Jun 11, 2014

Your Jewelry, can now call upon your important notifications ?

www.ringly.com

We’ve all done it: You’re at a restaurant, enjoying a nice moment with a friend when all of a sudden you hear your phone buzz. You want to stop the conversation, reach for your phone and check the notification. You really really do. But that would be rude…right?

We’re in a constant battle with our technology; do we control it or does it control us? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Ringly, a new line of technology-enabled rings, wants to make sure we have a say in which notifications are put in front our faces.

The rings, which launch today, are connected to your phone via Bluetooth Low Energy. You can configure the ring and its accompanying app to notify you when certain things are happening on your phone (calls, texts, emails, push notifications from Tinder, etc) by blinking colorful lights and soft vibrations. For those of us bound to our phones, it’s supposed to be a way to free us from our technological shackles. But actually, Ringly was started for the exact opposite reason.

“I’m always missing calls and texts, and it started to get really frustrating to have to keep my phone out on the table at restaurants and in meetings,” says Christina Mercando, Ringly’s co-founder and CEO. “I thought there just has to be a better way.” At that moment, Mercando looked down at her ring-covered hands and had an epiphany: “What if my ring told me what’s going on?”

Though notifications are hardly a uniquely female problem, Ringly has made the choice to position it as one. The rings, made from semi-precious stones set in gold-plated metal, look like something you might find in your great aunt’s box of costume jewelry. They’re clearly feminine, and stylish in a way that says the company is gunning for Barneys, not Best Buy.

                                                                   This is how it works !

Still, the tech is impressive when you consider what’s inside this little piece of jewelry. Bluetooth LE helped the Ringly crew to cram a light, motor, battery and accelerometer underneath the ring’s stone. It’s not a delicate ring by any means, but it’s certainly within the realm of normal. This discreetness was key, says Mercando. “A ring is the smallest form factor, so if you can fit the electronics into that, you can fit them into many different things, like a watch or bracelet,” she says.

The team hints at potential future applications–things like gesture controls, easy mobile payments, unlocking doors–but for the moment, its sole focus is to see how people use the ring in the realm of notifications. “The fashion world is blown away; they can’t believe something like this exists,” says Mercando. “And the technology world is like, is that all it does?”

The value of Ringly is entirely up to the person who wears it. The app allows you to customize which notifications you see, potentially an efficient way to screen calls. “A lot of moms will say, if the babysitter calls, that’s the only person getting through on date night,” says Logan Munro, Ringly’s mechanical engineer and co-founder.

But technology that claims to free us from technology is a complicated proposition. A ring that flashes and buzzes every time something happens in your digital life could be equally, if not more, distracting than just having your phone on the table. “The angle of this is totally something that helps you disconnect is misleading because it does notify you when things are happening and then you want to go and check,” says Mercando. “It’s helping people not worry so much about their technology and not have so much anxiety around it.”

A quick, totally unscientific poll of a few friends found that while all said the ring looked like something they’d wear, they worried it’d only enable their bad phone etiquette. “That thing would make me so edgy,” says one. Replacing one gadget with another might not be a solution for everyone, though who knows how it could change our behavior over time. The key to Ringly’s success will really be in its fashionable style–something that we covet regardless of functionality.

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