Simple Ideas -- Big Effects
 

So I recently read this story from Apple Insider. It talks about a new patent, where Apple is thinking of implementing "acoustic separation" in it's iPhones for conference calls. The idea being that if you have your headphones on for a conference call, each individual speaker will be assigned a spot along the stereo spectrum, making it sound like each of them is speaking at you from a different direction.

To me this idea is pretty freaking awesome. It increases conversation clarity in conference calls, and it's a pretty simple system to implement. Thus the title of the thread: Simple Ideas -- Big Effects.

I was wondering what the rest of you thought of this. But, perhaps more importantly, I wondered if any of you could think of other examples where simple ideas have made huge differences for technology. I've become suddenly curious.

Robert Adler came up with the most useful, simple piece of technology man ever invented for man.... the TV remote control.

Flint flake, edges which can cut.

The bread slicer. It was the greatest thing since...........ever.

P.S. That acoustic spatial conference idea rules.

The basic idea that moving a conductor across a magnetic field has had a pretty profound effect on us: We call it Electricity.

Friction creates heat. Struck objects spark. Both can make fire. Humans survive. :)

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Where would modern civilization be without the zipper?
Thank you Whitcomb L. Judson. :)

Or Velcro, which we got from the Vulcans.

Wasn't it originally called Vulcro?

whoever accidentally lite a marijuana plant... (i kid drugs are bad)

Controlling fire. It beats sliced bread by thousands of years, and it makes bread possible. :D

whomever invented the internet.. how else would we have girl on girl factual information at a click of the mouse?:D

*face palm*

well, you know that as soon as this catches on, someone's going to start playing with it so that the CEO comes across as a booming voice from heaven, and your immediate supervisor always sounds like he's standing right behind you. and then people are going to start worrying about where they are positioned around the virtual acoustic table, and you could even get instant demotions by making someone sound farther away. it's going to make office politics even more horrific than it already is.

That totally made my day :D. If I'm ever the CEO of a company, this will absolutely be my policy.

The match..... portable fire.... fire on a stick.

So we can cook our hot dog on a stick! :D

Portable fire? Like a flaming arrow used to kill people and set fire to buildings:eek:?

Gyroscope. First built by Johann Bohnenberger. Without gyroscopes, which are used in missile guidance systems to measure movement (yaw, pitch and roll) around an axis, there would be no satellites. Without satellites, your GPS wouldn't work. Neither would Yahoo! Maps.

Or flight for that matter. Every plane in the world uses a gyro for it's attitude indicator. Without that instrument it's impossible to tell if you are flying straight and level in low visibility.

Good pick aehurst.

In my book, GPS-- creates so much technological possibilities.

However, historically, the semi-conductor has to be one of the greatest.

I have a classic example... :)
Very simple idea - wheel.
Greatly changed technology and our lives.. ;)

Steel - probably once quite a simple idea, but has gone on to become indispensable.

The pill......

Cool. We are coming up with a lot of interesting inventions that have been created. And various discoveries. But what about new ways of using existing technology? Using something that's already there in a way no one had thought to use it before. Because I think that's what was so interesting about the original article. It wasn't a "breakthrough", stereo sound already existed as did headphones, but the re-application of the technology through a simple idea--it could really change how we use cell phones from now on.

Mobile phones themselves are a good example of what I mean. We already had phones, we even had wirless phones that we could haul around the house if we wanted. But then someone figured out a way to use radio waves (also already in use for other things) to communicate with a phone. Suddenly you can take your phone anywhere you want, and the way we interact with people really changed as a result.

Examples like that are more what I was looking for.

hmmm... that's almost the entire history of technology. I mean, a nuclear power plant is just a steam engine powered by a carefully controlled atom bomb, and a steam engine is just a hydraulics system driven by boiling water, and hydraulics systems are just reinterpretations of the wheel (using rotation to translate and redirect force...).

I'm on a survey list for AT&T. One of the things they are looking at (based on their questions) is an arrangement where Mom could take her cell phone to a basketball game and stream the video of little Johnny playing from her cell phone to Dad's cell phone while he's out of town... all live. Couldn't tell from the questions how it would work. May be streaming to and then down from a web page, or it might be directly from phone to phone.

Interesting idea.... what you pay for that service?

In a lot of ways, yes. I'm just looking for some of the better stories. But, perhaps I'm asking a bit much. I have an odd fondness for minutia (comes with being a historian). Anyway, the thread is still open to whatever anyone wants to put on here. I'm just trying to mold the conversation a bit, that's all ;).

@aehurst. I would assume that will be possible when the finally get broad band going in between phones. I mean, we already do it with computers, we just call it video conferencing. Before too long I would assume that every camera will have a "stream" option, so that you can send the video to someone else live.

Hmmm, sounds interesting but useless to me. I knew you were holding out on us :D

Interesting but useless is almost my middle name!

The GUI, and of course, adding multi touch to it!

SQL Databases

This reminds me of something from a while ago:
http://gprime.net/flash.php/soundimmersion

It's a good example of faux surround sound with plain stereo headphones. Even works pretty well with regular speakers too.

Or perhaps put in a 20 second delay (except on their own feedback), making them seem unusually daft and impolite.

One simple technology I have come to rely on is remote locking. When my battery went flat I panicked for a moment before I remembered you can stick the key in the lock and turn :o.

Why SQL databases?

Well I don't know if I needed to specify SQL. I just mean the ability to store and quickly retrieve and cross reference massive amounts of data. It's a pretty pervasive technology that makes a lot of other things possible.

Another example of that...

I haven't gotten around to forgetting the manual backdoors because my remote doesn't always work when the car is parked near TV/radio towers. If it won't lock by radio I have to do it the old fashioned way. I even looked up the secret sequence to disable the alarm just in case if I have to turn the key in the lock when the remote won't disarm the alarm.

I was going to say "because he's a geek", but then I had a Monty Python moment and wanted to say "because he's a witch; BURN him!" but then I got to wondering whether you burn computer witches to CD or DVD, and it just got too confusing.

Damn, took me three more posts to realize you were talking about an automobile, not a computer!!!!

I was trying to visualise putting some sort of key into an orifice on a mbp!!!

And how that could possibly help its dead battery.

:D:D:D:D:D

I'm not even really sure how to respond to that :confused:. What kind of witch are we talking about here anyway? Cause if it's an HD witch, I would think a DVD would be more appropriate than a CD, don't you?

Dare I suggest that transistors are sand-witchery? :o



Sorry 'bout that... :p

Not to mention the difficulty of weighing a virtual duck.

Or determining the airspeed of a virtual swallow. :D

Ok, you all knew this had to be coming...

Ni!

What may be more interesting is the energy potential of the duck. :cool:

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...and where would modern civilization be without the zipper?

Does this come unsaltered?

My physician says I need to avoid salt?








{But I don't have to avoid Shrubbery. (for tw)}

Likewise...

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