I bought a jawbone and wore it for a few months. It was a terrible experience. It didn’t even look cool and it felt weird.

A wristband should in theory be able to measure not only the number of steps you take every day, but also things like your body temperature, heart rate (by measuring pulse, even if inaccurately), galvanic skin response, and more…

Basis Band does exactly that. Still I have issues with it – can’t wear it non-stop as supposed to, because it gives me rash. And I am on my second one, because first one just started glitching for no reason.

What I want is a bracelet (not a watch, I like ‘watch’ watches), that could do all the above AND also vibrate/signal that I am getting a call on my phone that’s in my handbag where I can’t hear it at all.

There are things I would like to have that could be solved by some future version of Glass – like showing me which direction to go (still depends on maps) and the distance to objects (which, I think, is either impossible or very inaccurate?) but I don’t want it to mess with my already poor eyesight :)

i had a smartwatch (metawatch frame) for half a year now, until it broke last week.
It was horrible.

My idea was to use it as a bike computer. All it should do was to tell me how fast i move. My Phone knows this already, since i use it to log my routes anyway.

The hardware was ok, i don’t need much but a display that can be filled by Bluetooth. Even the battery was ok (3 to 10 days, depending on how you use it). The display was readable (not E-Ink, but ok) in bright light and dark rooms (unless you are in a room with white walls/ceiling, because then the contrast between white/reflection is nearly zero)

But the software just sucked. It claims to come fully open source, but there’s only a really crappy old version where you can read the code (full of bugs) and a “new” version (as in nearly 2 years old) that has less bugs (i.e. it sets the time on connect) but you can’t change a single thing in this.

I even tried to create my own little icon displaying my current GPS-Speed for metawatch, but it was unusable due to all these bugs.

What i would prefer would be more some kind of “minimal HUD” in ordinarily looking sunglasses. It need not do much. Just display 1-2 Words of Text via Bluetooth (i.E. “100km/h”, “13:12:00” or “3 Mails”).
It doesn’t even need to have Sensors. My phone has Sensors, i carry it around anyway. (Although i don’t know why a watch shouldn’t be able to measure pulse/temperature, air pressure… it might come in handy)

But: noone is selling me something like that. I even had the idea of buying something more like a classic bike computer and mounting it to my wrist (there are wireless devices, shouldn’t be a big problem).
Not even this is something you could buy for less then 300€. -.-

One of the things that concern me besides availability of this tech is control. I’m starting to get increasingly paranoid about who controls my tech. While I really want Glass-like wearable tech too, I also want something that’s acceptably hackable. I already run my own VPS for most computation-related things and I’m considering putting Cyanogenmod on my Nexus phone.

Google Glass is now in a more “open beta” phase and anyone can buy the glasses until further notice.

That said, I am on eBay looking for used glasses and will pay no more than $1000 thats about how much they are worth to me

Workout heart rate monitors have existed for a while now. They’re not intended to be worn around, but you could and they’re not *that* expensive.

And if you’re just looking for wearable tech for the sake of wearable tech, well then: http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Jacket/