Finns come up with 37,000 more or less useful applications for mobile phones
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What do ideas like a sound-based positioning system for the blind, a mobile phone-based fingerprint identification system, a voice-recognition text message service, or an automatic service to warn travellers of dangerous areas abroad sound like?
These and 37,000 other ideas for applications for mobile telephones were among the responses when the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) asked the public for ideas for new ways that mobile telephony could improve the quality of life.
The original goal of 35,000 ideas was exceeded by about 2,000.
"All 1,400 people who submitted ideas are experts in their own everyday lives. Therefore, it was relatively easy for us to compile the world’s largest idea bank", says Pekka Alahuhta of VTT.
The majority of the suggestions are not expected to bear any practical fruit. Only seven percent of the entries are seen to be "brilliant", while 20 percent were called "interesting", and 60 percent were seen as "ordinary".
"Next we will start refining these ideas into products with the help of Finnish companies", says research professor Pekka Abrahamsson.
The approximately 2,000 top ideas included a warning signal announcing the expiration of parking time, combined with the possibility to buy more time via the mobile phone. Another quite reasonable idea was that of a location-linked call filter, which could be used to block work-related calls while the owner of the phone is at home.
Interesting ideas included the possibility of ordering "good excuses" by phone, or booking a taxi in advance to wherever a person happens to be at three in the morning.
There was a considerable amount of duplication.
Several respondents proposed a service in which a phone subscriber could use the in-built camera to photograph a plant or bird and send the photo to a central database for identification.
Proposals for various types of positioning services were also popular: there were suggestions of ways to locate lost members of a tour.
Another suggestion was the possibility of retracing one’s movements the previous evening in situations of impaired early morning recollection.
Positioning is also believed to be behind a proposal for a special "mobile shout". "When I shout a warning, it could be heard through all mobile phones at a distance of up to 200 metres", was one proposal.
Those behind the idea campaign suspect that many of the proposals must have been from students, as the situations that the applications were proposed for appeared to focus on partying and mating rituals. One suggestion was that mobile phones might somehow reveal the presence of singles nearby, and provide a character profile.
An absolute gem of an idea in the field of voice recognition was a built-in sobriety test based on the clarity of a person’s speech.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 8.6.2006 - TODAY |
 Finns come up with 37,000 more or less useful applications for mobile phones
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