Update adds a few more features to Google and Levi’s smart jacket

The folks over at Google and Levi’s may be hard at work on the next iteration of their smart jacket, but they have not forgotten owners of the existing product. The Levi’s Commuter smart jacket is getting an update which will enable the intelligent garment to work with ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft.

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Mind you, the jacket wont call Uber or Lyft for you – you’ll need to do this. But the accompanying smartphone app will now connect to the services.

This will enable to jacket to ping you (and the cuff to light up) when your ride is three minutes away and then again when it arrives. Users will also be able to brush the jacket’s smart cuff fabric for real-time updates on the car’s progress via connected headphones.

For the uninitiated, the connected apparel is the first commercial product that uses the touch-sensitive fabric developed as part of Google’s Project Jacquard. A Bluetooth tag located on the cuff wirelessly connects the conductive yarns in the jacket’s cuff to your mobile device.

Touching the tag in different ways allows you to send commands to your smartphone while on the go. You can ask for directions, answer calls, control music playback, get notifications and more. Plus the entire garment is washable, once you remove the tag of course.

The rollout of Jacquard 1.2 has started and will continue over the few days. In addition to playing nice with ride-sharing services, you’ll also get support for bookmarking places in the app and noise cancellation gesture control for Bose Aware Mode. This last one will only be useful for owners of Bose QuietComfort 30 or 35 headphones.

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