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Ardica Jackets Keep You Toasty, Juice Your Gadgets on Long Winter Trips
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 3:00 PM on October 29, 2008
If you're planning on a long distance ski trip or a mountain climb this winter, check out Ardica's new power and heat platform for outerwear. Not only will Ardica-enabled jackets charge your gadgets (up to 11 full charges on your mobile phone and 20 on your iPod), it'll also keep you nice and warm for either nine hours on low heat or three hours on high. If you'll be in the cold for even longer than that, just bring along a second battery.
Back in March we showed 
The third eye or "Hard-Ware" concept jacket by designer Paul Coudamy gives the wearer an expanded range of vision by awkwardly integrating a micro-camera on the back. The device records all of the people behind you laughing at your ugly jacket and then transmits those embarrassing images to an awkwardly integrated monitor located on the wrist. I can see how something like this could be useful from a safety perspective, but something needs to be done about the style before anyone in their right mind would wear it.
The Blu Jacket concept from Lunar Design aims to turn our children's children into walking billboards using an electronic fabric based on e-paper technology and space-age organic fabrics. It could display your mood throughout the day, pull up maps using a built-in GPS module, display photos, video and (gasp) even advertisements.
Those who have trouble with allergies (and deep pockets) may try just about anything to help alleviate their symptoms, and chances are Victorinox had these people in mind when they developed this Swiss Army Tech Vest with Air Purifier. The purifier itself is located in the left breast pocket, and it supposedly transfers purified air to the funnel collar of the jacket where it can be sucked into sensitive lungs . My guess is that this jacket is nothing more than a means of separating suffering suckers from their hard earned cash, but I'm not willing to spend the US$500 to find out if it works. [
Jackets that incorporate MP3 players are nothing new, but my guess is that only the 
Being homeless would suck, but being homeless in Canada during the winter would suck even harder. A Toronto ad firm called Taxi aims to help around 3,000 of these unfortunate souls (and drum up a little business while they are at it) using their new 15 Below jacket.The lightweight jacket was designed to be waterproof, windproof and capable of withstanding extreme cold temperatures with the help of pockets that can be insulated with crumpled newspaper.More info and an additional pic after the break.
O'Neill is offering its European market a glimpse of the snowy future with the NavJacket, a GoreTex parka with a stitched-in GPS receiver, speakers in the hood, and a "flexible display sleeve." We don't have any demonstration video (but damn do we wish we did). In fact, this is really the only picture floating around. But here's what we know:
