SETI@Home shows that lots of people are willing to participate in distributed computing projects if they sound sexy and/or have a nice visual dispaly. Why not build trinkets for particular projects which are cheap and attractive enough that that people will buy them as decorations? The one for global climate models would be a little globe which changes color as it calculates future temperatures, etc.
-- cosma, Dec 03 1999

(?) Casino-21 http://www.climate-dynamics.rl.ac.uk/
Massively-distributed climate modeling [cosma, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Sun's Jini Connection Technology http://www.sun.com/jini
Devices should work together. They should simply connect. No drivers to find, no operating system issues, no weird cables and connectors. [jimfl, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Hyphos: a self-organizing Wireless Network http://www.media.mi...h/Hyphos/index.html
An alternate to Jini from the Imagineers at MIT's media-lab. [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Decentralized Computer Networks http://www.dnaco.ne...lized-networks.html
A page of references to other similar network schemes. [jimfl, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Personal Ambient Displays http://tangible.www...l_Ambient_Disp.html
Though not as old, or as origianl as the Factoid... these gimmicks are a step in the right direction. [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Cybiko http://www.cybiko.com
A wireless PDA marketed for teens. not a trinket, but apparently has structures in place for program interaction at a disctance. does chat, email, friend-finding, and wirelessly interactive games. A system like this could actually do distributed computing with no central compilation system, if it wanted to. [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Fact Sheet: IBM's Linux Wrist Watch http://alllinuxdevi...-07-005-03-PS-WL-WB
Fact sheet concerning IBM's Linux-running research prototype wristwatch [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Image of self-same wristwatch http://lwn.net/daily/linuxwatch_pen.php3
Here's a pic of the thing. Oddly enough, in command line mode. [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

A GNU/Linux Wristwatch Videophone http://www2.linuxjo...s/issue75/3993.html
Pah! Here's _another_ (different) one. It's two years older and runs Xwindow and contains a videocamera. damn. [bear, Dec 03 1999, last modified Oct 04 2004]

Ambient Devices http://www.ambientdevices.com
All around you computing devices.. make Ambient produce a SETI version and your done [nhyatt, Feb 21 2002, last modified Oct 04 2004]

This is a beautiful idea! Onward ahoy!
-- BradNeuberg, Mar 02 2000


"press any key to clear the tiny seti-at-hand screen saver. " -quote from slashdotter re: New Linux-based Wristwatch (?!) from IBM.

There you go, an even weirder concept - a Seti@wherever micro-client to run on your watch when you're not using it. IBM isn't planning to commercialize the watch as of yet, but we continue to inch closer to my favorite of all half-baked concepts. see much new linkage.
-- bear, Aug 07 2000


I'm curious as to what the ideal input-output would be. Would the first product be these little weather globes, that would take in the current temperature (and I imagine some kind of GPS to let the network know where it is) and then output temperature forecast?
-- nhyatt, Feb 21 2002


An interesting idea. How expensive would a dedicated device have to be?

I might be willing to spend a bit more for [nhyatt]'s weather station - and share the data from it - because I get something in return (more accurate weather forecasts). But I wouldn't spend much more.

The SETI@Home tchotchke would have to be very inexpensive.
-- phoenix, Feb 21 2002



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