Fabric can now conduct electricity.
During the 2005 holiday season, Macy's, Dillard's and CompUSA sold jackets whose sleeves contained switches to control iPods.
Kenpo's Jacket for iPod features a .5 millimeter thick sensor made completely out of fabric; the sensor has no wires or transitors.
The jacket features a unique touch sensitive fabric called ElekTex. Unlike previous efforts to incorporate hard switches into fabric, ElekTex is soft and actually feels like fabric.
Buttons in the jacket's sleeve lets the wearer control their iPod.
The sensor comes from Eleksen Ltd., which says it produced 80,000 such sensors last year for a variety of uses.
Eleksen also makes a wireless fabric keyboard that can be used with portable devices such as PDA's. When you don't need the keyboard, you just roll it up.
In addition to consumer products, the firm wants to support industrial uses of its conductive fabric such as switches and controls in uniforms and protective gear.
