Drop Your Phone onto a pad and bam! It is the central core of whatever your doing

You hop into your car and in the center console there is slightly recessed area the size of your phone. You pull it out of your pocket and drop the phone onto the pad, your car turns on, your selected playlist begins to flow through the speakers, etc. Cell phones are definitely the center of our lives, (to lower my vocabulary: DUH!) but the will soon become the center of all the devices we use. Sure, some stuff, kitchen appliances, computers [since the already have core processors] and the like can be considered excluded from that glaring generality. However everything that has been mildly computerized, houses, cars, etc. will make the leap with a little help from your phone. Imagine your phone as what it is, a little computer, it has the power (we’re talking smartphones) to process a lot of information. Now consider if all the stuff that isn’t already a computer could become a computer with your phone hooked up to it. The car, for example, with your phone interfaced, could play music from your phone (which I know is already possible, but think really high quality and seamlessly), and with the aid of an on windscreen heads up display, do highly advance AR (augmented reality) navigation. Also at the end of your journey, the car could add to your to-do list on the phone’s calendar “get gas” it would calculate when you need gas and add the estimated time and date to the calendar entry as well. When your phone is not in the car the car could still start but it wouldn’t use the phone as the onboard computer so it’s digital capabilities would be lessened greatly. Just as a smart house could use an standardized syncing device to use your phone as a media server.

What all this means is you would have the central core of all your devices with you no matter what you’re doing, you would have access to all the pertinent data about you’re life. Your phone could magically have your shopping list from your fridge the last time you were at your smart house. It would know whether or not your car needs gas, etc. You could build a dock for the phone o’ the future into pretty much everything and use an open platform for drivers and apps. Inventing the device would create the market, no consumer study’s, no focus groups, these things will be successful for the same reason the iPhone was: “who wants to carry a phone and an iPod!?” It will now be, “who wants to have to remember what they needed from the store?! who wants to have to sync music between multiple computers, who wants to… and so on.”

In the future people will live in smart homes… We’ve been hearing this forever… But the time has come.

First things first, not all my posts will begin with “smart” by  coincidence it just so happens I’m thinkin’ about “smart” stuff.

Anyways… Smart Houses are coming, their rise has already begun, consider home servers, lighting systems controlled by people’s iPhones, etc. The real, everyday smart home will work like this…

Scenario: Average weekday morning. Setting: Smart Apartment…

1. A seemingly normal alarm clock awakens you, but said alarm clock has a motion sensor. The sensor makes sure you are awake for real, not just reaching to hit the snooze button.
2. The clock confirms you “awakeness” and sends a signal to the smart apt.’s core (A small, linux based computer in your closet).
3. The signal triggers various scripts on the core cpu, these scripts turn on your shower, begin making your coffee, and queue  up a collection of preselected podcasts [their audio follows you throughout the apt's speaker system] (They could also turn on the TV or radio).
4. You take your shower, get dressed.
5. Your coffee is waiting.
6. You leave, the smart apt turns off all the lights and appliances (except the fridge) and locks down the security system.

I chose a smart apartment for my example because the first instances of the technology would probably be in smaller dwellings. Smart home tech could be implemented easier than you think, too. Barring the speaker network and the programmable shower you wouldn’t have to rip out any walls to set up your smart home. The Linux computer core in your closet would have a web connection and would also be a full fledged server, it would have (assuming the OS wars are still going) clients for both Mac and PC that would allow you to set up the scripts or select from a collection of basic tasks. The core would connect to your home’s power system and use standard wall outlets to command the devices gathered in your abode. All smart home compatible devices would use an industry standard system to send and receive commands. Standard wall outlets have been used for internet connections and could definitely handle simple commands.

In short, A geek with a medium budget could build his own smart home, go forth geeks, let’s see google house before decade’s end!

Everyone has heard about the Smart Car? Yes? Well then I don’t have to tell you it is a small little car which many people love and a good measure of people loathe with a blinding intensity. I have been pondering buying a Smart Car and though, for me it would be the perfect size, for many it would be far to small, to those people I offer this:

Most people do not need a four door SUV for their commute however most suburbanites require a larger car for hauling around kids, pets, and the like.

Now imagine if you will a modular car, if in your garage you could have a Smart car and two or more pods with small motors but no steering or or other controls. In the morning you would take a smart car-esque car to work and then in the afternoon you would return home and couple up the passenger pod to pick up your kids etc. the pod could have four wheels or a more futuristic rubber ball bearing like device on which it rolled. It would be automated in way that the necessary parts where attracted electromagnetically and coupled as soon as you got within a foot of the linkages. The pod would have a small motor aboard that would provide air conditioning etc. to the pod and then also send any excess energy (there would be a fair amount) via a suped-up drive-train linkage to the driving wheels of the lead car. There would be some manor of emergency stop button for the passengers of the pod in case the linkage broke and there would be a disconnect button in the cab of the lead vehicle as well. Since every car contributes a little power you wouldn’t have to worry about over-straining the engine of the lead vehicle, and since the lead vehicle doesn’t need any extra power it would be plenty efficient when uncoupled. The car wouldn’t, however, look like it was missing anything because most of the longer and unsightly cables would originate from the pod and only a small panel with holes to plug in those cables would be placed on the back of the cab. Since most families need to be able to pass things between them when in the car the liftgate of the cab would fold in a manner that would allow a rubber gasket to lock into place that would allow hands and objects to move freely about the cabins of both vehicles the goal being to make the car seem as whole as possible. Now The Cab would be about $12000 and the pod would be about $10000, so to match and each pod would seat four so you could match an SUV’s seating pretty quickly and with the ability to purchase cheaper cargo pods you could also begin to match an SUV in luggage capacity as well pod’s would also be available to rent a pod for road trip for a reasonable price. The lead car, you must remember would be totally autonomous, and could be purchased without extra pods the cab would be a wholly enjoyable car without ever even looking at a pod. The marketing point being “expandable and adaptable,” as in you buy the cab (the two seater smart car-esque thing) as a first or starter car and keep it indefinitely, as your family grows or your needs change you can add pods, a cargo pod for your new dog or to take your stuff to college or a passenger pod for you kids, and you can have up to three cargo pods or two passenger pods per cab so you can haul up to ten people!

Thank You for Listening.