Gadgetory

soon you can control your phone by rubbing your jeans I'm Bridget Carey this is your CNET update Google teased us that it would have a wearable that would knock our socks off and it turns out they really meant socks one of Google's more exploratory divisions is working on smart clothing as a way to control your gadgets with the everyday fabrics you wear now Google isn't gluing on a touchscreen to assured this goes way beyond that Google created its own conductive yarn to be woven into any fabric so it looks like normal yarn but it senses touch and it can respond to precise gestures the real challenge was to get conductive yarn that would withstand the process of making clothes including stretching and heating and it had to get it all controlled with a tiny chip you can tuck away unseen in an example we saw this fabric put into a designer jacket and it could be programmed to make a phone call by simply swiping your finger across the sleeve this is called Project jacquard and Google is working with Levi's to produce some of the first pieces of clothing to move this beyond a novelty and into something realistic one of the motivations for creating smart fabric is the fact that our screens are getting smaller with smartwatches so we need to think of new ways to interact with devices and a sleeve certainly provides more surface area to touch and scroll but there's another angle to solving this problem and that's creating something that could detect your hand gestures with project soli Google created a tiny radar sensor that can detect the slightest hand motions so you can move your fingers in certain ways to navigate a screen it's sensitive enough to let you scroll with a roll of your thumb like you were holding an invisible smartphone or you can twist your fingers like you're rolling an invisible watch dial to set the time the chip sends out a radar signal and the reflection of the signal changes as the hand moves so it interprets different poses now Google just has to put that in a watch and you have a way to control it without actually touching it let's move on to another side of tech companies trying new things this time with food coming soon to breakfast near you Amazon flakes cereal to be served with cold Amazon milk and a cup of freshly brewed Amazon coffee that's right the online store sells everything wants to sell you its own generic brand of food and household products The Wall Street Journal reports Amazon's preparing to add several types of grocery items and cleaning products to its generic store brand called elements Amazon launched elements last year to sell baby wipes and diapers to Prime members but the diapers were discontinued less than two months after launching because of complaints Amazon actually makes a few other cheap tech accessories under the name Amazon basics including HDMI cords and Bluetooth speakers that's all for this tech news update but there's more at cnet.com from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey