Trekkie Communicators Now a Reality

SolFire writes "Forbes is carrying an article about Vocera Communications and their little internal communication system that they have working at their office that functions like the badge communicators from ST:TNG. The employees wear the system as a badge and touch it to start the connection. Then they speak the name of the person they want to talk to and the system connects them using VOIP for one-on-one communication." We mentioned these in 2002.

Comments

Yeah,

[Anonymous Coward]

but does it make the classic "deet deet" sound?

Not as fast as Star Trek

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they are not as fast as the ones on Star Trek. Ever notice that the computer on Star Trek semes to route the connection before the target name is given.

Data: Data to Lt Worf.
No real delay
Worf (over comms): Go ahead Data.

The delay is only enough for Worf to open his mouth and talk. It is not long enough to replay "Data to Lt Worf." I freely admit I'm crazy.

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[ackthpt]

The delay is only enough for Worf to open his mouth and talk. It is not long enough to replay "Data to Lt Worf." I freely admit I'm crazy.

The real fantasy here is that Worf, or anyone in your workplace, will answer a communicator that fast. Has there *ever* been a busy signal?

"Lt. Worf is on a nother line, please hold. ..dah-dah-dahhhh..dah-daddah-dah-dahhh..."

Now when you face someone who appears to be talking to you, you won't see a headset and think they may be on a call. This should add to confusion. (Like that funny phone commercial where the woman comes onto tha man, she's unaware is on a call.)

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[Steve B]

Now when you face someone who appears to be talking to you, you won't see a headset and think they may be on a call.

I recall Scott Adams predict that this would be used as an excuse to insult people with impunity (claim to be talking to somebody on the phone rather than the hulking brute in front of you).

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[Wind_Walker]

Not only that, their transporters are amazing. People on the planet below never seem to mind waiting until Picard got to the Transporter Room, and as soon as Picard walked in he gave the order to Energize. But people on the surface are always ready to greet the Away Team, no matter how much time they fiddle around arguing with the Doctor or configuring the Image Enhancers.

If I were standing on a planet waiting to be beamed up, I'd be terrified about moving too far, sitting down (I'd be beamed up without the chair!), or even worse going to the bathroom. Could you imagine the kind of embarassing situations that would arise from being beamed out of the toilet?

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[drwiii]

The real reason Q was pissed off at humanity, of course, is that there was no letter Q on traditional phones. Nobody could key his name into the company phone directory to find his extension. You try spending a few centuries getting only wrong number calls and see how you turn out.

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[bebing]

Ensign Jones: *hits communicator* 'Captain, I have received reports that there
may be a bug in certain ship software, is Holodeck 1 running?'
Captain Picard: 'Why yes, it is running.'
Ensign Jones: 'You'd better go catch it!'

Ensign Jones: *hits communicator* 'Guinin, do you have Klingon Prince Garduk in
a can?'
Guinin: 'Why, yes we do'
Ensign Jones: 'You'd better let him out then!'

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[starm_]

"No real delay"

That true, there is some weird shit happening to time in general in Star Trek. Did you notice how, all incidents seem to be resolved within an hour of time?

Also they have events that for us in our universe would take much longer than in the Star Trek Universe. The one you mensioned about the communicator is one. But did you also notice poker games last only a few minutes? Same thing with meetings, meals, surgery, war battles, rarely these events last more then 10 minutes whereas here in our universe they would all last hours or days.

And also everyone and everything in the "Star Trek Universe" seem to take a break every ten-fifteen minutes so that the television channels can show us a commercial. Its true! Try to notice next time you watch, after a commercial you never feel like you missed anything. Nothing happened during that time, its almost like time "froze" for that period. Also you'll notice they take more breaks towards the end of the hour maybe its because they get tired.

Re:Not as fast as Star Trek

[Lyran]

(Off-Topic)
Chekov has those powers...
oh wait, wrong show...

Man oh man..

[hookedup]

Scotty at work is really going to hate me...

And for company-wide broadcasts...

[Black Parrot]

...everyone answers to "Nerd".

William

[jstrain]

Shatner uses these to dictate his albums to his secretary...

Re:Simliar to wifi, but not quite.

[Toxygen]

You've never been married, have you?

Voice recognition

[Dirk Pitt]

I hope they've become better than Sprint with the voice recognition dialer. At least with a cell, people understand why I have to shout the same name 5 times in a row with different inflections.

It'd look a little odd to see someone walking down the road, repeatedly tapping their chest, saying "Robert! *smack* Ro-bert! *smack* Robbberrrtt! *smack* "

Re:Big badge

[dubiousdave]

Yeah, it won't take long before Linux is ported to them and we see roving Beowulf clusters chirping all over the place.

Yeah But does it

[myownkidney]

Run Linux?

On a more serious note, the badge, if you stick on your breast pocket, will have one heck of a time picking up your voice, especially in a noisy enviroment. Otherwise you will have to bow your head and pull your shirt up. Looks quite odd.

Re:Next Logical Step...

[warpSpeed]

BlueTooth ear pieces?

BlueTooth neural implants

3 am Tech support calls take on a whole new dimention. "Man, I was dreaming that the server kept going down last night."

Tag ... You're it

[Chief Technovelgist]

New office game - walk up to someone, tap their communicator, say the name of the president of the company and walk away. You're it!

At least this is an ST technology that works. Once on the set of the original Trek in 1967, an executive for a tech company saw the automatic doors. You just walk up to them and *whoosh* they open. No big sensor doormat, no nothing. He offered a million dollars for the technology.

The "technology" turned out to be two stagehands who yanked them open JIT.

Re:Next Logical Step...

[Phreakiture]

enterprise ready

You missed a pun opportunity, too.

Precognition is the answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has ever worked on a Federation Star Ship knows that the comm. system uses a "defocused temporal perception" to give the comm. system a limited sort of precognition. The inventor of the system claimed he got the technology for it from a parallel universe of sorts, that he stole it from an elevator system (the "Happy Vertical People Transporter") at a parallel universe corporation called the "Sirius Cybernetics Corporation". No one knows what he's talking about.

What Star Trek doesn't show you, is the many hours each day that the Ship's Counselor has to spend working with the comm. system just to get it to want to work. Apparently the system suffers some of sort of depression. I don't understand it.

Modern elevators are strange and complex entities. The ancient electric winch and "maximum-capacity-eight-persons" jobs bear as much relation to a Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Happy Vertical People Transporter as a packet of mixed nuts does to the entire west wing of the Sirian State Mental Hospital.

This is because they operate on the curios principle of "defocused temporal perception". In other words they have the capacity to see dimly into the immediate future, which enables the elevator to be on the right floor to pick you up even before you knew you wanted it, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing, and making friends that people were previously forced to do whist waiting for elevators.

Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking.

An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.

--Douglas Adams, "Restaurant at the End of the Universe"

Re:Scalability

[thrillseeker]

What do they do if there are two people with the same name?

One of them is awarded a red shirt.

How often...

[Bluesman]

...is this going to get left on accidentally. People will be getting fired left and right.

Or will people learn real quickly not to say "stupid (*&*(&" as soon as they hang up the phone.

Re:Damn, they've skipped over The Man from U.N.C.L

[Mateito]

> I always wanted to say, "Open channel D,"
> into my fountain pen.

I'm sorry, but exactly what is stopping you?

Location

[wideBlueSkies]

It'd be cool if the system was set up such that you can ask it where someone is, and have them located via GPS on the badge.

Picard: "Computer, where is Commander Laforge?"

Computer: "Commander Laforge is in the 10 Forward restroom, Stall 3."

wbs.