Please kick mi. Adidas's connected, sensor-filled miCoach Smart Ball.

Key trends: the internet of things, sensors, well-being, playful, fitness, wireless charging.

via CNET >>

Perhaps you can forget the Wii when you have the mi. This looks like a great way to get the kids out of the house. Check out this product from Adidas: the miCoach Smart Ball.

Yes, you have the smartphone, smart home, smart watch, smart clothes. And here comes the smart sporting equipment.

In this sensor-filled world of the internet of things, we can count calories, we can count steps, so why shouldn't we be able to count kicks? Adidas's miCouch Smart Ball connects to the user's smartphone via Bluetooth as uses sensors and software to monitor kicks, and includes some games which cross the real world with the virtual one. And for a touch of additional coolness, it uses wireless charging. We'll be seeing a lot more solid uses for wireless charging going forward for sealed gadgets like this.

The miCoach costs around $299/€299 in America/Europe. So, not exactly a toy.

Take a powder: Oakley Airwave - GPS-enabled ski goggles.

KEY MOBILE TRENDS: augmented reality, wearable computing, LBS.
EVENT HORIZON: three years.

Product Pages >>

These $600 skiing goggles from Oakley are specialized computers implementing sensors and a near-to-eye display to bring the sport of downhill skiing into this fresh century. It's a new reality. Take a look.

"Welcome to innovation beyond the limits of possibility. Oakley Airwave™ goggles combine world-class performance, protection and comfort with a display that integrates GPS, Bluetooth® and more with a host of onboard sensors to give you instant access to a world of information. The revolutionary design allows you to view jump analytics that show distance, height and airtime. With preloaded maps available for many resorts, you can find your location and even track others in your group. Additional sensor information includes altitude, speed and vertical descent data. Bluetooth connectivity allows pairing with a compatible smartphone for immediate viewing of incoming calls and text messages, and if your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone has music, your playlists can be accessed and controlled."

Concussion-Detection Application

Mobile apps. What will they think of next? [ via TrendHunter ]

LifeBEAM SMART helmet. Another example of wearable data-collecting devices.

Indiegogo pages >>

Here's an interesting project I found on Indiegogo's site: a bicycle helmet which collects heart rate data. The helmet can feed the data to a smartphone using Bluetooth. As the helmet also has an accelerometer, the project owners are looking into the possibility of crash detection. Since bikes or helmets don't have airbags, I am not so sure what good a crash detection feature would do, but perhaps at some points sports clothing will get more protective.

In some ways this could be considered a solution looking for a problem to solve which already has a solution: Bluetooth-enabled heart-rate monitors already exist, and so do helmets. I suppose it could be argued that this saves the user a bit of hassle. But the point here is that sensors such as heart-rate monitors are being "sewn" into other wearable devices.

This on-going collection of vital data has great potential. Let's get it on.

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Remember this heart-warming video from Nokia?

All this talk of mobile healthcare apps and sensors brought back some heart-warming memories for me: remember the Nokia N79 Active? (Actually Mobihealth reminded me about this.)

From 2009, Nokia's N79 Active sensed, collected, and shared. Too bad it ran out of time. This sort of gets the blood boiling in some ways. Samsung is running with this baton now.

Crowd-sourced crowd support with Sony's Vamos Viewing app. Shake things up a bit.

http://vamosviewing.sony.co.jp/

I wonder if the inventor of the accelerometer envisioned this: an app used to create virtual crowds for supporting sports teams.

As part of its World Cup Japan 2012 sponsorship, Sony has released an app called Vamos Viewing which allows viewers anywhere to shake their Sony smartphones to show their team support. The shaking data is collected in real time and visualized with other fans. It's like creating a virtual crowd. Throw in some location data and you have some nice sensor fusion collusion going.

This is rather sweet in some ways if shaken in moderation. I'd like to see more like it.

The world is becoming a crowded place.