Jewelry That Has Your Back

A new kind of wearable technology promises to keep you looking elegant, even as it protects you from harm.

Called Stiletto, this new line of high-tech jewelry offers wearers real-time text, call, and social notifications, smart-tag and phone tracking, multi-party emergency calling and texting, voice and location assisted 911 communications, evidence gathering, and more, according to Secure Couture, the company that makes it.

These gadgets measure less than one inch by one inch, and are embedded into a variety of jewelry housing shapes, including stainless steel and gemstone pendants. The items themselves start at $179, which doesn’t include the service you need to sign up for that allows the tech to synch with your cell phone and offer all of this high-tech protection.

Journalist Polly Mosendz recently test-drove the Stiletto for Cosmopolitan, and offered a real-world evaluation of its capabilities. When she triggered the device’s security feature (by double-clicking the pendant), her friends got a text saying that she was having an emergency, and linking her to a profile containing a selfie, emergency contacts, medical conditions, and insurance information. Mosendz said that the text also offered her location.

Clicking three times on the pendant triggers a 911 call, in addition to the “friends and family” notification.

As the manufacturer puts it, Stiletto “…provides wearers with real-time notifications, keeps track of their phone and other smart tagged personal belongings, and syncs to the wearer’s phone (and 911URL.com) to enable emergency dispatchers to rapidly review and distribute emergency profile and location information.”

That sounds like an interesting application of wearable tech, and one that could prove life-saving. With all of the new wearable tech enhancements coming from big players like Apple and Samsung these days, it will be interesting to see how well these smaller innovators do this year.