An open design platform with 11 interchangeable modules – this is the ara smartphone that Google presented in a prototyped version some 10 days ago.

And 5 days later, another launch: a haute couture sensor board, a first attempt to design a products framework that combines the open design approach with the Internet of Things to extend our everyday ecosystem.

The sensor board designed together with Lapka includes environmental sensors and more personal ones, like the blood and urine and…the soul sensor, that so far has not quite been defined (wonder whether they already know what it is about or if they’re just teasing us).

The Soul Sensor by Lapka

The design is, of course, super cool and beyond. But what we find quite meaningful is Google stronger and stronger interest in products that are always connected and that can – I guess – share date with their online platform.

Not only the concept of Internet is going towards physical products from the digital world, but the concept of an always-on data exchanging platform, that shares information from the web to things and back, feeding the Google giant. Good sides and bad sides.

(remember the Boston Dynamics Atlas-Terminator? Well, Boston D. belongs now to Google)

Full story here.