Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Goldratt Inspired Alarm Clock Earpiece

How small can we make an earbud - a headphone I mean? Read "The Goal" by Eliyahu Goldratt and one chapter starts with "... Julie on top of me. She isn't being amorous. She's reaching for the alarm clock." So, can we make an earpiece that will sound the alarm when commanded by the base-station? It's got to be so tiny that there's absolutely no discomfort at all. You stay in a super low-power mode for 5 hrs, then you wake up. Then, when you get and easy to check for code, you go into a higher-power mode and wait for the alarm signal and put out about 10 mW of audio energy. The battery can be recharged everyday - probably a supercap will work.

Start your day without waking your wife up. What exec wouldn't want that?

Broadcom ICs Power Smart Buyer-Protecting Products

You see a TV for sale cheap on Craigslist. How do you know if it has any latents issues or not? You can't. But, thanks to Broadcom's future efforts, we will be able to. You can bring your iPhone, get a code from the owner and get the TV to tell you its history - inexplicably rebooted twice in the last 2 months. Fuzzy picture experienced x times on a, b, c dates. You get the idea. This will make the economy more efficient.