Never lose anything again

Have RFID (radio-frequency ID) tags attached to all my important things: my bookbag, my PalmPilot, my notebooks, my clothes, etc.

An easy way not to lose stuff would be to wear an RFID tag reader on me and activate the system whenever I am away from my home and from my office (which is where I could REALLY lose things). If any of the things that were with me when I activated the system leave my vicinity, the system will warn me immediately (I still don't know what would be the best way to do this).

This has problems, however. Suppose I leave my dorm with a book, with the intention of going to a computer lab. I want the system to warn me if I am about to lose the book. So I arrive at the computer lab, and I sit down at a computer, next to which I lay down my book. If I go pick something up from the printer, the system will go off, because I am too far from my book.

Solution: you carry a second reader with you. When you go to the lab, you put in on your station, which means that it's ok for your book to be far from you, as long as it is close to the other reader. In other words, your book must be close to either reader.

BUT, What if you lose the second reader? Well, you put tags on your readers. At home you keep a Finder, which will work like a metal detector, except it will only go off when you find what you were looking for. No... A better solution would be to have your tags be equipped with a little (but loud) beeper that will go off when remotely commanded (like a telephone's handset locator feature: it has a range of at least 50m). Actually, this alone would be good enough for some people. For them, it's ok to lose stuff as long as you can find it easily. Of course, you could have GPS's instead of tags on everything, but let's not take it too far.

I tell the system that my stuff can stay either there (so I leave some kind of reader on my desk) or near me (I would be wearing another reader).