The 10 Coolest Looks in Wearable Tech

Wearable technology is having a profound impact on our everyday lives, according to a new report from Rackspace. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. respondents claim that it has boosted their personal abilities, 71 percent say it has improved their health and fitness, and 54 percent say wearable tech has boosted their self-confidence.

Here’s a look at 10 of the coolest advancements in the area.

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The GolfSense gadget attaches to almost any golf glove to detect the acceleration, velocity, tempo, position and posture of the device and club by calculating sensor data at sample rates of more than 1,000 times per second.

Pair GolfSense to your mobile device to analyze your swing and the app will tell you whether you’re hitting the ball too early or decelerating before impact, for example, and tells you how you can modify your technique to improve your game.

Frog Design, a global innovation firm, has designed a product that could come in handy to many city commuters: a bracelet that alerts riders to train arrival times, approaching stops, available transfers and more.

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Instabeat is a device that mounts to your swimming goggles that tracks your heart rate via your temporal artery and projects a color on your goggles to tell you how close you are to your target zone.

The device also measures your calories burned, number of laps and flip turns, and syncs with your personal dashboard to track your progress over time. Instabeat won first prize at the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Business Plan Competition in 2012.

Forget Apple’s rumored iWatch: “Pebble” is a fully customizable watch that pairs via Bluetooth to your iPhone or Android device. You can use it in a number of ways: as an activity tracker for running or cycling, a GPS device, a music device and more.

You can also customize the notifications you receive on your watch, such as caller ID, email, SMS, calendar alerts, Facebook messages, weather alerts and Twitter updates. You can preorder Pebble for $150.

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Yes, these are real. Smarter Socks aren’t your typical black socks: These are equipped with an RFID chip that helps you ensure each pair has a match and that their color hasn’t faded.

These socks don’t come cheap: You can order a “Sockscription” of three deliveries of three pairs (without the sock sorter) for $100, or a “starter kit” of 1 delivery of 10 pairs with a sock sorter for $189.

This medical glove prototype is equipped with sensors, including an accelerometer, pressure and temperature modules. Med Sensation also aims to place ultrasound pads on the fingertips, allowing doctors to peer inside your body while they examine you.

Longer-term, Med Sensation hopes to make these gloves available to the public to help you check for lumps or enlarged organs at home, without wasting time in the waiting room.

Smart PJs, a startup from Idaho, has designed a pair of interactive pajamas for kids. The PJs have a printed-dot design that works much like a QR code: Using your smartphone, scan the dot patterns to download a bedtime story on your device’s screen. A free app can even recite the tales aloud.

The pajamas retail for $25 and are available for both boys and girls, from ages 1 to 8.

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The LUMOback sensor is a waistband device that vibrates when it senses bad posture. The sensor connects wirelessly to a mobile app that tracks your posture and your daily activities in real time.

LUMOback retails for $149 and is compatible with the Apple iPhone 4S, 5, iPad and iPod touch.

MindWave Mobile is a brainwave-reading device for iOS and Android devices. The company claims to let you control games with your mind.

The device, which fits like a headset, uses a single sensor positioned on your forehead that reads your brainwave frequency, allowing it to infer your mental state (translation: It determines how relaxed or concentrated you are).

The Re-Timer, from an Australian sleep research company, is a frame that can fit over your own glasses and uses a soft, green light to help regulate your body’s internal clock.

Ideal for shift workers and people who suffer from jet lag, sleeplessness and winter blues, the Re-Timer comes with a travel case and USB recharging cable, and retails for $274.