20 members of the MIT Sloan Innovation Club each recently received a Samsung NV3 device as a part of the current I-Club testbed.  The multi-purpose devices serve primarily as point-and-shoot digital cameras, but are also capable of playing MP3 and MPEG-4 files, recording spoken comments and verbal notes, and displaying simple text documents.  One of the camera’s cooler features is the integration of moderate-quality external speakers and a headphone jack that allows playback of videos shot using the camera, as well as playback of other videos placed on the phone’s SD card from your hard drive.  The lack of integration with a convenient desktop application for managing MP3s and MPEG4s is the only conspicuous omission, but this omissions is compensated for in excellent image quality, convenient features and appealing form factor.  See the Flickr image, taken at a temple in Japan last week, for an sample of the camera’s handiwork. 

Innovation Club partner Research In Motion is set to launch their new BlackBerry 8800 on February 21^st.  The device will be available through the new AT&T and will be the first BlackBerry to have built-in GPS.  In addition, the 8800 incorporates trackball navigation, a multimedia player, and Push To Talk.  Check out the RIM website for all the specs.  

Since December members of the Innovation Club have been testing Suunto watches enabled with Microsoft’s SPOT technology.  Although the watches are reminiscent of the calculator watches of the 80’s their advanced features quickly become addictive.  Most notably, they have the ability to wirelessly sync with your Outlook calendar.  Check out the article from the Sloan newspaper, Fifteen, for the full story.

http://media.www.mitsloanfifteen.com/media/storage/paper766/news/2006/12/05/StudentLife/A.Watch.Fit.For.James.Bond-2518578.shtml

…and it operates on the same principle as an ink-jet printer! Check out these videos - talk about an innovation, albeit quite scary, in the evolution of weaponry…

According to this post NTT Docomo is developing a phone to deliver surround sound ring tones.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/51-surround-cellphone-as-awesome-as-it-sounds-205436.php

The trend here is not an isolated surround sound ring tone innovation. The important innovation is the integration of surround sound/high quality audio integration in the to the mobile platform natively.

Couple this with
a) Rapid improvements in battery life on phones
b) Presence of multiple wireless buses ( Wi Fi/ Bluetooth) which offer ad-hoc connectivity on cell phones
c) Increases in the storage capacity on phones
d) Soon to be launched Wireless speakers

you get the picture?

I’ve always be curious about the following question - if everyone has one of something, is it impossible for that something to be cool or sought after? So many hot items these days, whether they’re cars or consumer electronics or jewelry or clothes, are hot items just because only a select few folks have them.

While covering the mobile phone industry, I often wondered: Did Nokia’s struggles to create the hot, hip device stem from the fact that hundreds of millions of people own Nokia phones and even if the device itself was unique (i.e. stylish etc…), the fact that everyone had a Nokia product would in itself be enough to squash some of the appeal. Consider how Nokia created a sub-brand, Vertu, for its highest-end devices - folks paying thousands of dollars for a diamond-encrusted phone simply did not want to be carrying a ‘Nokia’ like everyone else. On the other hand, even though millions of people owned Motorola phones, the RAZR took off like crazy, at least until ‘everyone’ had a RAZR.

I then happened upon the following article in the Guardian:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1869042,00.html

In the story, David Smith wonders if “…most disastrously, Apple’s signature pocket device with white earphones may simply have become too common to be cool.”

What do you think? Post your thoughts here or discuss in the forum…

So, I bought the Nike+ adaptor for the iPod nano the other day and have been having fun trying it out so far. The sensor itself is pretty small, about as big as a quarter and as thick as a half-used pad of post-it notes. Since I don’t have Nike+ shoes, I just tuck the sensor under my shoelaces. Doing that instead of having it in my insole seems to work pretty well so far — though its a little insecure there. Maybe I’ll try the velcro-tape trick I read about to secure it to my sneakers.

There are also downloadable workouts with paced music and voice-over coaching advice available from iTunes to match the release of the new product. The ones that I’ve tried are very challenging — I only made it about half-way through the endurance one on my first try. Someday, I’m sure I’ll make it all the way.

Once you have recorded a few runs, you can upload your performance data to nikeplus.com to chart your results and track your gains over time. Its a pretty neat site, with compelling features on the whole. Being that this is an innovation blog, I think it warrants talking about some innovative things that could be done with the information being collected:

1) Allow bloggers (like me) or MySpace denzians to add a widget to their sites that gives an at-a-glance view of my running performance. Making a public statement on fitness levels can play on the whole psychology of escalation of committment - improving the fitness level of the average mouse potato would definitely be a good thing!

2) Give access to the aggregate data to researchers and economists. I can only imagine what Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner would do with info about how people exercise — other than continue to point out the fact that we usually don’t. On that note, I just discovered their blog: Freakonomics. It’s definitely something to add to your daily reading list.

Now, get off your duff and go out for a run!

Here’s something different - Nike and Apple announced a partnership today. Apparently they’ve developed a shoe-based sensor that enables you to track the duration, distance, pace, and calories burned of your run.

I could see this enabling a particularly cool software feature. If your songs have the BPM (beats per minute) metadata entered, and your iPod knows the frequency of your steps, then your music could sync to your workout. Better yet, you could configure your music to pick up the pace and push you during your workout. That would be pretty sweet!

-jimmy, awaiting a workout coach software update for his nano.

I was alerted to a very interesting article on Wired. Following in some of the traditions of the Homebrew Computer Club (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_Computer_Club), a new club, the Homebrew Mobile Phone club has arisen in Silicon Valley to brainstorm about mobile phone technology and think through how the mobile phone might evolve in the future.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70929-0.html?tw=wn_story_mailer

I believe that one day, mobile phones will be quite similar to PCs as modular, rather than interdependent architectures. While PCs are easily upgradable these days, through the swapping in and out of hardware (i.e. cards, hard drives, memory, processors, etc…) in a modular fashion, mobile phones remain interdependent architectures with most everything hardwired and soldered together (with the exception of the SIM and memory cards). Some day, I believe that mobile phones will also have modular, swappable components, allowing consumers to buy new components and put them into their phone as desired. Any thoughts on this? Share your comments…

My name is Trond Wuellner, and I’m one of the Vice Presidents in the MIT Innovation Club. As a feature on our recently updated website, many of us involved in the club will be contributing our thoughts on innovative topics of interest through this blog. I begin today with my first contribution and look forward to establishing lines of communication on just about any new innovative topic. My personal agenda is to get the word out about the new things going on at MIT that may otherwise fall under the radar. If you have suggestions or just want to start a dialog, drop me a line at: trondw(at)mit.edu. I’m kicking this off with a little self-promotion for the club — I think what we’re trying is pretty interesting, shout if you disagree!

For me, one of the most rewarding aspects of being involved with the MIT Innovation Club is the opportunity to participate in Tech Testbeds. Right now, we’re in the process of rolling out a trial-use test of the newest RIM Blackberry, and I’ve been lucky (or unlucky rather) enough to get my hands on one of the first ones that showed up. I’ve been using the device for just over two weeks now and have started forming a good impression of it. I’m going to save my specific comments for another time, instead I’ll focus on a few features that I would love to see added:

• I’m a Mac user and really don’t care for Exchange - forward through Gmail is good by me - but I can’t really do calendar or contacts sync very well this way
• That said, I would love to be able to subscribe to iCal or Google Calendar XML feeds from the calendar tool
• On a similar topic, Plaxo for Contacts?
• Google Talk is awesome on the Blackberry — how much more bandwidth would I need for voice? Skype?
• Bluetooth sync and file transfer? I’d love to eliminate another cable from my desk
• I’m not one to take advantage of the 9,000 bookmarks that Firefox comes pre-installed with, but give me more than 6 by default! Can I grab my del.icio.us links? Those tagged with “BlackBerry?”
• Can I have a physical switch for the keyboard lock? Like on my iPod?

Anyone out there who can get a way to pull iCal feeds from the web down to the BB would make my day!

Next time, I’m going to talk a little about BioFuels and a project going on here at MIT that I think has some real potential. I’ll even see if I can get a moment with Vinod Khosla at the MIT Energy Conference next week to corroborate!