Updated Oct 14, 2008: This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists hosted by mjelly has featured this post. Thanks a lot James.

The last concept hack i did called the iPod SD became a popular post. Too bad, Apple never built the product

Yesterday, i came across this interview of Steve Wozniak (via Techmeme) where he mentions an iWatch.  I decided to daydream about the iWatch.

At a minimum the new concept should cure a disease of mine that has me embarrassed down to the bones – one that possibly afflicts most people that have reached a ripe old age like me I am walking around, someone comes around and says “Hi Sukumar, how are you doing” with such affection and familiarity, that it has me cringing – oh god! – i don’t remember the person’s name.

Wouldn’t it be cool, if i could have a camera, built-in to my spectacles, that would recognize the person and whisper the name of the person in my ears.

I knew that oakley had built mp3 sunglasses which gave me the hope to pursue this idea. I proceeded to look for sunglasses that had a camera built-in.

W00t! There is a whole range of spy cameras that are available that have cameras builtin to sunglasses and other sundry items. The only issue is that they all looked like the ones robocop would wear – not meant for humans

After some searching, i found one made by Brando that i thought i could wear with some alterations. I had to add a earbud headphone similar to the oakley so that i could hear what the sunglasses would eventually tell me. Then I wanted to strip out all the memory and other electronics needed from the sunglasses and leave only the bare essentials needed for the camera to work. That way i figured i could convert the Brando into a sleeker one that normal humans would consider wearing

That meant that i have to store all the electronics somewhere else and use bluetooth to communicate with the sunglasses. Additionally i realized i needed some kind of platform to run my face recognition program that would analyze the picture and whisper into my ears. Similar to my decision on using my spectacles to host the camera, i wanted to use something else that i always have with me to host the back-end electronics for the camera – the wristwatch.

After some Googling, i found this Hyundai wristwatch cell phone – it is a full fledged GSM cellphone+mp3 player+camera+bluetooth stuffed into a watch form factor. Conceptually i could take the camera lens and the mp3 speaker out and have it talk to the modified Brando sunglasses i described above.

The problem with these watchphones is that there are too many buttons making the user interface too clunky and complicated. I wanted something like the iPhone – a multi-touch based watch phone which had a superior user interface.

Dame luck smiled on me again. Yankodesign has published a concept phone called Cobalt that fit the bill perfectly – oozing OLED goodness. Yanko Design had it made like an old time pocket watch. I had to crop the picture to get the design that i wanted.

Drumroll please, here is our concept hack – the iWatch.

The spectacle piece is on the left and the watch piece is on the right. The watch is showing the time, temperature, a recent text/sms, the date/time, voicemail and email notifications.

If you are wondering where the camera is, i decided to give you another view of the iWatch.

The spectacle piece has the camera highlighted and the watch piece is showing the mp3 player.

With this on, i hope to recognize you when you come say hello Not just that, the iWatch can replace the mobile phone, digicam and mp3 player that i need to carry around.

Hope you liked the concept hack. How would you enhance this concept hack further?