Liquid Crystal Tie

This is a project I took the time to design. The principle is simple: Track the owner with a GPRS high-speed radio. The radio tracks location and compares this data to a database built and maintained by an advertising agency.
The agency updates the database using a system of auctions that occur constantly where advertisers compete for the ad-space on the users.
The company then uploads images to the memory on the ties micro controller.
The user then recieves a big fat paycheque for the work they've done.

Potential problems: users may not like having a company which is hardly impartial knowing where they are constantly, however I imagine it will be more acceptable once CCTV in urban areas really starts to ramp up.

Of course the user shouldn't be entitled to a cheque when they just wear the device around their home, so location tracking is a necessity.

Finally, the user could also drop the tie off in a downtown dumpster and rake in the dough so a measure will have to be initiated where every week or so the device needs to communicate with the users personal computer to receive an 'update' that tracks the user as active.

The potential for this kind of marketing scheme is massive and once flexible OLED technology becomes commercially available I hope this will become more realistic. It will also afford the ability to have, say, a full color display surrounding a simple t-shirt, effectively turning our troubled, fashion-centric youth into cheap, reliable full-motion billboards. As it is now, the technology is cumbersome and somewhat delicate, but this will not be the case for much longer.

Unrestrained Diarrhea of the Brain

More specific than just a boring old length of insomnia, but rather I'm doing alot of online reading.
I guess gathering information for all sorts of projects that I'd like to work on eventually. I figure where's a better place to talk about the internet than on the internet. It's like... why not contribute the results of my personal, somewhat insignificant fact-finding mission to the overall girth of the net. No one reads my posts, I'm no Doctorow. Alas.

Making a replica Jurassic Park Ranger outfit, I dont know why I thought this would be fun, it's just a khaki shirt with lapels with one or two logo badges sewn to the the sleeves. Finding the badge? Not so easy. So, after a bit of reading, I found Westerfield Studios, who is more than happy to ship internationally. The company also sells replica badges from Firefly and some from Lost. Business seems good and they've got new products on the way. The more well known competitor I think is The Intergalactic Trading Company. Same market, two URL's.

Another thing I've been interested in for some time is the notion of the wearable PC. Once you go down that rabbit hole you almost never ever find your way back. There are a host of different places to get information, but I finally discovered a de (waitforit) lightful wiki on the subject.  From here I learned a little more on the topic of HMDs (which has become troublesome after my main contender: Vuzix recently announced backorders on their new product the Wrap920). I learned about a man in Toronto who has an MIT doctorate and specializes in wearable computers.
Infact, Steve Mann practically invented the idea. Below is the actual image from the wearable computer entry from Wikipedia. I've, of course, seen this image before, but knowing I might be able to obtain his autograph...

 Currently he's teaching at UofT and oversees a project known as EyeTap.
The project really excites me and I'd love to be able to learn more. Judging from the website, this man is interested in receiving all forms of input including that from designers (not an engineer, not a computer scientist, what am I?). I plan on making the attempt at contacting him sometime before the holidays at his eyetap.org or UofT email address (though I worry because the site hasn't been updated in some time).
One idea that's crossed my mind is producing a series of questions for him and interviewing him for Urbane Magazine and perhaps using my production skills book a BB practice room and make it filmed and snappy.
Mann is an MIT post-doctorate. My chances of this dream being realized are slim.
I also located the supplier of most of the components for these projects - Tek Gear. A Winnipeg-based electronics supplier specializing in HMD and micro displays. 

What else? Looking at cyberpunk fashion online. I found an interesting wiki on the Cyberpunk Review website. A site I noticed iGargoyles work on earlier in the week.  Most of the links are dead, but it was fun to find. One thing I like the idea of is making a t-shirt (cotton or poly) with panels of bullet resistant kevlar.
Like this guy's shirt I found on German Xtrax website. I doubt this shirt exhibits any properties of bullet resistance, but hey, this exist in the world so they can be made better.

This shirt reminds me of Adam Savage's Kitanica MarkIV jacket. One of the best ways to drop $500 in my opinion.

The design of the MarkIV with it's spinal absorption padding has really made me think about how an pico-ITX based computer (Like the new version of Compulab's FitPC2i - due for January) into a wearable rig could work.

The idea of a slim-profile wearable rig isn't exactly new though.

Really though, all this focus came from was a sweater designed with love and care by Marc Ecko, and trying to find it online. To say the least it inspired me, but I've also been thinking of the idea of customizing a white sweater into a space suit - either NASA's EMU or the fancier Chinese Feitian suit.

Anyway, I plan on getting the latter from ebay. Marc hates Canada, and shipping thereto.

Tie Patent Application

A tie loaded with:
A 3G (or even GPRS) radio.
An LCD of suitable size.

How it works. People get the tie. The tie is location aware, and is the output of the LCD is controlled by the data received from the radio.
This network is controlled by a company who represents ad agencies.

The display can be in the form of a pepsi logo, or something more elaborate like a full video commercial.
The tie will track the location of the user and this will be stored and compared to an existing model (the model may even be live updated via camera feeds) that track population density in certain areas of the city at certain times.

The tie wearer earns some revenue by wearing the advertisement and silently, but actively participating in the promotion of the product.

Now, throw in the concept of ad revenue developed by Google. The real-time auctioning of the ad space between competitors against a mathematical model ensures maximum revenue.

So, there you have it. I will attempt an early prototype someday soon