follicle

So I complained that I was still using power cords, and I see there is a commercially available solution for charging selected devices without plugging in a cord, by fitting contacts to the device’s battery terminals and placing it on a conductive pad.  Yeah, ok, but it’s not a great solution, it still requires physical contact on a special surface.  So come on down, wireless power!  One of MIT Technology Review’s ten emerging technologies of 2008, this is the answer to the power cord.  Resonant coils at each end couple electrical energy through a magnetic field.  Efficiency is the hill to climb, but the impact could be big.

I love the idea of smart clothing. Not the type that repels stains, monitors your vital signs, stops bullets, or wires your iPod and mobile phone through your pants. I mean the really smart ones that will change the fashion world. I get excited by this. Imagine, if you will, the “smart shirt”…

A shirt that you can set to whatever colour you like. Today it’s a red shirt, tomorrow it’s green, whatever you feel like in the morning. Dial up a colour, and put it on. These are washable fabrics of course, not like those ones with the built-in LED displays, so maybe you buy two for alternate days, or try not to sweat too much from the excitement of wearing a smart shirt.

But better still, what about being able to choose a pattern? Vertical stripes, diagonal stripes, dots, tartans, at a turn of a dial. Then, of course, with some advanced technology, you can download the patterns from over an integrated wireless interface, like Bluetooth.

Think of the commercial opportunities. You buy a blank shirt — tee, collared, long-sleeved — and buy patterns for it, like ring tones. Design your own, if you have the artistic skills, or more likely download something from the web. Advertising, niche designs, premium content, all available. Change it from your mobile phone wherever you are. Smart pants as well. And smart shoes! One physical style, but multiple colours. Never worry about colour uncoordination again: buy an entire colour scheme.

As an aside, when I said a washable fabric, let’s imagine a self-cleaning fabric. One that doesn’t even need washing. Maybe it cleans itself, or perhaps doesn’t even get dirty in the first place. It repels dirt, or contains nano-things (TM) that break down dirt and turn it into oxygen and solid particles you can shake off. Hey, think about that — you give your smart shirt a ten-second shake to wash it. The shaking actually could power the nano-things.

So back to the smart shirt. You download a pattern, maybe a favourite photo, and wear it for an hour, then change it to a different photo. Make a slideshow and have the image change every hour, automatically. Cool. Hmm, changing pictures… say, what about every 1/24th of a second? Moving pictures — constantly changing patterns and images. Turn bystanders into zombies with the moving psychedelic spiral pattern on your shirt. Trigger epileptic fits from stroboscopic images. Subvert society with subliminal messages.

Display live television or video on your clothing. Be paid to be a walking video billboard. Not so great for the rest of us, but think of the commercial opportunities. Then, when shirts in close proximity can form an ad-hoc mesh network you could have wide-screen video across a conga line of people.

I’m very excited. And I haven’t even started to think about the porn possibilities.

It’s 2008 and here are ten things I’m still using:

1. Paper and pencil
2. Email
3. SMS
4. Mouse
5. Palm PDA
6. Power cords
7. Plain text files
8. Username/password authentication
9. ADSL
10. Hard disks

All these technologies are old. I’m bored with them. Where’s the revolutionary innovation? Are they really that good that we can’t improve at acceptable cost?

Let’s take a quick look at some of the alternatives put forward…

1. Tablet PCs?  Not yet. Wireless keyboards on PDAs or smart phones?  Nope.  Taking notes on a laptop?  Sometimes, but how do you quickly capture a diagram?  Surely there has to be a better multimedia capture solution than Word or some of the journalling software.  And maybe we need electronic ink so we can get good lightweight, high-contrast screens.
2. Ok, it kinda works, assuming you’re not overrun with spam.  But if it truly were a successful technology, it would be less intrusive and less visible.  I keep emails in a mail client and documents in folders — why?  They’re not fundamentally different.
3. Is this really the be-all and end-all of inter-personal communication?  Apparently.
4. Or trackpad, or stylus.  Fingers on an iPhone — now we’re getting somewhere.  More intuitive interfaces — not just point-and-click, point-and-poke.
5. I love my Palms (all five of them along the years).  But disconnected applications with separate data stores and rudimentary integration.  We can do better.
6. Two words… Wireless. Power.  Bring it on.  I don’t care if it nukes my brain, just free me from frigging power cords.
7. There’s something nice and simple and safe about text files.  But I still wonder why I’m settling for less than I really want.
8. I am sick of all those passwords.  You know it’s me, dammit.
9. Click.  Wait.  Yawn.
10. Magnetic oxides on spinning metal disks?  You what?

Come on innovators, and none of this patent protection rubbish.  If you’re invention is that damn clever, people will be laughing at it, not copying it.

I was going to blog about my brilliant solution to the challenge of minimising aeroplane boarding times, but some smart arse beat me to it.  Instead of working out which order to board people — rear to front, window to aisle, by amount of carry-on luggage etc — you make the plane modular.  The plane is a shell with a modular seating area with overhead lockers that can be placed in the gate lounge.  You stow your luggage, and get in your seat, with access from any direction, and make yourself comfortable.  When everyone is seated, the whole seating section is lifted and slotted into place in the plane.  Presto, you’re boarded in five minutes instead of thirty.  Do the same with the baggage hold and the fuel tanks, and you can turn around a plane in fifteen minutes.