Written on March 12, 2009 – 7:06 am | by Maria Mihale |
I sometimes get so lazy that I just can’t rise to my feet in order to go to the kitchen where I can quench my thirst with a glass of refreshing cold water. I get so lazy that I just don’t want to blink or breathe and the only thing I’d like to do is to lay in my bed, without people getting on my nerves and asking me all sorts of stupid questions. It isn’t something to happen to me very often, but when it happens the best thing one can do is to leave me alone.



And I suppose that the Mini Ear Switch was designed with this picture of mine in the mind, because it’s aimed at those who’d like to change the tracks on the iPod, for example, without pushing any button. Imagine you can pause a song by sticking your tongue out of your mouth or that you can change the song by widening your eyes.

Well, this is why some Japanese people invented something that is called the Mini Ear Switch, an in-ear device that is aimed at reading facial expressions.



“You will be able to turn on room lights or swing your washing machine into action with a quick twitch of your mouth”, said Kazuhiro Taniguchi, of Osaka University, the inventor of the device. “An iPod can start or stop music when the wearer sticks his tongue out, like in the famous Einstein picture. If he opens his eyes wide, the machine skips to the next tune. A wink with the right eye makes it go back”.

The hands-free functionality seems to be overexploited these days, but come on! Stranger things have happened!