AUSTIN, Texas — Forget Google Glass, Google's got sneakers now. Well, at least it does at SXSW.
No, the search giant isn't planning to get into the sneaker or
footwear business, but to showcase its new advertising innovation
program called "Art, Copy and Code" the company has hacked together a
crazy pair of sneakers that would even draw Marty McFly's attention.
"The Talking Shoe is an experiment in how you can use connected
objects to tell stories on the Web today," Aman Govil, lead of the
advertising arts team, told ABC News.
Govil's team at Google took a few pairs of Adidas sneakers and
crammed in a small computer, an accelerometer, a pressure sensor, a
gyroscope, speaker and Bluetooth. The shoe can tell what you are or
aren't doing and can then relay that information to your phone via
Bluetooth or to you via the speaker in the top tongue of the shoe. Think
those 90′s Pump sneakers, but with a speaker in place of the squishy
ball.
The idea is that the shoe would function a lot like many of the
fitness gadgets out there today that attempt you to motivate you more.
When you have been sitting for more than an hour it might yell at you to
walk around. But in this instance, Google's really thinking along the
lines of what brands could do with this sort of technology.
"If you put what the shoe knows through an algorithmic logic engine,
it can translate it into copy," Govil explained. "Now if you give that
copy to an interesting copy writer, you could give the shoe personality.
One shoe could be the trash-talking shoe."
Copyright 2013 by ABC News
