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A Slightly More Universal Remote?

Photo of a remote controller taken in a room of a short-stay hotel in Seoul. It controls the TV, DVD, air conditioner and lights. Whilst people are prone to complain about having too many remote controls cluttering up the living room cramming everything on one remote controller is a far from optimal solution (though perhaps better in a hotel context).

Every so often someone pushes the mobile phone as a remote controller for anything from slide show presentations to toy cars and robots (via Bluetooth) to TV (via IR) to topping up parking meters (via SMS) to setting PVRs (via the net). By and large the mobile phone user interface offers a very poor and limited remote control experience - just about OK as an emergency backup but not something you want to use every day.

Which is why the Nintendo Revolution controller could be interesting. Take a generation of people who are adept at navigating and moving and thinking in 3D (though they most likely wouldn't describe it those terms), add the convenience of having a controller lying around and what do you have?

The real revolution may come from what happens away from the Revolution.

Thanks Younghee for the sunday Korean to English UI translation services.

Writing from Tokyo | March 11, 2006 | Permalink