going to jingle about as you try to flee the police or fall into the sink as you try to wash your hands.

Thirdly, not everything is a flat, clear surface. I am not going to stand outside in a rain storm because all of the walls in the nearby building are taken. Not everyone has huge hands to read the news on, and that paper is really stupid. Newsprint is going to be a touchscreen-able kindle interface with infinite regressive magnification ability (like the Seadragon program http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_... ) so that just like the photos demonstrated you will be able to reach out and move around information. If I am in the middle of a grassy field and I want to check who is winning the Iditarod I AM NOT WALKING TO A BARN TO DO IT. That is not going to work!

Then we have the losing things aspect. Which is easier to mis-locate in a cluttered room full of books and papers: a huge honking metallic arm sheath, or a tiny I-pod thing, a small detachable hat-camera thing, and itty-bitty little colored finger caps to track where your fingers are moving? The finger caps for a hypothtical arm system are attached with retractable wires to a built-in storage compartment. No separate parts. Also the lanyard designers neglected to consider the rumble aspect for sculptural 3-D object modeling. Holography already enables seemingly pop-outable images (especially in a fluid medium http://www.keebler.net/blog/2008/01/26/crazy-as... ) so the nxt step is rather obvious.