June 01, 2004
Airtexting
Nokia has just announced a phone that can send "airtexts" -- messages that are displayed in the air by a set of LEDs. As their press release notes:
By waving the Nokia 3220 from side to side, the LED lights of the Nokia Xpress-on(TM) Fun Shell light up to "write" a message that appears to float in mid-air. Exchanging messages across a crowded room or at open-air concerts will never be the same.
Blogger Joi Ito speculated on the possibility of this being used for some hilariously aggressive heckling at conferences. Imagine some stuffed shirt giving a speech -- and looking up to see the words "YOU SUCK" floating in the middle of the audience. Heh. And speakers thought the backchannel was bad.
(Thanks to Boing Boing for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at June 01, 2004 12:18 PM
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Man, and you thought a cell phone ringing in a theatre was annoying.
This isn't really new. Wildseed (http://www.wildseed.com) had a "smart skin" phone that Kyocera was going to market, which also had airtexting. I saw a prototype when I was doing some work for Kyocera.
It's *lame*. I mean, seriously lame. The cognitive dissonance associated with using that feature is simply *massive*. It's like popping a whitehead at a prom dinner. Who would do it?
Gaaaaaaaaaaah
Now I can't get that image out of my head.
Yeah, I rather agree, it does seem like an impossibly dorky thing to do. And you're quite correct about the previous Kyocera phone that attempted this app; I read about that when I did a mobile-phone story for MTV last fall. I'll be interested to see if *anyone* uses 'em.
"I must use this power only to annoy!"-bart simpson
so there really doesn't seem to be any practical usage for this that regular text messaging or just talking wouldn't be better/less annoying for. I'm sure many people will end up using this feature, though I doubt anyone will pay extra for it.
this is a good reason to invent new ways to shut off people's phones through bluetooth or somesuch.
They could sell a ton to Red Sox fans in Boston. Imagine the entire stadium waving "Yankees Suck" in unison.
