One potential killer application surfaces in several of the essays-the desire to use the phone and GPS to find and pay for parking. This idea obviously comes from students at urban campuses!
In a story by Cameron Quinn of Western Washington University, phones can communicate with parking meters to pay the fee. Then, the phones record the locations of the meters via GPS so drivers can find their cars again.
Rebecca Shoats of UCLA used her essay to describe a mobile phone that communicates with a master parking system. The phone displays the locations of available spaces and then uses GPS to guide drivers to spots.
In the vision from Brian Ho of Virginia Tech, GPS combines with specially equipped display glasses to direct drivers to their cars in a parking lot via a green arrow that appears in the glasses.
Check out the final 10 essays and all of their great ideas at www.motorola.com/motofwrd.
Meanwhile, Motorola introduced some pretty futuristic products of its own at last month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For example, its Miniblue headset includes an in-ear microphone that picks up the user's voice from the ear canal. Its case works as a remote recharge unit for the headset. Also, Motorola partnered with Oakley to create the O ROKR sunglasses. These stylish shades integrate Bluetooth stereo for listening to music as well as phone calls via the sunglasses' frames.
For a look at more Motorola product previews, go to http://promo.motorola.com/ProductPreviews/index.html.