In Philip K. Dick's 1953 short story "The Preserving Machine," an impassioned inventor creates a device for "preserving" the canon of classical music — the sacred and, he fears, impermanent beauties of Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven and so forth — by feeding it into a device that transforms the compositions into living creatures: birds, beetles and animals resembling armadillos and porcupines.
"We decided to create a device for people to help them sleep less, but much more efficiently" he says.
So as Windows Mobile is aimed in the general direction of business users, Microsoft might just be looking to create a device for the gamers and hipsters that want a fun phone.
KFx Medical, a 12-employee company based in San Diego, created a device and method for reattaching tissue to bone during orthopedic surgery.
The conventional BlackBerry's thumb-operated keyboard made for speedy typing and its large screen helped in e-mail reading, but the combination created a device too bulky for most pockets and many people's taste.
Photo via Flickr user Yelp Inc. Sign up for the best of VICE, Docsvered to your itbox daily.
For example, you could create a device designed for outdoor use that chimes when a timer has concluded, or a switch that drops dog food into a bowl when an alarm expires.
"We saw an opportunity to create a device just for kids that provides them with an intuitive, fun and kid-friendly user experience filled with rich, interactive and educational content that parents will love," says Samsung CEO JK Shin in an official press release.
No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear".
Critical Engineers Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev have created Newstweek, a device for manipulating news read by other people in locations with wireless hotspots.
