A fingertap away
NTT DoCoMo may have succeeded in coming up with a wacky interface that we actually want. Their UbiButton controller is a watch-type device with a chip on the back in contact with your skin; tap your fingertips together lightly and it picks up the shock. By tapping out different patterns (it detects only the shock, not the strength) the idea is that you could turn lights on and off, control appliances, and so forth. The fingertip-sized UbiChip that forms the guts of the device can be put into pretty much anything provided it's in contact with your skin and it can detect the shock—so you could turn on a Bluetooth headset by tapping your earlobe rather than fumbling for a button, or tweak the volume of your cellphone by tapping your face. Sounds silly, sure, but it's not enough to get people laughing and pointing at you (unless that's the kind of face you have already). We'd love a wristwatch remote that controlled everything in the room, personally, rather than the stack of black obelisks we have at the moment. That said, remembering all the riffs to tap out for the commands could get tough beyond a certain point.
