Versatile Amphibian

Here's a nice presentation from Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR about the addition of an influence layer onto the internet. The concept is to use gaming techniques to generate patterns of behaviour amongst users - not new but certainly powerful. It's also an interesting path that the mobile industry can take without garnering too much regulatory attention. Recent news from Germany on the way that telemetry can expose patterns of behaviour suggests that a harder line may soon be taken on the information retained by operators. Interestingly, this was something we looked at a number of years ago with a major operator, but decided not to proceed with because of data concerns. Perhaps the answer is a hybrid between manipulation of behaviour based on active monitoring and passive "nudges" (the SCVNGR model). If the user can be incented to score points, gain influence etc by the way they behave - where they go, how many calls they make, how many friends they meet, then they ma...

In my last post about future mobile phone design concepts, I talked about the thin film contact lens as screen. This time I'll talk briefly about a more radical possibility - using neurological techniques to place images directly into the brain without light shining on the eye. Before considering this concept, please take a look at this link, to a technology called Brainport . In brief, Brainport uses electrodes mounted on tongue to transmit images from a head-mounted camera to the brain, in effect enabling the blind to see. This is a laudable objective and a very clever product, for the device appears to work rather well, however this type of technology offers a tantalising possibility for the communication device designer of the future. Just like the contact lens screen overlays images onto the line of sight, a neural feed like that suggested by Brainport could overlay images without any device in the visual field. In effect, the user would be surrounded by a sphere of virtual sc...

This post is a quick intermission in my thoughts about future mobile design. When I talked about contact lens screens, I mentioned the need for wireless power supplies to connect devices to each other. The BBC today reported on a company called Witricity who have developed a wireless power system that connects the mains to devices using low frequency resonance. I'd imagine that such a system is relatively lossy, however, when combined with ever more efficient batteries (driven in part by increasing demand from the automotive sector ) or even portable fuel cells it could form the basis of a "personal power grid". A thought that occurs while writing this, is that the battery pack of such a device - or individual devices if the PPG* doesn't happen - could synchronise with power, just as they synchronise data over the air. *: sorry, I can't resist a good acronym!