Etsy launches curated local shopping guides for four cities

Online marketplace Etsy has put a lot of effort into helping its users find local places to buy its goods, whether online or offline — the company added local listings to its mobile app and launched a same-day delivery service in NYC. Now the company is launching some new curated local buying guides for four cities: Chicago, Austin, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. (New York City is coming soon.) The content in these guides was pulled together by the Etsy Wholesale team, a part of the site that connects retailers with craftspeople who can produce goods at a higher scale. However, these local shops appear to stock items by a number of craftsmakers who also sell their wares on the standard Etsy site.

The guides were actually launched last year, but only in a physical format. To go digital, Etsy partnered with On The Grid rather than host this content on its own site. On the Grid already has a number of city guides, all created by various curators but hosted and designed in a similar fashion. Etsy’s guides follow this design, though with the signature Etsy orange color. Once you pick a city, you can browse shops based on what types of items you’re looking for or just check out a map to see what’s nearby.

All in all, it’s a nice looking site that fits well with Etsy’s own aesthetic, so consumers likely won’t be thrown off by using these tools. An Etsy spokesperson called On the Grid “a great partner because their design aesthetic, audience and mission aligns well with Etsy’s.” It sounds like these guides aren’t a temporary intiative, either — Etsy says it’ll launch more in more cities over the next year.

Via: Fast Company

Source: Etsy City Guides

Robotic ‘glove’ will allow the blind to see with their hands

A team of researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Arkansas, Little Rock announced on Thursday that they are developing a robotic wearable which will enable the visually impaired to “see” what they’re reaching for.

“We will pre-map the hand, and build a lightweight form-fitting device that attaches to the hand using key locations for cameras and mechanical and electrical sensors,” Yantao Shen, assistant professor and lead researcher on the project from the University of Nevada, Reno’s College of Engineering, said in a statement. “It will be simpler than a glove, and less obtrusive.” The device will combine tactile and temperature sensors, high resolution cameras and miniaturized microphones to sense items around it. This information — the item’s location, size and shape — is then relayed to the user via haptic and audio feedback.

“Not only will this device help blind and visually impaired people, the methods and technology we develop will have great potential in advancing small and wearable robot autonomy,” Shen added. The technology is still in development and there is no word on when it will actually be made available to the public.

Source: University of Nevada, Reno