Wireless Earbuds

Walking is a great way to get around. I like to listen to tunes when I am walking from home to work and back, with my most excellent iPod in my pocket. I just wish we could ditch the wires.

If those high-quality earbuds were wireless, I might be able to hear more than just the music too.

What if while I'm listening to tunes, my palmtop is communicating with a local wireless network and transmitting audible messages to my earbuds? Some of these messages could be various kinds of ring tones that I've set to mean different things. One sound to tell me someone important just sent me an email. Another to tell me my server is down. Another tiny sound I hear way in the background every time someone else requests a page from my weblog. A cash register sound every time someone places a new order on my ecommerce site. And a special sound from my sweetie, just to let me know she's thinking about me.

Maybe text-to-speech could also read email to me as it comes in to my palmtop. Maybe some signals could be programmed to read me the fresh news stories from journalist weblogs I subscribe to. Or maybe my I've got my Webstream Radio transmitting to my palm, which sends my custom audio stream right to the ol' earbuds.

An ambient graphic equalizer and mixer would be nice. Whatever audible streams I am listening to could be adjusted to foreground or background, and pickups in the buds themselves could catch the sounds of the world around me. Enhance some frequencies so I am sure to hear well when someone on the street speaks to me. Kill the background noise of heavy equipment, the clatter of dishes and silverware in a noisy restaurant, or boost the distant sound of tolling bells on the clock tower -- all controlled on a graphic panel on my palmtop.

Listening to 1,000 tunes in my pocket shouldn't close me off from the rest of the world; wouldn't it be nice if I could actually hear a whole lot more of my personal infosphere at the same time?

Last update: 2/22/08; 2:01:59 PM.