How meta are wearables now? This meta. Meet the Ditto, a new gadget from Simple Matters that is a tie-clip sized vibrator that sits outside of your smartphone, buzzing in situations where you couldn't otherwise feel your smartphone buzz.
This isn't quite as silly as it sounds. For example, if you're prone to leaving your smartphone behind you at the bar, the Ditto will buzz and alert you when you get more than 50 feet away. Or maybe you keep your iPhone in your purse, where you can't feel it vibrate. In that scenario, you could clip the Ditto on your bra strap, and not have to worry about missing an important call.
There are some other use cases too, albeit fringe ones. The Ditto is waterproof, so even if you're swimming laps in the pool, you don't have to worry about missing calls, texts, or emails. And since the Ditto is small enough to be clipped onto a pair of underpants and can be programmed to only buzz when you're contacted by certain people, there are even some light teledildonic possibilities to be explored. (If you're so inclined.)
The Ditto works by pairing to your smartphone through Bluetooth. An accompanying iPhone or Android app allows you to specify when the Ditto should buzz, set-up custom vibrating alerts for your contacts, or even use your Ditto as a silent wake-up alarm. The Ditto runs off of a simple watch battery, so battery life should be months. And the price is certainly affordable enough to make the Ditto an impulse buy: if you preorder now, $29 will buy you a Ditto in black, white, or clear.
Right now, the problem wearables this granular is that they seem very vulnerable to being killed off when the inevitable "One Wearable To Rule Them All" comes along. But according to designers like Yves Behar, that day might never come. In fact, by teaming up to form a sort of ad hoc Voltron, maybe wearables like the Ditto might kill off the likes of Android Wear and the Apple Watch before they have a chance. So don't write the Ditto off just because it's meta. It might surprise us all.
You can preorder a Ditto on Kickstarter here. Don't worry about the project failing: Ditto's founders promise they'll be shipping devices to backers in January no matter what.