Here’s an interesting article about researchers using touch to convey text messages. An interesting concept. They call it “tactile melody”. I would have called it braille. Even though they apparently want to use different movements of pins than the letter combinations used by braille. They probably figure they can convey messages more effectively, requiring less attention from the user and less symbol recognitions. Good for them. I’m not going to say that I know for sure that they’re reinventing a number of wheels in unison, but I’ve got a pretty good feeling that they are. I take this for example:

“I can assign a certain tactile melody to my wife and another tactile melody to my daughter,” said Prof Eckmiller.

“If they send me an SMS, I immediately recognise these melodies, because I selected and generated them myself.”

Just like I always remember where my car keys are because I put them somewhere myself. Ah yes, infinite customization. The non-existent user requirement every developer loves to foist upon the unsuspecting public.

Or maybe they’re just talking about using these tactile melodies like ringtones? Could be, but that doesn’t explain how it would allow for reading messages “under poor lighting conditions” in “total privacy”. And, of course, they’ve filed patents. Ensuring that just in case there is a nugget of useful sanity they’ve generated during the extended dance of tactile plagiarism we’ll probably have to pay through the nose in order to even consider using it. Yay technology!