The world is always fast trying to figure out what the next ridiculous trend will be because these ridiculous trends are guaranteed to bring in heaps of money. Technology is especially guilty of this as these trends are the veritable ebb and flow of the industry and as such, seldom do we see real and significant innovation.
CHEMION is a pair of LED glasses that can display text, images, and animations similar to how a scoreboard at a stadium and its large bulbs constantly change color to show pictures or scores. The product uses Bluetooth LE to interface with your iOS or Android smartphone so that you can customize what people around you see, and lasts about five hours on a pair of AA batteries. It looks a bit clunky, but that never stopped crazier products from seeing the day of light. One pair of Chemion glasses goes for $100 with an estimated ship date of February 2015. The campaign is looking for $10,000 to become the next big annoying thing you see everywhere.
The company behind the CHEMION, KSEED, swear they have a game changer on their hands. The more you look, though, the less of that you see. It could be due to the fact that you only have tiny slits with which to see the world, or it could be due to the grand claims of aiming to help people with speech problems with a product that amounts to a novelty handed out at a club. The company claims to be selling a quasi-medical solution, but their advertising is pretty much devoid of that noble notion. There are much better ways to address problems like this (MotionSavvy comes to mind) but this just isn’t one of them.