We are all naked in a way when we share our information online. We expose our personal lives to the world, and the scary thing is that most people don’t even realize just how much personal information they’re broadcasting. NYU students Xuedi Chen and Pedro G. C. Oliveira collaborated on a project called x.pose that makes that digital nakedness a lot more tangible.

X.pose is a personalized, 3D printed mesh armature that sits over 20 reactive displays. Each little display window represents an area of New York; when the wearer is in a certain neighborhood, the corresponding display will change opacity to expose the wearer’s skin. The physical exposure corresponds to the digital exposure caused by our always-on location-revealing services like Google and Facebook. The more information is shared, the more the wearer’s skin is exposed.

Google, Facebook, and other services have gained our permission – often through long, difficult-to-understand terms and conditions that most people don’t bother to read – to track our movements and actions. We have become pieces of data to be triangulated and compiled, and plenty of mobile app junkies have no idea just how much of their personal information they share with the world every day.

For this particular project, the designers created a proprietary mobile app. The app broadcasts the wearer’s digital data for anyone to follow. Xuedi Chen wears the x.pose suit and her trail of information is reflected in the increasing transparency of her already-risqué ensemble.

The x.pose project is a wake-up call to those who think that their data is safe in the digital realm. Unless we are very careful to avoid using location-based apps (which more or less means leaving the smartphone at home), we are constantly sending data out into the aether. This exposes us not only theoretically, but in a very real sense as well. Chen and Oliveira’s project puts the concept of over-sharing into an easy to understand (and quite attention-grabbing) context.

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Losing your keys, wallet, or kid can be a pretty harrowing experience. Take it from this editor who recently found a set of keys that had been missing for two weeks…in the most obvious place possible. No one will ever have to deal with that panic again once everyone is using the many smartphone-based electronic “tag” products that are either in development or currently on the market.

Another contender has thrown its hat into the ring: a San Diego startup called XY. Their product consists of a small $17 hexagonal tag that you can attach to nearly any physical object, even to your pet’s collar. The tag is tethered to your smartphone via an Android or iPhone app using Bluetooth Low Energy technology. Each connected tag is also registered on the XY website. The app pings the tags every 15-30 seconds; when your lost tagged item is within the 50-150 foot range, you can use the app to guide you to it. When you start to walk off without something important (or it walks off without you) the app will alert you.

But the real stand-out feature of XY is its user interface. You can snap a picture to go along with every tagged item, so when you’ve lost one of your items you have a simple visual cue to help you find it. You can look up the item’s last known location and go back to retrieve it, or if another XY user finds it they can alert you through the app. The only drawback seems to be the app’s lack of precise location. It will tell you when you’re getting warmer or colder in relation to the lost item, but it can’t pinpoint exactly where it is. XY’s Kickstarter campaign raised far more than its goal, and the team hopes to integrate competitors’ tag hardware in their app in the near future.

The post Getting Warmer: Inexpensive Tag Keeps Track of Lost Stuff first appeared on Gajitz.

If you’re one of those people who regularly misplace your keys, your TV remote, your wallet and anything else that’s small enough to disappear, you need a way to keep track of your stuff. The Finder is an RFID location device that uses a transparent touchscreen device and a sheet of locator stickers to help you find all of your little lost things. Just peel a sticker off of the sheet and stick it onto your stuff, then the handheld device can tell you just where it is.

The concept was designed by Chu Want, Qiujin Kou, Qian Yin and Yonghua Zhang – and it looks like a cool futuristic twist on the numerous other “finder” devices out there. The handheld device guides you to your items, taking you turn-by-turn right to your stuff’s hiding spots. You’ll never be late again…well, not because of lost keys, anyway.

The post Hide + Seek Champ: RFID Tracker is a Remote Bloodhound first appeared on Gajitz.