From the That’s Interesting, I Think, But Why Exactly Do We Need It Dept comes news that the boffins at British Telecom — BT Exact, to be exact — are working on interactive toys that are linked to mobile phones so that SMS communication can be displayed through the toys’ actions. “This enables the texting experience to become more personable and fun”, reports The Register, who could well be making this up.
So it would work like this: Send a message to the toy — a smiley 🙂 or whatever — and the toy would convey the emotion. For example, if a happy symbol was sent to a toy dog it would come to life and start barking. Alternatively a love message could be sent to a teddy bear, which would trigger its heart to glow and become warm to the touch. Lovely. The researchers, apparently, reckon this would “create a more natural and tangible mode of communicating for adults and children, which will encourage more imaginative text messaging”. Er, OK. Your medication’s ready, Sir.