Google Unveils Talking Shoes

The latest gizmo to come from the Google workshop is designed to keep you connected – even if you’re running away. The tech giant has outfitted a pair of unassuming ADIDAS shoes with a computer a speaker, as well as an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a pressure sensor movements, the shoe can actually talk to the person wearing them.

The device made its debut late last week during the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.

Aman Govil, lead of the advertising arts team, told ABC News: ‘The talking shoe is an experiment in how you can use connected objects to tell stories on the Web today.’

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The shoe utilizes Bluetooth technology to connect itself to the internet, and can provide location and directions using Google’s mapping app.

The computer also enables the shoe to react based on the wearer’s movements, or lack thereof.

If you’re sitting on a park bench, the shoe may inform you: ‘This is super boring.’

It’s a part of the Art Copy & Code project, which has been designed to deliver a new frontier of marketing and advertising.

Govil told ABC: ‘If you put what the shoe knows through an algorithmic logic engine, it can translate it into copy.

‘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.’

The possibilities are endless, but the shoes can be worn by favorite athletes and let their Twitter followers know how fast they’re going during a particular sporting event, for example.

But Google claims that it has no plans yet to develop the fancy footwear into a shoe empire.

Govil told ABC: ‘We’re not getting into the shoe business. We are in the social network and advertising business.’

And Google is not the first company to get involved in the footwear industry.

In January, Apple announced that it was developing an athletic shoe that would let its owner know when its time to buy a new pair.

The alert could come in the form of a flashing light or beep but would also incorporate a wireless interface, presumably connecting to an iPhone or iPad.