Samsung’s C-Lab Projects (Creative Lab) has this week demonstrated six new consumer-focussed spinoff projects it is fostering.
Each of the projects was designed by Samsung employees and will remain part of the C-Lab Projects in-house incubator program, which aims to help employees nurture and launch their own start-up ideas.
The Korean tech giant said each project is designed to ‘enrich consumer’s lives and contribute to social prosperity’, so, below, we take a look at each new C-Lab Projects offering:
Hum On!
Dubbed Hum On! this product does exactly what the name suggests; it’s a mobile app that lets you make music simply by humming a tune. Each hum becomes a musical notation, which, in theory, allows anyone (even the tone deaf) to write music on any instrument. Cue the David Cameron parodies once this launches in the UK.
Waffle
Waffle claims to be a social network app that lets you draw and leave doodles on your friend’s wall. It will also let you add your own stories and videos/photos to make walls more appealing. Handy for those of us that enjoy a doodle, but we’re not yet sold on the longevity of this product.
ItsyWatch
Smart watches haven’t found favor with the adult population – not yet anyway – so why not see if children are more receptive? That’s exactly what the ItsyWatch is trying to do. It’s a wearable watch to help children build good habits by letting them do things like care for virtual pets (some of us remember the good old days of Tamagotchi!) It’s also designed to relieve parental stress, though how successful this will be remains to be seen.
Ahead
For any budding cyclists out there, Ahead might just be the perfect application. This product is a communication device for helmet users – that includes skiers and bikers – which offers a hands-free option to replace smartphones. Perhaps its most useful function is that it will allow users to listen to music and receive voice notifications. If nothing else, it might encourage more people to wear helmets.
LiCON
Ever wondered how you’ll control all of your Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the next five years? We have, and the team behind LiCON has, too. That’s why they’ve created this app, which uses a smartphone camera to recognize and control IoT devices. You just launch the LiCON app, take a photo of your smart device and it will launch instantly.
FITT360
Last but not least is the FITT360, a wearable 360 degree camcorder that supposedly let’s you capture all of your surroundings. FITT360 claims to be hands-free and easy to use, allowing users to become totally immersed in virtual reality (VR) content.
Samsung’s C-Lab Projects was founded in 2012 and has supported more than 150 projects.
In emailed comments to Internet of Business, Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Research, said: “This is an interesting initiative by Samsung which echoes the trend towards crowd-funding small innovative products on platforms like Kickstarter. Interestingly Sony has embarked on a similar in-house initiative.”
“The purpose of initiatives like C-Lab is to encourage employees to be more entrepreneurial. It also provides a way to given talented team members a chance to realise a product vision within the company rather than being tempted to leave for a start-up. Furthermore, it is an excellent way of safeguarding any intellectual property that might emerge from the project.”
“These are niche projects that probably would not stand a chance of being developed within the Samsung corporate framework. C-Lab means that Samsung can place a few bets and see what emerges in more edgy areas.”