Slashdot Mirror
Short Text Messages In Mid-Air
bahree writes "The BBC is running an interesting story on how Nokia is making a mobile that lets you write short text messages in mid-air. The messages are written using a row of LEDs fitted on the rear cover of Nokia's forthcoming 3220 phone. A motion sensor in the phone makes the lights blink in a sequence that spells out letters when the handset is waved in the air."
OK, the social engineering that is going on here is getting out of control. It's bad enough that you have someone talking on their phones in the elevator/restaurant/movie theatre or on the subway behind you about all sorts of things (many of which are quite personal), but now we are going to get people gesticulating madly, waving their arms back and forth to send messages.
Lets have some real innovation, yes? Rather than fun and games with LEDs, what I would like to see some real innovation in in terms of interaction with cell phones much like iChatAV (prevents having to remember phone numbers etc...), whereby you could call someone wherever they may be over TCP/IP or have servers automatically negotiate phone calls through traditional land lines if the receiver of the call is not available on the iChatAV equivalent. It could be relatively easy to establish a hierarchy of places to contact a person starting with VOIP, then progressing on down to sending a voice to text message at the very last.
Right now at least, we do have phones (V600) that will automatically negotiate networks (so I can have one phone to travel with internationally rather than having to keep two or three depending upon the networks), but most of these phones have maddening interfaces and that in of itself could use some thought and effort. Look, placing GUI interfaces on lots of stuff is OK if it streamlines your operation of the device, but the phone companies and even automobile manufacturers are using lousy GUI interfaces to perform simple tasks. (I absolutely refuse to consider the new BMW's because of that stupid GUI that has to be navigated through three screens to change the radio station or move the seat or change the temperature.
Sorry for the rant.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I used to have toy from Mattel back around 1983 or so that worked on this same concept - it was called a LightStick or some such. It was a long black paddle with a row of leds on the front, and a keyboard on the back. You just typed in a message, and wave the stick wildly back and forth in the air.
As I recall the problem was, waving this thing around wildly was very taxing on the arms, and the message was sometimes unclear and difficult to read - especially after fatigue set it.
Hopefully Nokia thought about this, and has made it a little less straining to use.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
Just look at all the ugly ascii art we see from the ./ trolls.
Now imagine some retarded 15 year old high school loser waving an animated picture in the air in front of you.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
sulli
RTFJ.
I wonder if it has any pre-programmed messages already? A particularly useful one might be "HELP: HAVING A SIEZURE!"
* Olaserov is in the process of thinking up a signature.
I hope it comes with reverse mode so I can wave messages to the car in front of me. think: "Green is for go"
ahhh... this is what happens when your R&D dept. can't keep up with the marketing dept...
gimmiks for the kiddies...
writing messages to a DJ in a noisy club. I currently request songs by holding up my phone as close as possible, but that isn't always readable.
The Technonaut
Nokia said the 3220's air messaging system could be used by friends to talk to each other across crowded rooms or open-air concerts.
Great, all the artists need are 10,000 people waving "Freebird" in the air
Kind of like Hokey Spokes but not as big or cool really. But it will sell with the junior high crowd I predict.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
cool a better way to flip people off when they cut you off... "FU" should become very popular
It's annoying enough having people using cell phones for normal sms messages in movie theatres...imagine the waving of phones in movie theatres that will happen now...of course if the message happened to be a target...
Please mod up the first person to spell out "Fuck off and die!" with their wavey phone thingy and post a picture.
When someone developed the flamethrower it was because of the idea "You know, I'd really like to set that person over there on fire"
I wonder what the analogous thought process was for this product if there was one...
ACMD eht detaloiv evah uoy
You notice a cup with a few coins in it at their feet.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://www.theregister.com/2004/06/02/nokia_she
How stupid is this. Just open your mouth and talk the the person you can fricken see. Rediculous. I am sure there will be a plethora of posts about how someway this could be integrated with Linux or a beowulf cluster by a loser sitting at home living with his parents, compiling the latest kernel.
[Insert name of enemy] has a small duck.
[...] stinks
and so forth
-=- celibate by popular demand
WTF! WTF! WTF! (LOL!) Stay away from this guy, he'll be waving his phone in your face ... !!
I've always wondered how long it would take for these things to become available to the average consumer. What I really think should start getting popular are keyboards that shine on the desk, allowing you to type without the need for moving keys. This is a big step into mobile technology, and it can only grow bigger, and better!
A beowulf cluster of these!
Can it show goatse.cx?
In Soviet Russia the phone lights you up.
Does it run Linux?
Oh, and:
1. Type
2. Shake
3. ????
4. Profit
How about a motion-sensor device that will enter text on your phone (i.e. into a SMS message) as you move the phone. Say making a "J" motion will enter in a J. Kinda like Palm's graffiti just using your hands.
Reminds me of Bob Blick's propellor clock. Except it spins constantly.
links
So instead of picking up the phone and calling the other person, you're supposed to type in a 15-letter text message and wave your phone around in the air?! I can see how this can be fun... for 5 minutes.
If you wanted to communicate to someone in a discrete manner you would sms them or phone them. If you wanted to make an indiscrete communication that would get their attention you could shout to them (they are still within vision range and i doubt that you can read the little LED's at 100 metres), so what void does this feature fill?
I may not be the target market for this, so it could just be my not seeing how these things tend to take on a life of their own beyond the original use.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
Whether you are waving your arm in a straght line? Seems like when you wave your arm it makes more of an arc than a line. I wonder if the phone compensates.
And you wouldn't want to send a long message on a subway -- you'd end up whacking the people around you trying to work it out. Back up, buddy! I've got a phone here!
Nokia said the 3220's air messaging system could be used by friends to talk to each other across crowded rooms or open-air concerts.
Yes, because waiving a phone around in the air in a crowded room is a good idea; how long until someone gets suied for injuring someone with one of these? Or even better, how long until Nokia gets suied? Also, this would be a great way to advertise to muggers just how new and expensive your phone is.
I remember seeing a toy at a rave that is essentially the same thing (minus the phone). It was the LEDs on the end of a box, attached to a handle, that you spin around in circles and it prints out messages that you can read if it is spun fast enough. It's a pretty cool trick.
I can see two positive things happening with this technology:
1. People using this who accidentally hit people in the process will be sued, prompting them to stop using it.
2. People using this may develop carpal tunnel or dislocations, prompting them to stop using it.
Enough's enough. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should - someone throw the engineer that came up with this off a cliff!
You have to buy an extra shell to get this silly function (Available in Germany). It's like the old days when you had to buy a special battery to get vibration alarm, but this time the function is kind of useless. Imagine many people waving their mobiles in the air to communicate. Not to mention that you can't type and wave at the same time ...
* Smile. People will wonder what you think. *
I can see tons of personal injury lawsuits resulting from someone wacking the next person in the head while reading their SMS's, or even worse, stabbing someone in the eye with the antenna.
I want to know when it was decided that all the most annoying technology would be crammed into one device and then given to basically any idiot. I sure didnt vote on that.
You have to admit that it's pretty clever. Especially being able to control the games using the same motion sensing technology. We've spent decades twisting and waving gamepads around in the air in fruitless efforts to produce that extra bit of movement in critical gaming moments - how about it actually working for a change! Why can't my console or PC do this?
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
The next thing you know this will be used by spammers too.
"R U BIG ENUF?"
"V.I.A.G.R.A.!"
Well.. in 15 characters or less... They'll find a way I'm sure of it!
NOONECARESNOKIA
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imagine someone cuts off someone else in traffic.
Both drivers taking their eyes off the road to tap obscene messages into their cell phones, and wildly waving their arms around to display it to the other driver.
Lawyers, start your engines!
Replace the LEDs with Lasers!
;)
- Red for a funny effect on the building accross
the road.
- Blue to look evil/cool.
- Carbon Dioxide Lasers to cut steel.
Bah... let me know when it can do it in three quarters air. That's when I'll be really impressed...
Come on, Nokia. Don't we geeks look stupid enough?
Now you've got us flapping our arms around at concerts trying to spell "Freebird". And just think of that waving around to make the message idea. Fairly soon you can walk into any office in the country and see people acting like a frightened chicken trying to make a point to a person 2-feet away?!?
What's next, a torso-mounted hoola-hoop that lets you surf the web? A facial-tick reader that checks the weather for you?
I liked the pocket protectors better.
so I can have one phone to travel with internationally rather than having to keep two or three depending upon the networks
get yourself a GSM phone from a service provider like T-Mobile (or Cingular IIRC). GSM was designed in Europe to solve the problem of the carrier not being available in every country. Just pop in the sim card that works in the area.
And the sim card is designed to work not just in cell phones but also, say, in hotel phones/phone booths, so that the bill will go to automatically to the sim card.
Unfortunately here in the US, GSM phones are locked by the carriers so they wouldn't work easily with other sim cards. You'd have to call customer service to have them unlocked. Or have it unlocked by a third party for a small fee (like we do in the Philippines).
This I actually saw a long time ago in a bar in London, '91 or '92... I was chatting away with some friends and I kept thinking Absolut, Absolut... that feeling like you just saw a sign for it somewhere. After a while of this subliminal pounding I notice a vertical row of bright red lights in a corner. Didn't think twice until I moved my head away from it and saw "Absolut" floating in mid air.
Essentially just moving your eyes around the room and going past these lights a person would get "Absolut" written in mid-air for them...
If I ever wanted a gift as much as anything, it was a row of lights like that! Many very useful purposes for an object like that come to mind... spelling out "Go into my bedroom and undress..."
Shouldn't something like this have some subliminal regulation?
it has gone far enough.
This normally is not my mindset however this must stop. It is bad enough to hear a cell phone but now I am FORCED to see your cute little message.
Punches self. Feels much better.
I mean, this is just amazing! A system that lets you send messages by waving your arms!
Maybe in a few more years they'll invent a system which lets you send a message by entering just dots and dashes.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
Aside from being on a mobile phone. I've seen modified metronomes that do this, but can spell out long sentences - of course they aren't designed for long distances. Several slashdotters have already pointed out that Disney had a toy that did the same thing.
Last thing I want is someone waving their arms about in my face when they could get up and walk over to the person and use that thing called a mouth and utilize their own damn vocal cords.
Back in my day, we called them smoke signals.
Now someone can let everyone in the area know they were stupid enough to buy this useless crap.
And 90% of the messages displayed will be FU
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
As far as "messages in mid-air" are concerned, I would find SMS messaging in airplanes a lot more useful than adding a disco light effect from the 1980's to mobile phones.
most dirty words are 15 caracters.
christ on a cracker. I'm all for nerdliness, but I cannot think of a more useless non-feature.
... + (arm-excercising device)
it used to be: phone = phone.
it is becoming: phone = (verbal communication device) + (textual communication device) + (personal digital assistant) + (voice recorder) + (camera) + (internet access point) + (vibrator) + (portable game closet) + (GPS locator) + (status symbol)
and now we add:
basically it is becoming: phone != phone.
-- --
dear mobile manufacturers,
NOT ALL FEATURES ARE GOOD FEATURES.
love,
matt.
If anyone has ever tried any of the current devices for creating messages in the air using LED's, namely the one which you swirl around to create the message, you'll know that this is a definate improvement in typing the message.. while text messages are generally painfully slow to type, entering whole sentances having to scroll through the whole alphabet and symbols using 3 buttons is torturously, mind-numbingly slow and annoying.
You gotta know where this is going... If it does not use pre-programmed character or if you can import characters, you could give people the virtual finger all night long! I can't wait to use it while driving in my car in the dark when normally people can't see me flip them off. -It is better to have loved and LEARNED than to never have loved at all
Itop Website
Imagine flashing some nice ASCII p0rn in public, would make some really nice fun :) ..erhm.. privates, Edna.
Old Lady: Henry *roll with eyes* what *is* that thing hanging in the air by that kid, yeah, the one shaking his hand all around his head with one of these teechno things?
Henry: Ehrm, it seems to be a womans
It`s not about the money, it`s about the things they buy.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
It's not supposed to be useful. It supposed to be fun. It's phone/toy. Motion sensitive games sounds cool, and you might actually use it to wave your phone number or something.
face to face communication is years away !
the graphic in the article makes the phone spell out the word 'FUN', my money is on people using this a lot for messages that start out with the same two letters but end up differently, especially in traffic: I mean, come on, even if you scream at somebody who cut you off they won't hear you, now you'll be able to wave the phone at them and let them know how you REALLY feel (I wonder if this comes with a preference to spell things backwards so they'll appear straight up in rearview mirrors).
It's also definitely quite a possibility that somebody will stand up in the dark movie theatre and wave this thing around to tell nice things to all the folks sitting behind... not to mention the applications in school during tests and so on.
Jaded? cynical? maybe, but really, come on, this seems really like one of those products where the distruptive uses far outweigh the benefits it can afford...
-- the cake is a lie
AT LAST. A sure way to say "F*** You" to another driver on the road.
I can't wait to type in F U Tailgator, and wave it while driving into the guardrail since I'm not paying attention to the road...
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
This is old news to me. This summer, some of my friends figured out a way to get this to work on a modified fan (i.e. the LEDs were mounted on one of the fan's fins). While I'm not sure how exactly they got it to work (I just saw the final project, but they hooked it up to the computer somehow), it was kinda cool just to see the thing work.
Besides, it helped to cool you down. What could be better? In fact, these would probably work fairly well at amusement parks with the fans producing subliminal messages (along the lines of "Buy More Pepsi!") as well as cooling the people off.
Procrastination sucks.
Top quality exercicle for sale
/should've been in bold
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
I don't know if this was mentioned before, but I'd rather keep looking at porn than read 126+ comments to see if it was. Anyways, devices that do this have been around for several years, I always see them in the Discovery Store in the mall...
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
This really seems to me like it could be used in a plethora of really obnoxious ways. I live in San Francisco and we have enough people walking around talking loudly into their cellphones and typing out SMS with their key-tones set on "LOUD AS FREAKIN' POSSIBLE" so I'm sure that very soon I will see two pre-teens standing on opposite street cornors waving "OMG BILLY LOOKED AT ME IN MATH CLASS" and "OMG HE 3 3 3s U" to eachother... I guess it will give people more fodder for The Chronicle's Public Evesdropping section, though.
-"Nice jacket, who shot the couch?."
At Last, a sure way to say "F*** You" to another driver on the road!!
"fly to this tower"
I can just picture a beowolf cluster of them .... no wait, before you mod me down, my cricket club could do with a giant led scoreboard so all I have to do is wait til most people wanna dump them, get my hands on a few hundred and build a little bluetooth machine to control them. I'm not insane ... REALLY @~}
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
so, next out will be an RFC about how to packetize IP datagrams and wrap them in this led-air 'transport'. but its one way, so how do you get ack's and stuff? well, that's just a detail, save that for AFTER we get funding.
IP over ASCII LED air painting.
at least it will be faster than ip over carrier pidgeon (which IS an actual RFC, btw).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I am that drunken, stone asshole!
I want one to mount in the back of my car to tell tail-gaters to goto hell...
Saw something like this at the local drugstore, it displayed time via a row of lites on a oscillating wand mounted in a small plastic box..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Nintendo released a device like this last year called the Pokemotion - and I have one. Amongst it's presets are a whole set of ascii smileys (the japanese variant, at least, but still recognisable as such.)
:)
Scared yet?
"steal me!" The phone has some nice features (XHTML browser for one), but all the LEDs seem to do is advertise to would-be theives that you've got an expensive phone.
"HANG UP & DRIVE"
"U R IN MY LANE!"
"SAME TO YOU ASS"
"DAMN TAILGATER!"
this is a bunch of lower case letters to avoid the lameness filter so you can ignore it if you like or not if it fits your preference.
What a great idea, a phone that you have to wave wildly in the air to send your message! The marketing people at Nokia are geniuses. It has built in repeat sales all over it. Think of all the extras they can sell too! Impact insurance, bystandard protection plan and of course for the die hards little tethers like on surfboards.
Nokia said the 3220's air messaging system could be used by friends to talk to each other across crowded rooms or open-air concerts.
Okay, let me see, I'm in a crowded room, a party let's say, and my drunk friend is trying to get my attention. What takes longer, for drunk boy to pull out the phone, get to the proper menu, drunk type into the phone using T9, press ok, wave the phone like a madman, only to have it slip out of his hand and go flying across the room and hit the hot chick in the head he was trying to point out to me......
OR, is it easier for him just to yell my name and spare the girl a head injury? Which is easier?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
I said I wanted BETTER battery life. I must be breaking up, sorry. I'll try you on a landline.
Alex.
There have been numerous toys that do this; a waving wand thing, a frisbee with programmable message, etc. I built one with a hardcoded logo about 15 years ago.
Here's another example:
http://www.luberth.com/analog.htm
Ummm... so what exactly do you think you'll enter the message to display with the LEDS with? I would guess probably the phone's 'patheric excuse for a keyboard'...
If you could make it print the characters in reverse it'd be awesome!
My first messages would be:
"Put Down The Phone And Drive"
"Eat when you get home!"
"I think you've eaten enough already"
"Watch TV when you get home."
"Nice stereo. Turn it down."
"POLICE"
"OMG WTF LOL"
I once heard (maybe an urban legend, but anyway) that Nokia is making 30% of their sales with... ... RINGTONES.
Maybe someone has the exact numbers availbe?
Such a gimmick seems to be a very thoughtful addition to the phone for me.
Now, Nokia could start selling people LED-Messages. And, since they pay alot for ___RINGTONES___...
...what we used to call, way back when I was in college, a "hand-waving argument" -- which just meant putting a poorly documented line of reasoning up on the board and hoping nobody noticed that the logic to tie it together just wasn't there.
Well, the principle is old,
doing it on a static (metronome on a bar counter) or a predictible (like a bikes wheel) device is easy.
(BTW, the metronome version is available at ThinkGeek if you want it now)
What's new it that it mesures your (irregular) arm movements and adapts to them. Then again, we'll have to see how well it'll do in real.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Look. The company is making gazillion products a year. So what if some of them look like a candy bar and have oddball features like this?
Does that take anything from you?
No, it's-funny-laugh-debt.
Bot Assisted Blogging
...You hit me as I cross the road.
YouDrive, IDie.
Tune out the distractions or I end up in traction. The best driver interface should make all nondriving functions of the car inaccessable from the driver's seat unless the car is at rest. What do you think people riding shotgun are for?
However I am all for tactile feedback gear shifts and drive by wire and head's up displays. Just keep the nonessential stuff out of the driver's hands, until the driver parks. Too hot? Radio station sucks? Put up with it or pull over.
Oh, how we laughed at Kirrin Island.
Well the interesting thing about the absolut LED ad in the bar I saw was that it didn't seem like it was moving itself... If you looked at the LEDs directly you wouldn't see anything. Swinging your vision across the room the writing would appear for a second. Hence even more of a subtle/subliminal effect.
Are you seriously saying that you pull your car over to change a radio station or to turn the heat down? I'm no fan of distracted driving, but I am more than able to hit a preset button without taking my attention off of the road. Driving across flat prairie land does not take much concentration anyway.
I got a preview of this myself. I'm much too lazy to wave my arm so what I do is mount it on to my Segway and rock back and forth till the person reads the message.
As much as this feature seems annoying to most people reading slashdot, it might actually come in handy in certain situations:
That said, this is obviously only going to work in certain situations, namely dark rooms or at night, but what I find interesting is the fact it will be VERY easy and obvious for someone to pick you out of a crowd of people when your waving this around. Imagine emergency situations where it might be difficult to discribe your exact location and someone that is despirately trying to find you (At a concert, park, out lost in the wilderness etc), or even something as simple as alerting someone driving around trying to find you (and have never meet you before perhaps?), you could easily attract their attention, plus include a message they understand.
Now, granted 99% of the time it's going to be completely useless, but for the fact that the other 1% of the time this allows you to communicate more effectively, I think it's really not a bad idea.
I would also like to point out that the average slashdot reader should have no problems waving the phone around for extended periods of time (granted they use their right hand).
DJing is the artform of presenting and combining songs in new ways, setting the mood and telling a story with music (not to mention turntablism). If you just want to pick a song and have it played at your command, buy a Wurlitzer.
Reminds me of propeller clocks (also here, here, here...)
...or the similar mechanically scanned displays.
Spacewriter sells some very cool full-color displays. Their iBall 3D display is also sold at AudioVisualizers - check their site out for more animated demos.
There's also the Virtual Game System (Google cache) which was amazing; unfortunately the site is down so you'll have to settle for text and no pictures.
-- If you can read this, you are too close to my signature.
I am using my shark with a freakn' laser mounted on his head for drawing pictures in mid air for years now.
In my opinion, the manufactuers, should develop a short message system, that doesnt carrier text messaging.
Just finding the user within the little range of the phone in an area where there is no reception, or setting up a message "base station" where places like datacenters wouldnt have to purchase phones with messaging costs, where they can send messages in house.
But they wont do that any time soon, as it takes money away from the carriers. Although, messaging in a small room, quickly and efficiently with out a carrier would be useful. Theme Parks, Schools(The teeny Boppers), or any large events.
The event could also send "Broadcasts" informing the device users, that a ride has been closed, or a flight has been delayed. etc.,
can you side-talk with it?
Pretty much every comment has been disparaging... like "oooh... what do we need this for?"
I can think of one case where it would be useful: hearing impaired individuals.... Imagine trying to shout across a a street or something to a deaf friend.. not going to work. but if you could wave and message them, then it allows communication over "earshot" distances easier.
I programmed it to say "Get Linux" and wandered down Main Street waving it around. A few people actually made a sign that they knew what I was talking(? blinking? waving?) about.
in the case of one hardcore Micros~1 fanatic, that sign involved a certain obscene gesture.
People talking on a cell phone while driving is bad enough. Can you imagine some idiot in an SUV waving one of these things at other drivers?
As Click and Clack say, Drive Now, Talk Later.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Yeah and then someone will hack it to show a different message than you entered (you'd only notice if you waved it to yourself or in a mirror).
If you're even thinking abou getting one, please just go get it out of your system. Walk into the store. Enter in OMGWTFBBQ. Spin it around. Watch the reactions. Get bored. Leave.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
OK, so now we have a phone based implementation of 1981 toy that is "cutting edge"?
The Sky-Writer by Ideal was a wand like item that you could program to say whatever you wanted by waving LED's in the air.
I had one of these as an 11-year-old.
It was nine years later before I got my first "bag phone" (a Motorola).
Of course, it could be great now for those times I'd like to tell some D.C. beltway drivers MHO of their skills...
~8^]
My Treo 600 screen is pretty damn bright. Couldn't I get an app that does what these LED's do? Is the refresh rate fast enough to strobe for the retina persistence effect?
--
make install -not war
So, I thought that was the rationale for why a D.J. is more than just some poser replacing a CD player... that they somehow responded to the crowd.
Sigh. Normally the way a DJ responds to the crowd is by trying different tracks and seeing which style is getting the best response. For example, if a hard beat makes people leave the dancefloor, you'd play something funkier next. One guy with a phone does not represent the crowd as a whole.
If you don't want input from the jackasses in the crowd then what are you doing up there?
Maybe introducing people to some interesting music they haven't heard before? I'm guessing from the anti-DJ slant you're more of a live band kind of a guy. Well, imagine if every band only played covers and requests -- your local music scene would get stale pretty quickly. That's pretty much what you're proposing here.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
People yell into them...they ring all the time...people answer them while on dates. And now, you can slug someone in the side of the head as you wave your phone back and forth. The only good thing is that I'll bet a zillion of these phones are going to be accidentaly tossed 10 meters!
Here are a few other ideas I'm sure will appear on every 15 year old's cell phone in the next six months:
1) laser pointer - for when yelling and waving aren't annoying enough. Now a person with a cell phone can piss off everyone within a hundred meters.
2) loud WWII-style submarine klaxon
3) button that releases hydrogen sulfide while the phone yells "Dude! He who smelt it dealt it!"
4) taser add-on, for when an adult complains about features 1-3
"I'm Anonymous Coward, and I approved this message."
takes a song and converts it into the nokia ring tone thing that you can text message to yourself for at most 10cents? It's late and I'm TLTG to find out what it was called.
I don't know, I haven't used my Nokia in a long time. I upgraded to a T616 and have been in happy FREE ringtone heaven sending midi's over bluetooth.
Is bluetooth expensive to implement or something? I'm suprised most cellphones on the market don't have it yet.
But then again my friend who has a Motorola camera phone with Verizon just got a $132 bill, which was pretty much just from him mms'ing the pictures he took to his email account... So I can kind of understand why they're resistant to the tooth.
Maybe clippy wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Pathetic excuse for a keyboard my left foot. T9 works just fine for most messages (in English at least, can't say about other languages). I wouldn't even mind having T9 for use with a computer. It's 5 taps to get 'hello' with a normal keyboard, and 5 taps on a phone with T9. If you've got the need for a keyboard, get the Nokia 6810....
My Favourite Meme
Great , another way to ruin my movie night.Like laser pointers weren't bad enough.
This is probably the funniest thing I've ever read on slashdot.
All I can say is :
/. ?
1) why bother posting this to
2) a phone is a phone. Secondary functions such as games or crap like this are just an example that the company has run out of useful ideas.
3) Nokia's ABSURD keypad designs are a glaring example that they should be devoting design efforts elsewhere.
"A motion sensor in the phone makes the lights blink in a sequence that spells out letters when the handset is waved in the air." thats old school im trying to make smoke signs with my cell phone. :|
File under "Useless Nokia invention No. 174432".
It's actually pretty sad to see Nokia go from "best phones around" to "bad design with useless gimicks" in such a short time.
Imho the N3210 is one of the best mobiles, that are just phones and nothing more, but after that, Nokia pretty much lost it.
...aside from the bands, on each band there may be a number of service providers you have a roaming agreement with. when i take my uk, vodafone T630 to sweden, i can roam with a number of different phone companies. the phone has the option to manually select, say, vodafone sweden, so you can choose the one with the cheapest roaming.
...so when i plough into the back of you in my 2 ton 7 series because i was too busy fiddling with idrive trying to change the radio station or use sat nav, then that's ok?
Since the phone obviously compensates for how fast your arm is waving, wouldn't be just as easy to have it change lines with every wave? Like displaying 15 characters one the first wave, then another 15 until it reaches the end of the message, then back to the begining?
I only skimmed TFA, but I didn't see anything other than 15 character display. Seems it would be more practical, unless you're writing a book.
I swear they're stealing ideas from their college electronics lab notes- what's nex? Phone mounted potato clock all the way
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
Singapore Airlines already offers in-flight SMS.
Imagine though, with everyone waving these phone around and... Ooops there it goes tossed onto the concrete. Time to buy new phone.
Shame it can't translate into l33t.....
...from the message wands that were sold as toys starting, oh, about 30 YEARS ago?
I made a total dork out of myself back then when I bought one and took it to a Heart concert. Every time Nancy Wilson got close to where I was sitting, I'd madly wave the thing in the air spelling out "I LOVE YOU."
It's nice to see that the supply of dorks in this world is sufficient to support sales of an updated version of that ancient device. It's too bad they haven't figured out that most people can already figure out they're dorks and that they don't need to flail their arms about to draw attention to that fact.
..i just joined the mile high club!
http://efil.blogspot.com/
D-O-R-O-T-H-Y
Only if you're polite, or can be bothered to teach it swearwords. I have a friend who is neither, and have received lots of messages telling me I'm a "ducking aunt" :)
My favourite grips is that at least on my phone you can't change the order in which word options appear, so "pub" (which features in about 50% of my texts) comes after "sub" and "rub" (which feature in 0%). Sucks....
Given the sorry state of physical fitness in the US, I'd think some excuse to wave one's arm wildly would be at least slightly beneficial.
Both of these are non-issues for T9 on my phone (Motorola V60i Color) as you can easily add words to the dictionary, and it actually organizes the words that appear by how often you use them. EVen if this isn't the case in your phone, it's what, two extra keypresses to selec 'pub' instead of 'sub' or 'rub'.
BOM = Bill of Materials, not Balance.
And yes. I've personally gotten commended by my boss's boss for cutting about 2 cents off our BOM by getting rid of a resistor; why? Because we know we're going to sell 1 million plus of that particular module.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
...as people start waving their phones without having a firm hold on them, and end up just hurling them at walls, roads, lakes, ...people's heads.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
I wish mine did that, but hey, it's just a nokia 3330, it does NOTHING clever whatsoever...which is the way I like it...(although I can add words)
EVen if this isn't the case in your phone, it's what, two extra keypresses to selec 'pub' instead of 'sub' or 'rub'.
Which is just as many (5) as it takes the stupid way (p t->u a->b). :)
I remember in the St. Louis Science Museum some time back, they had a vertical row of LEDs on the wall. There were some mirrors, that said to take one, turn around (mirror facing LEDs) and shake back and forth.
:) And then, delightedly noticed the message. Of course, i then helped a other bewildered users.
After a bit, I realized that it was the *mirror* that was to be shaken!
It is kewl. I just wonder when the first law suits will come in about possible offensive LED lightings....
Have you read my journal today?
pr0n
There was a hobbyist electronics project in the 80s to make a wand that did this. I think it was in one of the British computer magazines for the BBC micro. Hopefully they don't try to patent it.
made this in high school, for physics class. stick with pic16f84 microcontroller and 8 LEDs. i did not know about the toys at the time, though.
Oh well, can you at least change the font?
Ok, maybe not you on flat prarie land. I don't walk there. But I do have to wonder about the people who are vacantly fiddlin with knobs unrelated to driving as they roll over the crosswalk outside outside my local mall regardless of whether I'm there or not.
Or those people who page through thousands of Mp3 folders while wavering all over their lane behind me on the freeway, so close that I can see them swapping CDs from through my rearview mirror. I always change lanes when that comes up.
No, I turn on my radio before I disengage the hand brake and it stays tuned until I stop.
We keep on putting more and more functions at the drivers fingertips... isn't it time that making a car as fun as a living room became a two person job?