My take on Augmented Reality, for mobiles

You think it's funny being an inventor whose every idea has been stolen by other people only because they thought about it earlier? No, it’s not…

Well, something like that happened to me the other day. I was very happy entertaining the idea of patenting a USB Enabled (Desktop) Xmas Tree. I thought, what-a-totally-amazing, excellent-idea, a Desktop Xmas Tree powered through your PC, something to help you feel christmassy in the comfort of your own cubicle (even during Xmas). Then I thought (pause) it should have like a solid and a bit heavy base, so it wouldn’t move or fall… I had it all figured out. I was going build the first one on my own, before taking it to mass production and probably become millionaire… Until it occurred to me, to google search for it (just in case), only to find the dreaded thing already exists. Not quite as I had imagined it, I have to say, but… It’s already out there… Bastards! I thought. They did it again.

Well, enough for Xmas Trees, I’m now riding another wave… It’s the… I don’t quite have a name for it yet. But my new invention is something like this…

What if you had, on your mobile phone, an application that by means of paying attention to your mood, speech and the speech of people interacting with you, could suggest a tune or movie clip to play? Isn’t that something you would pay to have…??

In very simple words, it’s a music and movie database (duly licensed if you like) tied to a mood and speech scanning software (nobody said it was simple to implement, but what it does, is what’s important).

In the Silent or Headphone Mode, it automatically plays tunes and movie clips that enhance or go with your mood. Say for example, that you are taking a walk in the park, it’s a Sunday, the sun is shinning, you feel great… Isn’t that a moment to be completed with something like “On top of the World”, by The Carpenters ?? Say now that you’re heartbroken, you’re in the same park, but it’s winter, you have just being dumped… Well, isn’t “Creep”, by Radiohead, the perfect match for that particular moment? Yes, I know, you’re just thinking: why the hell it didn’t occur to me before…

The applications and implications are endless. In the workplace for example, the application could save a lot of time people today spend deciding what to play while either writing tender documentation or simply fooling around on the web… With the savings this application would generate, companies could easily pay for subscription fees.

Well. I’m not too worried about this idea being stolen this time. This time it’s tricky. It would take a lot of power programming to implement it. There’s people I need to talk to in order to make it work…

But, wait… How Am I going to make it… I don’t know the right people…

(suddenly some music starts to play… it’s Thom Yorke singing: “I think my luck could change”…) Not my idea of a reassuring message anyway… (and you know it, Thom)