You can always change this.

According to news, Lapland’s entrepreneurs tremble for safety should phone-lines be dumped . The transfer of by-wire services to wireless is a process going on for a while in Finland. Especially in scarcely populated areas, the cost of keeping 50 000 lines up are high, while the transfer to gsm and wireless services is not.

It is a logical step from the operators. However, conventional phone is often the only connection a grandma living alone in Kainuu area has with the rest of world. Previously during this year we have been doing some usability research with computer users of age 70+, living in Kainuu area. Seniors use the traditional phone, all of them have serious troubles using a mobile phone (not mentioning using a computer). Answering a mobile phone-call is maybe ok, but anything behind that is a pain. Now, the lines will one day become deaf, and the only alternative is a mobile phone?

Consider this anecdotal situation we witnessed: a grandma loses her mobile phone at home. She uses her normal phone to phone her son to phone her back on her mobile phone so she can find it when it’s ringing. This illustrates the attitude well, a super small, hated, mobile phone, left somewhere. Soon, it will be the only connection to the rest of world.

PS: I hope there is a thick line to Justus’ office.

After reading this article about how cool it is even for non-technical people to come to an Apple store, I started to think why not to have something like that for a CS department.

I can imagine an open space shop that helps people with their computer related problems. Folks can come and play with something cool, have a chat over their problems (not necessarily only those of technical character). And we, IT researchers can help them and in turn can learn about their genuine needs.

With all new communication services like skype, accounts on email servers, gadgets like mobile phones, social networking services, I think it becomes quite difficult to keep contacts synchronized. Most of the services used their own proprietary solution, so e.g. one can log into skype anywhere and the skype contact list is automatically downloaded, and after changes also uploaded back to the skype server.

However, synchronizing between different providers and services is not possible at the moment. I therefore propose that there shall be a (yet-another) service that would allow users to maintain the contact list, provide different software and hardware a possibility to download the contacts, make changes, and upload the contact list back. While some security measures need to be adopted, I see no reason why such thing could not exist and be taken into action. For instance, most of the current mobile devices can connect to Internet servers. A simple application that would replace the current address books would just keep the address book fresh.

Let’s not confuse this proposal with a centralized user account and identity. Several companies have tried (e.g. passport from M$) without a greater success.

The communication protocol would be open (though secure), so anybody could write their own clients and plug-ins to any-kind of current software. The format of the contact list would be extensible, to allow an application to add new fields into the database.

Am I being naïve or shall I apply for a patent?

I expect not to be the first one to observe that electronic chips are getting smaller. So small, that a memory chip of a reasonable capacity (512kB) is not bigger than a grain of rice. As a bonus, the chip can be accessed wireless.

There are, however, much smaller memory chips available at the moment. A permanent memory cell 5000 times thinner than a human hair. That means such a cell, or a bunch of them, can without a problem penetrate you skin, travel in your blood, causing no problems to your organism. Add a future nano-sized device for a wireless read or transmission of data…

We can expect that in a couple of years such devices will become increasingly available and thus ubiquitous. What all will be possible to do with them? How will they change our lives?

Several ideas to ponder upon for my dear readers: your cloth will tell your wash-machine what is the proper program to wash. Your food can be equipped with the best-before info and contents and your fridge can then tell what needs to be wasted. What more, your kitchen keeps a list of all your groceries. Do you want to cook something perhaps? Select a recipe (your favorite recipes are intelligently recommended at first) and you will instantly know whether all required is at home. While shopping, you just pass the cashier. Your wallet knows how much money you have in (if you ever are going to need some physical change). You can trace what have you eaten (and what has passed through, of course), including medicines. You will never loose anything anymore, your staff is tagged. In fact, if you allow, all your movements can be recorded, so your family and friends can know where you are or where have you been all day.

I expect most of these will become our everyday reality in a couple of years. You can immortalize your ideas and implications of what can be done under this post.