Take a Walk on the Disconnected Side with These Notification-Silencing Shoes

Arduino Technology Wearables
Take a Walk on the Disconnected Side with These Notification-Silencing Shoes
Image courtesy of Anatomic & Co
Anatomic’s In Good Company shoes disconnect user’s mobile and social apps as well as contacts depending on the situation and time of day. Image courtesy of Anatomic & Co.

Smartphones and mobile devices have become integrated into our daily lives. So much so, that they’ve become a part of us, almost like a digital limb, if you will, that we can’t seem to be without. Sure, keeping tabs on our friends and family and using a myriad of apps to help us through the day are a necessity of sorts, but there is a time and a place for them. At other times they become more of an annoyance.

Watching a movie in the theater, eating dinner with friends, and helping your significant other give birth are just a few examples where maybe it’s better to wait to update your Facebook page or group-chat with others. In those cases, Anatomic’s In Good Company shoes may be the solution to help disconnect you from the online world as the stylish kicks do just that – disable contacts and applications.

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The secret to Anatomic’s In Good Company shoes lie in the sole – hidden inside the rubber sole is an RFDuino module with Bluetooth, which connects to the wearer’s smartphone. The module doesn’t disable any apps or contacts outright, rather users program an accompanying app to disable what they want and the app disables the apps at the specified time.

Hidden inside one of the shoes’ rubber soles is an RFDuino module that connects to user’s smartphones via a Bluetooth connection.
Hidden inside one of the shoes’ rubber soles is an RFDuino module that connects to user’s smartphones via a Bluetooth connection. Image courtesy of Anatomic & Co.

The app gives users total control over notifications, contacts and every application on their phones, only letting through what they want or need at any given time. For example, users can allow only emergency calls while at work and full access when the specified time arrives.

Anatomic’s goal is ‘to make the world a more sociable place’ through face-to-face contact without unnecessary distractions. The fashionable shoe company plans to launch a Kickstarter campaign sometime this summer to further the In Good Company shoe development as they’re only in the Beta phase at this point.

 

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