A couple of weeks ago I was pondering this idea whilst cleaning out my ears in the shower. Is there a way, I am wondering, if it is possible to play a tone through an ear piece, and have a microphone, also embedded in the ear piece, monitor the reaction of the ear as it listens to the tone. And based on the response, perform an action such as navigating in a three dimensional space.

I am under an assumption here that the ear is not a passive listening instrument but can be directed, however subtly, by the brain to tune in to certain characteristics of sounds. It is well known that people are capable of focusing in on a single tone amongst a cacophony of background noise. How much of this processing is done in the brain and how much does the brain alter the "tuning" of the ear to achieve this "tuning in?"

Assuming that the ear is reacting in different ways to different tones, if a monitoring device, such as a highly sensitive microphone could detect the noise of the muscles or small hairs in the inner ear responding to these tones then it would be possible to use that as feedback to a software program to perform some other task.

There are definitely small muscles within the ear that are involuntarily controlled, so how much of them can be voluntarily controlled? Can a paralysed person make use of these inner ear muscles, which a sensitive, non-invasive monitoring device could pick up the movements of, and then the person could control devices simply by changing how they "listen."

Share this post with others

Posted in Ideas | No Comments »

I’ve been pondering this for a while now. I think that Microsoft OneNote really needs a wiki like plug-in that allows you to see previous versions of a page.

It’d also be great if OneNote could work with a Wiki. I mean really work with a Wiki properly. I’m not thinking of the so-so solutions that have been thrown together.

I should look in to the OneNote API to see if any of this is even possible.

Share this post with others

Posted in Ideas | No Comments »

Just a thought. When will we start seeing eInk displays with a backlight?

And when will we start seeing transparent eInk displays?

And when will we see our first full-size, road-side eInk advertising billboard?

Maybe if you work for a company that keeps shuffling you from department to department you could have an eInk business card created.

And I’ve written about this before, but I think eInk "books" will become most useful when you are able to purchase them with multiple pages and the cost of the book itself drops to such a level you can afford to have several of them.

Will the collectible comic book market disappear when all comics are delivered digitally? Will comic books have very limited print runs?

How can you have rarity in a world of abundance?

Share this post with others

Posted in Ideas | No Comments »