Even if you don鈥檛 normally wear glasses, they鈥檒l be at the centre of your world if you become a fan of wearable computers. They might even prevent car accidents. So says Smartspecs of Roanoke, Virginia (WO 02/45044), whose specs have a small LCD projector embedded in the frame to display email or Internet pages fed by wire or radio from the tiny computer stashed somewhere on your person. The image is projected onto the inside of the lenses, with accompanying sound belting out of a small piezoelectric speaker in the frame. A tiny camera built into the nosepiece also lets you take low-resolution snapshots. When you鈥檙e driving, the screen is switched off for safety reasons. However, the specs bounce infrared light off your eyeballs so that if your eyelids droop for longer than a natural blink鈥檚 length, a loud alarm will wake you up.
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