Maybe we were wrong about British Telecom the other day when we implied that they were a rather stodgy company (at least they were when we lived in England). Their research group is working on a way for cellphones to connect to special interactive toys that could be cued, via text messages, to do specific things:
The researchers say these prototypes will “create a more natural and tangible mode of communicating for adults and children, which will encourage more imaginative text messaging”. The interactive toys are tuned in to their owners’ mobile phone so that, whenever an emotional graphic symbol (or emoticon) is sent, the toy displays the emotion that has been communicated. For example, if a happy symbol was sent to a toy dog it would come to life and start barking. Alternatively a love message could be sent to a teddy bear, which would trigger its heart to glow and become warm to the touch. The idea is that a recipient of the emoticon can sense the actual meaning of the message that has been sent from their friend or partner. In this way it’s hoped the technology could be applied to make the messaging experience more fun and tangible.
Creepy? Yes, most certainly. But stodgy? No, definitely not stodgy. Guess we underestimated you, BT.
