Thoughts -> Re: classiccmp server

[John Foust]

At 05:45 AM 10/7/2004, Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
>Wow, history repeats itself so soon.  It's good that the CueCat engineers
>managed to find work after the dot.bomb.  Because, you know, that was such
>a good idea that it screams for reincarnation! :)

I still think it's a good idea.  It'll show up in a thumb-drive-size
device someday, maybe talking to your PC with USB or Bluetooth,
or perhaps it all gets integrated into our next phones.

We all need a quick way to exchange small bits of info: URLs,
phone numbers, vCards.  Scanning barcodes is an easy way to "remember"
something you saw in print.  

I think an audio-based "barcode" is needed, too - imagine if your gizmo 
would automatically record the small bits of digital info it heard while it 
was with you - jingles from the radio and TV, something someone 
beamed to you over the phone, etc.  

What an interesting engineering problem: design an audio encoding suitable 
for a few dozen bytes that was pleasant-sounding to the ear, yet had a 
chance to work over AM radio or telephone.  It could even just be the
standardized start and end tones to bracket a snippet of audio that the 
device would record and decode later.  

Bring your gizmo to your PC or handheld or phone and share those bits 
of data, present them in a scrolling list...  Very handy! 

- John