Students Design Future Phone Concepts
From: PC Magazine - 01/18/2006
By: Bary Alyssa Johnson

Around 500 students from 225 colleges and universities heeded Motorola's call
to creatively communicate their ideas for "blend[ing] content and
communications" through technology that will enable consumers "to live life
wherever, whenever and however." On Tuesday the top four picks in the
MOTOFWRD scholarship competition were honored, with their creators receiving
scholarships and other prizes. The grand prize went to Duke University
biomedical engineering PhD candidate John Finan for his conceptual Mood Phone
that can detect changes in conversational tones and use mood-interpreting
algorithms to translate those tones into color-coded messages; the concept
was advanced as a way to improve social interactions among people, especially
those suffering from Asperger's Syndrome who often have difficulty with
social interactions and understanding unspoken social cues. Finan based his
invention on his study of brain injuries: "The more I learned, the more I
realized that the human brain is the greatest data processing computer
available to us," Finan said in an interview with PCMag.com. "A great
technology is one that uses the human brain as a core component."  

Read the entire article at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1912234,00.asp

Links:

MOTOFWRD
http://promo.motorola.com/motofwrd/index.html

MOTOFWRD Challenges Tomorrow's Leaders To Visualize How Life Might Be Affected
By Technological Advancements To Come
http://www.cpwire.com/artman/publish/article_1176.asp

Mood Phone
http://promo.motorola.com/motofwrd/us/pdf/John%20Finan%20170.pdf

Motorola’s New Mood Phone
http://www.cellphones.ca/tag/Motorola