Digital information

It’s sometime in the future and you come across a movie poster, a book cover, or a flyer that has a “memory spot” on it, a small, little dot that, when you place your cellphone or iPod video or other handy gadget over it, causes a series of photos or video clips to appear on the screen. So if we’re talking about a movie poster, your cellphone would suddenly start playing the trailer on its screen. If it’s a book cover, you’d get a slideshow of illustrations or an audio clip of the author explaining what the book is about, if it’s a flyer then it could be a commercial.

It’s a new idea from Hewlitt-Packard’s research labs in Bristol, England. The company has no idea what kind of a product or use it will have, or even if they will be the ones to sell it or a company they might partner up with, but for now they think it’s a clever breakthrough.

The dot itself, the “memory spot”, is actually a small computer about 2mm to 4mm square that has a wireless transmitter inside of it. It can be loaded with 256kb to 4GB worth of data and can transfer that data to a friendly device at a speed of 10MB per second (ten times faster than Bluetooth). HP says they could print them up on sheets as self-adhesive dots and you could stick them on whatever you wanted. You could even have them embedded into a sheet of paper.

Its enough to store a collection of photos, a body of text, or a short video clip so that any device that’s programmed to connect to it – a PDA, cellphone, mp3 player, camera, printer, could instantly grab and play/print the contents.

It doesn’t use a battery, instead feeding off of the energy sent to it by the cellphone or handheld device that’s trying to scan it. You would see the memory dot and then turn on your cellphone and direct your phone to “find memory dot” where it would broadcast a scanning signal. The signal itself would hit the memory dot and be enough to power it, wake it up, and have it send back a signal to your phone saying something like ”I’m here, here’s the fun video clip I have” and then your phone would tell you what it had found and ask you if you wanted to watch the video clip inside. Its a process called Inductive Coupling.

All of this reflects their initial prototypes and of course, as with all technology, it’s expected that their Memory Spots will grow more sophisticated as the years pass, with the ability to hold more and more content.

HP is currently exploring the possibilities (and the hope is by making this announcement interested parties will come knocking on their door) and here’s their hopeful uses:

-- Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient's wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.

-- Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.

-- Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.



-- Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.

-- Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.

-- Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds -- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.

-- Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.



Tiny? Very. HP's "Memory Spots" Can range between 2mm and 4mm.

by Kris Abel