LOS ANGELES – You're walking around some huge computer show wearing a cracker-sized sliver of silicon that was part of your conference registration package. Your stylish "infocharm" comes with a tiny infrared transceiver that automatically captures which booth you visited, whom you talked to, and how long you spent there.
Each day when you leave the conference, you stop at a kiosk, where your badge automatically emails you the names, phone numbers, addresses, and other personal information for the 100 people you've talked to during the day.
InfoCharms Inc., a spinoff of the MIT Media Lab, says it has just such a product and expects to demonstrate it at the upcoming Internet World show in New York. And by Thanksgiving, it expects to be selling the devices in bulk for US$10 each.
The invention is one of a number of tiny devices being developed by InfoCharms and Media Lab researchers, priced up to $100, that they say will allow people to perform a range of tasks, from remotely controlling home appliances to connecting with like-minded people at singles events, to sending out 911 distress signals over the Internet.
Each will be designed to fit snugly into fashionable slipcovers, available for a small additional cost.
"People haven't thought of computers as being part of the social scene, but rather as big iron chained to a desk," said Alex Pentland, academic head of the Media Lab. "They haven't thought about what a little computer might do to help daily human life. We have done devices like this at Media Lab social functions, so we know that they work amazingly well."
To whet public interest, InfoCharms is putting on a fashion show at Internet World promoting wearable computers developed by MIT Media Lab, Georgia Tech (poultry inspection systems, among others), Carnegie-Mellon University (computers in a T-shirt), and the Center for Future Health (heart monitors and related medical wearables).
Sponsors for the show, complete with leggy high-fashion models, include Hewlett-Packard and Red Herring magazine. Wearables are "much more addictive than cell phones," said Alex Lightman, InfoCharms' president and chairman. "Here's a prediction: Wearables will start outselling hand-held mobile phones within five years, and never look back."
Lightman, an MIT graduate, partnered with international model Katrina Barillova to create a consumer market for wearables technology developed by the MIT Media Lab. He licensed the technology for an undisclosed amount estimated to be well into six figures.
Dataquest research fellow Martin Reynolds says that devices such as InfoCharms' intelligent conference badge would be easy to produce at very low cost. "You can buy remote controls with similar infrared capabilities [as with the conference contact-recording infocharm] for $9.99," he said. "You could program your Palm Pilot to do the same thing."
The difference, of course, is that Palm Pilots cost hundreds of dollars and are a lot bulkier than InfoCharms' devices.
The key here is simplicity and low cost. Unlike expensive, multi-purpose PCs and mobile devices, MIT and InfoCharms are purposefully designing very simple devices. The conference device, for example, only has 8KB of memory.
The conference chip is simply a pointing device that creates a cryptic record of encounters with other people. Hooked to an Internet database of show attendees through the conference kiosk or a laptop, it points to the Web address where each contact's information resides.
Because the amount of information needed for this pointing utility is so small, you can "bookmark" several thousand contacts on one inexpensive piece of silicon.
InfoCharms' conference device uses a key feature of the Internet: its ability to store vast amounts of information that a user can access on demand but doesn't need on his own computer. It's the same basic principle that allows you to view your bank statements, back up your hard drive, or surf a newspaper on the Internet.
So why aren't PC companies and hand-held computer producers making these inexpensive devices? "Why in the world would a computer company want to sell you something cheap when they can sell something expensive?" Lightman said.
