How many times have you had people complaining to you that you spend too much time gazing at your mobile/tablet/portable digital camera screen?

Worse still, being deeply engrossed in your pixels can have some embarrassing real-world consequences. Think lamp posts and randomly-placed bollards…

One of the biggest culprits for these mishaps is our penchant to use mobile phones to snap pictures all the time, which can not only be dangerous but also alienates us by putting up a barrier between us and the world.

Enter the iPal smart eyeglasses, an ingenious device set to rival Google’s own Glass that is currently being developed by a Dallas (TX) company called i2i, Inc.

An eye for style

The iPal looks and wears like normal specs, however within the stylish frame you can find two HD cameras and a pair of eye-tracking sensors that helps the iPal see what you are seeing.

The kit is wired up to a touchscreen control module that is about the size of an iPod and can be carried conveniently in your pocket.

This eyewear technology is revolutionary because unlike other devices, like Google Glass, it uses eye-tracking instead of head-tracking. This makes it more accurate and ensures that every picture you take reflects what you are seeing at that moment.

But how do you take a picture with the iPal?

The iPal lets you snap a photo by just blinking, winking or staring for a while at the scene you’re looking at. This smart technology can learn other user-defined gestures and it even allows you to crop photos by simply tracing an imaginary outline around the scene using your eyes before sharing it on Facebook or Instagram. Now that’s cool!

Wearable technology

The iPal doesn’t only take photos but it can also store up to 2 hours of HD video on a single charge. By way of comparison, Google Glass only lets you record a paltry 30 minutes of video!

The iPal opens up new horizons for everything from simply making your next vacation more memorable to citizen journalism and more.

Wearable tech is a very hot area of growth at the moment, and with inventors cropping up on crowdsourcing websites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter and competing alongside giants like Google and Samsung, it makes for exciting news for geeky fashionistas (and plain geeks) everywhere.

How to help iPal see the light of day

The iPal smart glasses has already caught the eye of nearly 200 funders on Indiegogo who collectively have donated almost $33,000, or 65%, of the $50,000 goal.

The Indiegogo campaign has been running since April 21 and will end on May 30, leaving only a few days for potential pledgers to show their support.

The people behind iPal are offering some incredible perks, including the possibility of getting your hands on an iPal at a tremendous $400 discount! This perk has been snapped up in record time, but for the not-so-early adopters out there there eager to own this technology, despair not. You can still score your own smart glasses for a deeply slashed price of $125.