Friday, August 31, 2007

announcing the e-loo, the cell phone's friend

the ambient loo
--------

it is time for us in the pervasive and ubiqutous computing
community to stop taking the piss, and invest in some decent
technology

Toto(know, I know we are not in Kansas anymore) and UCL and Cambridge should
build an ambient loo - purpose - to stop the overly frequent loss of cell phones
caused by dropping them into the water when they are insecurely perched in shirt
pockets etc - a sensor in the loo would detect the falling cell phone (or the
phone could have an acceleromter like the nokia sports phone, and beacon when it
can tell it is alling) and the ooo would quickly swap the water out of the way,
and turn on the blow dryer to gentler lower the phone to the porcelain and allow
the user to retrieve it safely and cleanly

indeed it might even be a cell phone cleaning service

we could submit it to here (ian wakeman just noticed):-

http://www.inbetweeness.org/apublicinconvenience/

andy hopper and mark weiser wwould be proud to know that
Calm, seamless and persuasive, and secure, private ubicomp was alive and well,
and
that collaborations between Japan and the UK are being taken very very seriously

Tristan adds (for Scotland): "Since this is Japanese technology, I think we need to add karaoke to
the mix. If you start singing a song while sat on the loo, the loo
uses a DTN to find the nearest ipod/stereo/server with the correct
song on it, and then starts spraying the water and blow dryer in time
to the music (bass drum and cymbal respectively)."

Signage might be as per Tristan's fine collection
of photos in kyoto's streets.

Friday, August 24, 2007

come on, network people, save the planet!

use combined heat and data - pipe the packets and the kilojoules together - like combined heat and power, but IP over infrared delivers excess heat from big iron routers and data centers together to provide central heating and bath water - you could even parboil potatoes in an XML RPC exchange!!! you know its the way to go

its orthogonal to combined heat and power, or combined IP and power - its the third leg of a stable triangle - buy now!

Thursday, August 02, 2007

personal trainer laptop & mouse - longer human AND battery life:)

More stories from the halls of sustainable computing for the planet and gadgets galore:

1. on long haul flights, have a folding bicycle attached to your laptop, and use it to recharge the battery - while virtually cycling, you could be shown views of a cycling route (tour de france en ciel?)


2. instead of a wireless mouse being battery powered (know this: mine just went flat:), have a self-windingwatch type device that recharges from mouse movemnents and clicks - better still - use a tracker ball, which could also recharge the laptop:)