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My Old Blogger Posts (circa 2005-2006).

RFID Mood Rings

Today, I was thinking it would be cool to know someone's frame of mind before giving them a cell phone call. For instance, it's not too hard to tell someone's disposition -- happy, sad,angry, etc -- if you can see their face, and based on this decide whether you want to talk or whatever. This got me to thinking about hooking up something like a 60's mood ring to your cell phone. The ring based on heat, skin sweat, etc could monitor your mood. When a cell phone call comes in the cell phone could read these settings from the ring and send a few bits back to the caller's cell phone before the phone actually started ringing. The caller would see the caller's mood and then could decide whether or not to proceed with the call and actually ring the caller. I am not sure what would be the best technology for the ring. Nowadays, Bluetooth is in everything but I was not sure whether this could be put in something as small as a ring. I was thinking it might be advantageous to have a passive technology like rfid -- that way, you wouldn't have to worry about batteries or anything.

(Edited: 2016-04-09)

'''RFID Mood Rings''' Today, I was thinking it would be cool to know someone's frame of mind before giving them a cell phone call. For instance, it's not too hard to tell someone's disposition -- happy, sad,angry, etc -- if you can see their face, and based on this decide whether you want to talk or whatever. This got me to thinking about hooking up something like a 60's mood ring to your cell phone. The ring based on heat, skin sweat, etc could monitor your mood. When a cell phone call comes in the cell phone could read these settings from the ring and send a few bits back to the caller's cell phone before the phone actually started ringing. The caller would see the caller's mood and then could decide whether or not to proceed with the call and actually ring the caller. I am not sure what would be the best technology for the ring. Nowadays, Bluetooth is in everything but I was not sure whether this could be put in something as small as a ring. I was thinking it might be advantageous to have a passive technology like rfid -- that way, you wouldn't have to worry about batteries or anything.

Escape to witch mountain

As a kid I remember seeing the Disney movie Espace to Witch Mountain. It was about orphaned kids with psychic powers. One of their remarkable powers was to be able to get traffic lights to automatically change for them. At the time I thought this was great. Nowadays, police have a strobe device on their cars which works with some lights which can do the same thing. Actually. I wonder whether these kids psychic powers would require more effort than the police solution? It seems like there should be a science of effort needed to get what you want. MRI's can be used to "see" people intending to do things. From this I suppose you could get a lower bound estimate on the amount of energy needed to consciously want to do something. Presumably, mankind will have arrived when the upper bound on the energy needed to get something that we want matches this lower bound.

(Edited: 2016-04-09)

As a kid I remember seeing the Disney movie Espace to Witch Mountain. It was about orphaned kids with psychic powers. One of their remarkable powers was to be able to get traffic lights to automatically change for them. At the time I thought this was great. Nowadays, police have a strobe device on their cars which works with some lights which can do the same thing. Actually. I wonder whether these kids psychic powers would require more effort than the police solution? It seems like there should be a science of effort needed to get what you want. MRI's can be used to "see" people intending to do things. From this I suppose you could get a lower bound estimate on the amount of energy needed to consciously want to do something. Presumably, mankind will have arrived when the upper bound on the energy needed to get something that we want matches this lower bound.

Having a massive decentralized distribution of net...

Originally Posted By: Jake Thompson

Having a massive decentralized distribution of networked electronic mood rings opens up the door for some interesting applications--you could tabulate a geographic area's "average mood," and display it with color coding on a map. You could use hot colors for good feelings and cold colors for bad feelings, to make happy areas feel more alive and vibrant. You could watch it all turn blue and green after each election. Once Mardi Gras gets back in full swing, N'Awlins will shine like a star once a year.

(Edited: 2016-04-09)

'''Originally Posted By: Jake Thompson''' Having a massive decentralized distribution of networked electronic mood rings opens up the door for some interesting applications--you could tabulate a geographic area's "average mood," and display it with color coding on a map. You could use hot colors for good feelings and cold colors for bad feelings, to make happy areas feel more alive and vibrant. You could watch it all turn blue and green after each election. Once Mardi Gras gets back in full swing, N'Awlins will shine like a star once a year.

Better Hard Drive Enclosures

Hard drive enclosures are cool in that you can buy cheaper internal hard drives put them into an enclosure and then connect them to any computer you like via USB. They are great for transporting bulky files like videos. Some have built in wireless so you can make them network drives. All my Mac's have wireless 802.11G cards which in my opinion is still too slow for video so this wireless feature is not so great. I can think of two features which would be reasonably cheap which should be added to enclosure: (1) Enclosures should be made to hold two drives and then have a single button which backs up drive A to drive B. This implements the dumbest kind of RAID but it also makes it easy for people to transfer there data as hard-drive capacities grow without needing a computer. (2) Enclosures should support have enough brains in them to run media software at the equivalent level to Front Row (maybe slightly more configurable) based on the hard drive contents. The enclosure should also have video and sound outputs and support some standard IrDA commands. This would obviate the need to have a computer at your TV all to see your media.

(Edited: 2016-04-09)

Hard drive enclosures are cool in that you can buy cheaper internal hard drives put them into an enclosure and then connect them to any computer you like via USB. They are great for transporting bulky files like videos. Some have built in wireless so you can make them network drives. All my Mac's have wireless 802.11G cards which in my opinion is still too slow for video so this wireless feature is not so great. I can think of two features which would be reasonably cheap which should be added to enclosure: (1) Enclosures should be made to hold two drives and then have a single button which backs up drive A to drive B. This implements the dumbest kind of RAID but it also makes it easy for people to transfer there data as hard-drive capacities grow without needing a computer. (2) Enclosures should support have enough brains in them to run media software at the equivalent level to Front Row (maybe slightly more configurable) based on the hard drive contents. The enclosure should also have video and sound outputs and support some standard IrDA commands. This would obviate the need to have a computer at your TV all to see your media.

Pocket Watch Cell Phones

I heard on the news this morning about how watch sales are going down because of cell phones. This got me thinking about wouldn't it be cool if they made real silver or gold cell phone cases with chains so you could attach them to a vest like an old fashion pocket watch. The trendy hi-end cells I've seen don't seem to go for the retro material look. On another note, cell phones are sorta like 21st century pocket knives. So what features should be added to them? Here's what I use my cell phone (a Samsung T809) for now.

(1) As a phone
(2) Take pictures
(3) Take video
(4) Receive SMS of my google mail
(5) Edit Google Calender
(6) As a 512Mb USB/bluetooth key (with better micro SD cards this should become larger).
(7) Listen to MP3s.
(8) Surf the web. (Mainly news feeds).

The experience of (6) and (7) can be improved as microSD cards get larger. For (2) and (3) the resolution of cell phone cameras seems to be improving with each generation. So what features would I like added? We have all heard that positioning connected to some kind of mapping software (maybe with the ability to suggest restaurants) will be available soon, and that we will be able to pay for things using our cell phones. Here are some things I can think of:

(1) A decent media player in a cell phone so can get internet radio -- maybe even have a usual radio in it.
(2) A wind-up feature like capacitor based flashlights, so you can make emergency calls even when your battery is dead.
(3) Heck, why not add a flashlight to cell phones?

I suppose you can't add a knife because it wouldn't be allowed on airplanes if you had one. What about some small laser? Probably same problem.

(Edited: 2016-04-09)

I heard on the news this morning about how watch sales are going down because of cell phones. This got me thinking about wouldn't it be cool if they made real silver or gold cell phone cases with chains so you could attach them to a vest like an old fashion pocket watch. The trendy hi-end cells I've seen don't seem to go for the retro material look. On another note, cell phones are sorta like 21st century pocket knives. So what features should be added to them? Here's what I use my cell phone (a Samsung T809) for now. (1) As a phone (2) Take pictures (3) Take video (4) Receive SMS of my google mail (5) Edit Google Calender (6) As a 512Mb USB/bluetooth key (with better micro SD cards this should become larger). (7) Listen to MP3s. (8) Surf the web. (Mainly news feeds). The experience of (6) and (7) can be improved as microSD cards get larger. For (2) and (3) the resolution of cell phone cameras seems to be improving with each generation. So what features would I like added? We have all heard that positioning connected to some kind of mapping software (maybe with the ability to suggest restaurants) will be available soon, and that we will be able to pay for things using our cell phones. Here are some things I can think of: (1) A decent media player in a cell phone so can get internet radio -- maybe even have a usual radio in it. (2) A wind-up feature like capacitor based flashlights, so you can make emergency calls even when your battery is dead. (3) Heck, why not add a flashlight to cell phones? I suppose you can't add a knife because it wouldn't be allowed on airplanes if you had one. What about some small laser? Probably same problem.