'Cell phone banking' is really a poor title for this excellent web cast on MarketWatch. Jeff Kagan is interviewed about the implications of the deals being made by AT&T with Wachovia, SunTrust and Regions Financial to deliver 'cell phone banking'. My reaction to the title was: Can't we do that already with obnoxious touch tone menu systems and Indian call centers? However, this isn't what the web cast is talking about (like I said, poor title). The bigger implication, the heart of it, is that we will soon be able to pay for things with our mobile devices.

So, yes, 'the future is here' we can now all sleep easier at night because we can pay for things and fuel Capitalism with more gusto. More importantly there are a few things that are sure to worry people and my self.

Security is discussed, but that's really not what worries me. What if you loose your phone? Yea, but what if you loose your keys, or your wallet, or your purse. Over the past few million year us humans have gotten pretty good at tending not to loose things that are of value (although I'm sure it still does happen to someone everyday, we live through it, life goes on). Transaction security is a whole other issue but I have faith in good encryption and that secure systems will be in place to handle the transactions.

Transaction speed is going to be a bigger issue than anyone has mentioned. We've gotten pretty impatient as species these days (try stopping right where you are for ten seconds on your way to work tomorrow morning, people will be pissed). If a mobile payment service like this is going to make any headway in the market, it will need to be 1) lightning fast and 2) really easy to use (aka., lightning fast for the user). The test I use for ease of use on my mobile is: Can I do it with one hand, in the dark, while walking. Seriously take those human factors into account! And, while many networks claim you're on the Edge, they are slow, and you aren't (yea, you know who you are Mingular with a C). In fact, most of the Internet enabled apps on my handset are dogs compared to the luxurious speeds we've grown accustomed to on the desktop.

Oh and Jeff you can't count: The 'Third screen' you mentioned and I'm paraphrasing here, 'first we had the television, then the computer, then the cell phone... the cell phone is the third screen', Um.... you missed the mother of all screens: the silver screen! Mobile devices are the fourth screen. Lets keep our numbers straight.

To commemorate its 45th birthday, Repubblica created a photo time line of the evolution of the mouse. What floors me is how much the OG wooden box with a button on it looks so much like something that rolled fresh out of the shop at ITP. I couldn't help but notice that the track pad had been left out all together. It is a mouse isn't it? Same fundamental interaction model anyway. Go team! Go Douglas Engelbart! Shouldn't you be richer than Gates by this point?

ITP is out of forks. So today I ate my delicious leftovers with chopsticks. Which there is an abundance of. And so the story goes.

No posts for March! What is up? Where's DelGaudio? Is he off his rocker? No... no... I've been extraordinary busy with thesis. That the name of the game these days.

I haven't written much about my thesis project intentionally. Partially because the project was still under wraps for a while as I fleshed out the idea more fully (and its still changing, as with everything, always, getting better every day).

The project that I've been working on for my thesis is a sensor, display, and reactive material system for a snowboarder. The system uses a GPS and accelerometer to collect rider data and broadcast it wirelessly to an embedded display in the rider's glove. Additionally the rider data can be transmitted to a phone or to a reactive material embedded in the board. Over spring break I spent the week in VT and tested a alpha version of the of the sensor system. Things overall went well. I'm now in the process of taking the data collected during the field test and using to create and test the glove display and reactive polymer. I've posted some of the photo documentation on Flickr.

Labels: snowboarding, thesis