Last summer Adidas showed off a running shoe that had an upper made from trash found floating in the oceans. Adidas and Parley are back for a new running shoe with a sole and upper that is made from trash found floating in the oceans. The running shoe is made with a 3D printed ocean plastic midsole.
While the shoe does still need support of a sole - and strings, of course - this Adidas shoe needs but one piece of leather. The upper bits of this Originals Superstar are cut from a single piece of material, making use of the company's newest innovations in what's called the Adidas Futurecraft series. We previously showed you the first chapter in this story, one in which Adidas created the sole of a shoe using a 3D printer for otherwise-impossible shapes for support.
The team at Adidas have announced the program called Futurecraft 3D, a plan for 3D-printing shoes with unique specifications. "Futurecraft 3D is a prototype and a statement of intent," said Eric Liedtke, Executive Board Member of adidas AG, "We have used a one-of-its-kind combination of process and material in an entirely new way." In the future, a customer will walk in to an Adidas store, run on a treadmill, and walk out with a pair of running shoes printed with their exact physical specifications in mind.
Adidas has bought Runtastic, bringing the popular fitness tracking app in-house and promising to "unleash its knowledge of sport" on its 70m users. The deal, which values Runtastic at around $241m, sees the app join Adidas' own fitness wearables like the miCoach FIT SMART, and could give the sportswear brand a lower-cost way to engage new users via their smartphones.
Trash floating around the ocean is a big problem, one that Adidas has tackled by developing a running shoe made from it. The shoe is made mostly of material that was harvested from plastics and fishing nets floating around the ocean, and is a concept creation to show a more sustainable way the company -- and others like it -- could help solve our oceans' trash problem: by reclaiming the garbage for good use. The concept was made in partnership with Parley for the Oceans.
Early last year it was announced that Monster had partnered with Adidas to launch a lineup of headphones, and today it has announced a new product as part of that: the adidas Sport Headphones by Monster. There are two models in the lineup, the adidas Sport Supernova and adidas Sport Response. Adidas describes the first model as “in-ear headphones”, and the latter model as earbuds. They’re targeted at users with differing needs -- those who need noise isolation, and those who are active.
Can the brand with the three stripes bring the same quality to their smart device accessories that they do their sneakers and active wear? That's what we wanted to know when we first heard Adidas Originals would be getting in to the smartphone case business. Our first couple of units are both sleeves made for a wide variety of smartphones and smartphone-like devices. White and black, as simple as they come, ready for everything from the Nexus 4 to the iPhone 6.
This week the folks at Google have let it be known that they're ramping up efforts to embolden Google Fit. To do this, they're teaming up with Adidas, Polar, and Withings to create the Google Fit Developer Challengs. This challenge will have developers submitting smart wearable fitness apps to Google by the 17th of February, 2015 for a chance at fabulous features and prizes including all manner of Android Wear, Adidas, Polar, and Withings smart devices to continue development into the future.
This near-end of 2014 has a surprise release from the company that generally outfits your feet: Adidas. They've come out swinging this week with accessories - cases, mostly - for Apple and Samsung devices of all kinds. The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are covered, as is the Samsung Galaxy s5, the iPad Air, iPad mini, both 13-inch and 15-inch MacBooks, and a bunch of other devices with general sleeves. And if you're all about outfitting your Motorola Razr, BlackBerry Z10, or Lumia device, Adidas has you covered too.
Smart wearables seem to be forever just around the bend - they’re still not quite taking hold the way smartphones have, and each new generation seems to be drastically different from the last. With the miCoach FIT SMART, Adidas feels like they’ve got things under control, however, as they release a second-generation arm-based device that takes their original for a ride - on the relative cheap, too.
Adidas has a new wearable device coming and it's not exactly like its Smart Run smartwatch. Instead, it seems that the sports equipment company will be going back to the basics with the miCoach Fit Smart, a smart fitness band with a seemingly simple display but an obviously sporty strap.
This year’s Google I/O 2014 is bringing on the wearables with Android Wear - but more important than that for active lifestyle enthusiasts may be the software that’ll make their actions take hold in Android like never before. With Google Fit, developers will be able to work with an Android-based single location for a user’s fitness. You, the user, will have a central console for your health.