Wednesday, July 21, 2004
New Yorker Cartoons
Very funny cartoons. This link will auto-refresh the cartoons every 30 seconds.
Permalink, (1) comments
Monday, July 19, 2004
Human Body as a Computer Bus
- Economist (Jul 3, 04) has a story on Microsoft’s patent (# 6,754,472) for a “method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body”.
- Microsoft is proposing to use the skin’s own conductive properties to transmit the data needed to create a ‘personal area network’ (PAN) to allow people to link their personal electronic devices such as cell phones, PDAs. Microsoft also says that a wide variety of living animals can be used to create computer buses. It feels that skin can be used as a keyboard too. It does not end here: the body can also act as power generator for network - a ‘kinetic power converter’ in the wearer’s shoe or wristwatch can produce electricity in the same way as an old-fashioned self-winding watch extracted energy from its owner’s manual movements.
- Microsoft is not the pioneer in this field. MIT’s Media Lab and IBM jointly developed an idea of using the human body as a PAN nearly a decade ago. They showed how two people could transmit their business card info electronically via a handshake.
- Environmentalists will be waiting for the day when networking devices containing polluting lead and silicon are replaced by biodegradable human bodies.
Permalink, (3) comments