Whoa! This Ring Makes Your Palm a Touchscreen Interface

Tap your thumb to your forefinger to snap a selfie with your digital camera while it’s level on a tripod. Slide your thumb from the tip of your pointer finger to your knuckle to turn up the volume on your car stereo. Or swipe your thumb across your four outstretched fingers to power on your television. So cool.

It works like this: the ring’s embedded sensors detect gestures your thumb makes on your hand, like simple taps and swipes, which function as commands. Fin then sends those commands via Bluetooth to your connected device.

While it’s not the first of its kind, Fin is leaps and bounds ahead of the rest in terms of design and compatibility. The coiled shape is contoured for comfort—don’t worry, you’ll only have to take it off once a month to recharge it—and comes in three bright colors, plus white and black. It’s small, but powerful: it can control up to three smart devices at a time—you can easily switch from your TV to your iPod to your car with pre-programmed commands, or you can customize your own gestures.

For a $99 donation to its indiegogo campaign, you can get a “Smart Version” Fin as soon as September. With 16 days left, Fin is less than a quarter of the ways away from obtaining its $100,000 goal—though whatever funding it does have when the clock strikes midnight will be used to help the product “go global.” Could you imagine a future when gestures less demanding than typing were used to control everything from updating Twitter to turning on the lights at the Olympics opening ceremony? And you thought The Clapper was cool!

What piece of wearable tech has you jazzed? Tell us about it in the comments below.