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Google Glass might be the first thing many of us think of when someone says stupid, pointless, wearable device,

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hear that almost every day, but surprisingly enough, it was far from the most ridiculous

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thing that corporate America thought we should strap onto our bodies.

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For example, take a look at this thing. It's called the Poma, made by a company called Zybernaut.

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That, amazingly, was not in the business of making late 90s Saturday morning cartoons.

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The Poma came out back in 2002 and was actually a full-fledged computer

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that made you look like you just walked off the set of Star Trek.

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It ran on Windows CE, you know, that obscure version of Windows for embedded systems,

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and rocked a meager 128 megahertz CPU with 32 megs of memory.

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That's incredibly underpowered by today's standards, but back then, yeah, it was still pretty bad for 2002.

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The one-eyed display had an 800 by 600 resolution

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with the idea being to replicate a 13-inch monitor.

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But it turns out, completely obscuring one of your eyes

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isn't such a good idea. People reportedly kept running into walls

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while trying to use it. Your choices of input were either an odd-looking

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optical mouse you could use to click individual letters on an on-screen keyboard, or an actual physical keyboard

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you could strap to your forearm like the greatest hacker that ever lived.

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Needless to say, with a $1,500 price tag and poor battery life, it didn't sell well.

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Even with Zybernaut trying to make the Poma seem like the pinnacle of cool, almost got there.

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Next up, Beauty and the Geek, not to be confused with the reality show.

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This was a concept we saw back in 2012,

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and looked like something right out of a really lame version

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of Cyberpunk 2077. Instead of taking a keyboard and mouse with you,

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why not just put it in your pants? Beauty and the Geek was a pair of black jeans

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with orange stitching that could have been reasonably fashionable, but literally had a working keyboard

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sewed in right over your junk. Aside from the downside that typing in public

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could now be misconstrued as something rather indecent,

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the concept tried to take convenience to the max

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by also building in speakers and a wireless mouse

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that hung from a strap. I also don't really know how you're supposed to

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wash these things, so it's not surprising that these high-tech trousers never made it

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past the concept stage. The next thing we're going to tell you about

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actually did make it to market, and was a heck of a lot more practical

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than the wearable PC or the keyboard pants, but unfortunately, it sucked big time.

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This thing is called the Ring by Log Bar, and it was supposed to be a hyper-minimalist

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and ultra-convenient way to interact with your tech.

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You'd slip it on your finger, and then complete tasks like sending texts,

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turning on the lights, and changing channels on your TV all by drawing simple gestures in midair.

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So many people were captivated by the idea of waving your fingers in the air like a moron,

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that it raised over a million bucks on Kickstarter. But the Ring broke the cardinal rule of technology.

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It didn't work. When a user got in touch with Ring's support

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and told them the gestures only worked around 5% of the time,

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he was apparently told that, yeah, that sounded about right.

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Yikes! It also didn't help that the Ring was so large

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that it looked like you were wearing a piece of metallic calamari on your finger,

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and given that it sold for a not nice price of $269,

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it was quickly panned as one of the worst wearables in history.

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I just hope no poor soul out there got this gifted to them as a wedding band.

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But I do hope that you enjoyed this video. Hey, thanks for watching.

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