Pocket PC

Have you seen those keyboards made of light that detect your finger movements. If you have not, you are surely behind the times. A small laser projects the image of a keyboard on a nearby flat surface. When a person types into it, the movement is detected and converted to signals about which key the user was pressing. There are plans to integrate this system into cell phones in 1-2 years.
Projection of a screen on a nearlby flat dark surface is even easier there is no great DSP required. But projection of a touch screen works will with similar technology.

Idea : We just eliminated three perpherals of a PC : screen, keyboard and mouse. Imagine carrying a cell phone sized PC (I call it pocket PC) on which you can do anything ranging from watching movies to downloading pirated episodes of Scrubs to doing day to day job like emailing and reading news.

Progress : The light keyboard has already been invented. A light touch screen works on the same prinicple. However, a mobile phone sized device housing memory, a powerful processor, atleast 128MB RAM, efficient cooling device and wireless antenna is surely out of the world for atleast 4-5 years (10 years to be realistic). Even if the size gets reduced to this extent, the power consumption required will be humungous. Unless there is a revolutionary battery invented within this time, users will have to re-charge their PPCs every hour which sort of defeats the purpose.

Voiceless Phones

Do you know that there is activity in your vocal cord even when you are talking to yourselves. Its like talking quietly so that no one listens.

Idea : This activity can be detected using some sensors (eg:a miniature MRI) placed on a collar a person is wearing. Connect this to your cell phone and you can now attend to calls without disturbing anyone around. Isn't it great!

Challenges : Sensors for this detection are easy to make. The real challenge is DSP. First of all signals are feeble. This is a problem because there are noisy signals coming from the movement of the person himself, which may interfere with this signal. Secondly, the normal voice which we speak is a combination of our vocal cord as well as tongue and lip movements. Focusing entirely on vocal cord means that the DSP in the system will have to somehow differentiate between sounds that are based on lip movements alone.