A gesture to feel at home

I still remember my first e-mails, astonishingly quick but lacking warmth, no hand writing, smell or coloured ink... no sign of the person who wrote it. Today, with my broad band I can hardly imagine my life without listening to the "live" radio-news from my country or meeting my mother every night, (with a time gap of 7 hours).
Those are the gifts, technology gives us today. No matter how complex the mechanism or how much research was needed to produce them, with just a simple natural gesture, they make us feel at home. Music, plants, pets, food, relationships, here are 5 invaluable hints to recall our memories.


iPod


Created by Apple is the musical dream come true. The amount of songs you can have depends on the version you choose, the highest capacity being 60GB, it means more than 10,000 songs and pictures. Size and weight allow you to carry it in your pocket, or bag (the battery lasts 12 hours and charges in 2), just take it with you everywhere, office, park, bike or car.
Other than music, Ipod stores files, agenda, games, and the new generation includes a 2-inch colour screen for displaying photos stored on the pod.
All this power is controlled simply by scrolling and clicking the iPod Touch Wheel.




Domestic Greenhouse


Smeg and Piano Design are the creators of this "shrine" for all those plants, that otherwise couldn't be grown at home. The shape of a house, simply designed with the great achievement of a perfect microclimate, adjustable in light, temperature and humidity. Two side openings ease maintenance, and a structure in stainless steel and glass gives you the pleasure of a integral view. Either if you want to grow your own spices out of season, or have exotic plants, or just give a treat to your favourites, this greenhouse is the natural spot to colour your home.






Mini habitat for pets and plants


When it comes to pets, a normal thought is all the fuss and cleaning they bring; but with Globus ecosystems, there is no need to feed, clean or change the water, just what busy people with no space need. Ants, shrimps, snails, crustacean, and small water-borne animals, not the most "affectionate" pets, but living creatures to take care of, and learn a lot about. In fact behind every product there is a lot of research, even Nasa experiments, realised during space flights. Plants are also available.






Dokodemo


In development by HDCE -Hitachi- DOKODEMO is a system based on king size screens embedded in a network and situated in various places within a given environment like city centres, shopping-malls, venues or train stations. It allows you to get local and networked information, with general or customised content. Users can interact via Bluetooth, PDAs, GSM and RFID-tag enabled objects, and more important... gesture, researchers behind Dokodemo have enhanced a system of communication based on gesture and intuition that requires no learning, giving instant and simple access to users.







VeriChip


On the 14th of October the FDA, for the first time, approved a microchip to be implanted under the skin. More than "a hint to recall our memories" this could become our memory, (if ethics and responsibility are placed at the first level). Without the need for surgery, the Verichip is designed to provide all the necessary information in case of an emergency, when arriving to the hospital, just by scanning, doctors have direct access to your medical records, which means saving your life in case of allergies or just facilitating all the procedures.
What about privacy? the big concern about such devices... at the moment the chip is not equipped with any radio frequency tags, so no one can "spy" on you, but science fiction can tell us lots of sad stories about uncontrolled misuse.