Slashdot Mirror
A Linux Machine For Your Collar
MadSaxon writes "gumstix.org has a brief but titillating description of a very small Linux machine based on the PXA255: 20 x 80 mm, '64MB SDRAM, 4MB Flash, MMC/SD/SDIO slot, and power management. It takes 3.6V - 5.0V power, and has been drawing under 200 mA.' It weighs less than 12g sans battery, and 'can fit in a collar undetected.' Is collar-top computing the Next Big Thing?"
You've got token ring around the collar!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Red Neck Hat?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
I'm sure there's a "Slacksware" joke in here somewhere, but I'm not quite awake enough to make it. :)
These sigs are more interesting tha
I see management giving all their employee's one of these. Well, right after the little shock module is released for it.
... *ZAP*
"Slashdoting again?!"
So many possibilties:
Link to these lie-detector glasses for better detection.
Card counting in Vegas.
Covert recording of conversations (low bitrate MP3?)
The chicks. Well.. maybe not the chicks..
:)
Anyhow, this is moot. I can't recall the last time I wore a shirt with a collar..
Trolling is a art,
But, I guess that goes against the post. My other thought is the social stigma associated with these things. I still get people telling me in an embarassed tone of voice that they can't remember my number any more without their cell phone handy. I see these things being huge in the area of 'intelligence augmentation' and 'external memories', if only people could accept that learning things rote is no longer something we actually have to do any more.
Ok great the computer fits under my collar, but does it have a jack to plug right into my brain? Or must I wear those uber-geeky display glasses with a one handed keyboard to use it, which would seem to defeat the purpose of yet another ultra small computer. It seems we need to work on the interface for wearables more than anything.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I still have some (pretty straight-forward) bugs to be ironed out but a few other friends are now diving into these.
Best to iron these out without the device still in the shirt collar. Medium starch.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
... i dunno that i'd be all 'collar' about it.
... especially if i can put an 802.11g-friendly antennae thread somewhere.
..."
.mp3s' of the concert i just attended, i'd attend more concerts.
i'd definitely wear one of these in my leather jacket, though.
seems like it would be a good fit for 'seams', and i can think of a million uses for linux-enabled clothes, really
combine it with todays 'bendy LCD' materials, and we could, finally, be rid of the package-gadget dilemna forever. (clothes become computing devices.)
"hi, i'm home, its me, this is my pgp key, turn on the lights and wake up the studio
"constant-slashdot feed, on my collar lcd..."
"location-based websites" - now, here is an idea whose time has come: an internet based entirely on -physical- proximity.
who knows, maybe devices like this could save the music industry. if my clothes walked away with legit
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Belt? Even worse in many ways. In a working enviroment things tend to snag. And if you are crawling around after wires this is not nice.
So yeah the collar would be an intresting spot. A safe place on the body. How often do you bump your hips into something and how often your throath?
Of course the original reference was humorous intended but I just dislike it when people automatically snub an idea just because they refuse to think for a second about a new possibilty.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Slave you've been bad. Do you know what happens to bad boys?!"
"No Mistress, but wait let me google it..."
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Is collar-top computing the Next Big Thing?
Why not? For many, it'd be the only processing power above the neck.
Man, if I link this to a voice recognition program for numbers and math terms, add a display in your sleeve or like a HUD inside your glasses, and I could have a voice activated calculator, and totally impress chicks and others when doing complex equations right infront of them: "Hey M, what's the total liability for the period 1972 through 1989 if we owed $6,998,973.20 calculated at a compounded interest of 6%?" "It's THREE! Wait, oh shit, DragonSpeak failed."
[Please sign here]
No, it isn't.
I think people should start working on smaller, more convenient interfaces rather than smaller computers, because we have some pretty ridiculously small computers out already.
Hmm, combine that computer with this flexible display technology (running a flashy screensaver) and put anyone else's loud tie to shame.
Or just use the tie as your monitor, although it'd have to curl up so you could read it more easily. Now what nerd do we know that wears a curling up necktie...
-- Alastair
I don't know about you, but my company's payroll department is staffed exclusively by ninjas. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've gone to get my paycheck and gotten a throat punch.
They broke my pta (personal throat assistant) right when I got there, and I had to buy something else.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
You're exactly right, that is the way things are headed. But stop to think about the local computing power that may be required. Things like sophisticated video compression algorithms, speech recognition, and in the future perhaps an intelligent agent which sifts through data and presents useful items (think advanced version of dashboard). All of these things will need power close to the cpu. After that, Sun had it right, "The Network is the Computer". Especially for storage of data, etc. But there will always be a baseline requirement for local computing power.
Also, another idea to consider. By offloading processing power... ie, the "dumb terminal" approach, you take away the power to customize your experience. You effectively end up with an advertising receiver. You'll be powerless to access the types of information that you're interested in, and the device becomes more like a television, only capable of doing what it's preprogrammed to. Most people will not go to the effort to set up their own web services to connect to.
Distributed processing power is the future. But with lots of power spread out over millions of portable devices all interconnected, it becomes more of a social appliance that a number crunching system.
(I drift off topic...)
Personally what I'm most interested in are assistive agents. I think in the future you may be considered handicapped to NOT have one of these things someone on your person allowing you to tap into the global network, maybe even subconciously. Think instant google searches based on something you're thinking about, augmenting your memory automatically. Some really cool stuff, just hope the economy keeps together so I see it happen in my lifetime.
Seems like they either prepared their site for the /. effect or they initially were out to sell this stuff but reconsidered.
Take a look at the google cache here and here
where you can find out more about prices and specifications.