Mobile Projection

If you’ve ever suffered using projectors during a presentation your prayers could be answered with a new mobile phone projector. From the site:


The DLP pico-prototype further advances TI’s mobile projection technology, building on the 2006 introduction of DLP-based pocket projectors. These products are in the market today from manufacturers, including Mitsubishi, Samsung, and Toshiba. Pacific Media Associates (PMA), a global research firm, expects this pocket projector category to grow to more than 1M units by 2010. TI demonstrated the viewing experience advantage of showing mobile phone content on a pocket projector in January 2007. The introduction of the pico-projector capabilities will provide manufacturers and end-users even more options on how they can view and share information and content.

GPS gaming

Very interesting project being developed by Tom Hume, Locomatrix is a GPS game that forces players out into the real world. Whereas before gaming was limited to pushing buttons on a controller – games such as, ARG’s and Geo-caching are extending the game world beyond a screen and into a real world environment. From the site:

Gaming is heading in a new direction. Where once photorealistic 3D worlds were the future of gaming, the Wii phenomenon heralds something new: a world where gamers get out into the real world.

Locomatrix is a new digital game publisher with a mission to bring gaming back to the outdoors. The brainchild of Brighton entrepreneur Richard Vahrman, Locomatrix have partnered with Future Platforms to bring this vision to life.

This is no blue-sky dream: the first working prototype using mass market technology was built and tested at the end of 2006, and we're now working on a full production version.
The game is built in Mobile Java and can therefore reach most handsets on the market today
It uses standard matchbox-size GPS units, available from several mobile accessory retailers

The game communicates with the GPS unit over Bluetooth - again available on most mobile handsets on the market. A "game designer" allows players to create their own games
The prototype is a multi-player game.

Gathering in a field with a mobile phone and a GPS unit each, players hop into the game and then start wandering around the real-world playing field, picking up letters and bringing them back to a home-cell. As the team progresses, they see their letters come together to spell a word.

Romancing the phone

Mills and Boon novels are to be offered for users to download to their mobile phone to combat the “embarrassment factor” of carrying around the books. From The Times article:

“Penguin, Random House and HarperCollins have all signed up with ICUE, a British company offering the capability to transfer books into mobile phone-friendly content. None, however, has pursued the idea with as much vigour as the company founded in 1908 by Gerald Mills and Charles Boon.

Our Japanese operation has had great success selling our books in mobile-phone format,” Ms Byrne said. “Japan is normally 18 months ahead of the UK. They are finding that it’s women who like reading on phones and romantic fiction that’s rising to the top.”

Museums go mobile

A number of museums have now gone mobile – they will offer images of famous works of art, photographs of historic personalities, voice and sound recordings, music and video for download to mobile devices.

They will offer some of the following content (from the press release):

“· Masterpieces as Wallpapers – Historical Recordings as Ringtones ·
Masterpieces from various epochs are available for download as wallpapers or screensavers or to be forwarded as greeting cards. From Breughel and Rubens to Schiele and Klimt, and from Cezanne to Van Gogh to just name a few of the present artists. The multimedia experience is enhanced by:

• Music by some of the world’s greatest composers, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart • Original voice recordings, for example from the emperors Franz Joseph of Austria and Wilhelm II. of Germany, the German chancellor Hindenburg or Max Planck

• Films and interviews of Sigmund Freud • Recordings of ethnic or religious music as well as dialects from the last century from a variety of countries and cultures. The first multimedia-museum for mobile phones also offers background information, newsletters, up-to-date exhibition news in German and English and a greeting - cards section.”

Mobile Visa card launched.

A mobile Visa debit card has been launched by T-Weed. This follows the predicition by, chief executive of Visa Europe, Peter Ayliffe, that Paying for goods with notes and coins could be consigned to history within five years. Ayliffe said that, by 2012, using credit and debit cards should be cheaper and more convenient than cash.

From the press release:

“T-Weed's Wireless Visa Card intends to give unbanked Americans, small business owners, immigrants, and families the freedom of a bank debit card that can be used in coordination with a current bank account, powered by employment direct deposits or deposits made at Money Gram or Safeway locations. New Wireless Visa customers do not need to have a previous bank account or credit history, only a cell phone and a US address.”