Tag Archive for 'research'

What can you buy for $5.00?

five_dollars.jpgHalf a pack of nappies, a statuette of Ralph Wiggum, a Fish Taco, a taxi ride to the airport in Xiamen, China and a trip to the hairdressers in Kabale, Uganda.

What do these things have in common?  Only that they each cost around five dollars.
The Five Dollar Comparison is a collaborative project that invites you to send in your photos of things that cost about $5.  Submissions are made by a Flickr group and there are already a good selection of goods both commonplace and outré up on the site.

But wait, you are thinking.   What the yellow rubbery heck has this got to do with mobile phones?

Well, it’s a fair comment.  The answer, apparently, is that this is a project started by an internal research and development team at Nokia.  The team specialises in looking at current trends and “identifying and understanding future disruptions and opportunities”.

No, I’m not sure what that means either.  It’s appears to be something to do with the fact that half the world’s population has a mobile phone and that this fact means we are all more connected.  Asking what you can buy for $5, anywhere in the world, is an attempt to broaden the discussion about this interconnected world.

Or something.

It’s a fun site, anyway, and might spark a new thought or two.

But that’s enough of all this nonsense now, Nokia.  Get back to releasing the bleedin’ Tube like you promised.  Run along now.  Sell it for $5 if it makes you feel better.



Rattle rattle rattle- feels like 3 texts

Researchers at Glasgow University have come up with a novel way of interacting with your phone, giving it a shake to feel what is ‘inside’ it.

Their software - Shoogle - uses the motion sensors found in (e.g.) a Nokia N95 to detect when the phone is being shaken and then gives audio and tactile feedback using a combination of the vibrating motor and speakers.

For example, if the phone is low on power, Shoogle can make it feel as though it has a small amount of liquid ‘juice’ sloshing around inside. The software can also make it feel as though there are a different number of balls rattling inside the phone according to how many text messages are waiting to be read.

Shoogle is just a research project at the moment, but the release of Nokia’s Sensor Framework API means that we should be seeing more stuff like this in the wild in the coming months.