Every year at WMC (this is my 4th or 5th time), my favourite booth is the NTT Docomo booth for two reasons:

1. They only seem to ever send Japanese booth people who speak virtually no English. That makes me laugh.

2. They always have the wackiest and coolest stuff.

This years winner for most questionable handset innovation:  For people who think that aluminum, carbon fibre, or gold just isn’t good enough … the Wooden handset!

How do they do that? Well with 3D Compression Technology of course:

This year’s wackiest – Eye-Controlled Earphones. I kid you not. The man stood up there moving his eyes and shifting from song to song. Of course, it makes you wonder – what happens if you look at something quickly, will the song change? Or if you are reading a book and listening to music, will it keep fast forwarding? It also wins the award for most humorous demonstration. Watching the man below, I can read his mind ‘I got my PHD to do this?’.

It would appear that other carriers are also getting in into the ‘out there’ R&D business. Telefonica was demonstrating the ‘State of Mind and Mood Analysis for eHealth’ application. By closely monitoring involuntary facial movement, it could determine my present state of mind. The blue and green shading is my ‘aura’.

Despite the fact that I was just off a plane, had slept 3 hours in the last 36 and was uber-jetlagged, I was still measured as calm and in a good state of e-health. I asked her if she had red people (high anger, etc.) and she said occasionally. She then asked me to think of someone I really didn’t like, or who I hated or who made me super mad to try and get me to read red. I honestly couldn’t think of anyone that I bear a grudge toward or am angry with at this point in my life (which, upon reflection, is a fantastic thing .. life is good was my e-reading)… So she reverted to a video of Obama.

She showed him as he presented on the national deficit and the state of the economy. The aura is not a happy one (note all the yellow).

A few cool viewings.