mobiConf: Video conference on the go

Idea: Videoconferencing allows businesses to keep in touch with employees and clients from across the country and around the world in real time with both audio and video. They are connecting classrooms for distance education in ways never before envisioned. They are allowing online matchmaking web sites to allow real and powerful contact between potential matches. One current limitation of all the videoconferencing technologies is that they require participant to be located at certain "conference rooms". An interesting observation is that most of the cellphones nowadays have both internet and video recording facilities. How about utilizing those features so that you could participate in a video-conference from virtually anywhere.

Reward: Talk to your loved ones while seeing them live, participate in your company meeting while you're at home, possibilities are endless.

Bonus: Considering cellphone screens are usually small, you should be able to connect your cellphone to your TV/LCD display and have a full size view of the conference while your cell phone's camera streams out your live images.

cellBoost: Steroids for your cellphone

Idea: A growing number of people rely solely on a cellphone for their telephone service, and many more are considering giving up their landline phones according to a not-so-recent survey. Another trend we notice is that cellphone is not only growing to become de-facto standard for verbal communication but also getting more popular with electronic data exchange. The problem however is cellphone service network is usually too weak for fast internet, and many of us are unhappy with spotty cell reception indoors. It's true that we cannot force service providers to install more towers. The solution is neither economic not sustainable. An interesting data point to note is most of the time we're either at home or at workplace. How about a wireless base station for the home, which boosts your service network by piggybacking on your home's or workplace's wireless internet? Not only that the device could transmit over normal cell-phone frequencies and offer a reasonable coverage area. It could also make use of a broadband modem and could send calls over the Internet, and recipients could use either landline or a cellphone.

Reward: Your hand held just became more powerful! Plus now you can stop worrying about reception with your very own cellphone booster.

Bonus: With your cellphone connected to high speed internet, you can now go about playing LAN based computer games or online multi player games too!

mWallet: cellphone is your mobile wallet

Idea: Remember the lines from Seinfeld? George: "Because important things go in a case. You got a skull for your brain, a plastic sleeve for your comb, and a wallet for your money". Nowadays in addition to cash, you need to carry multiple credit/debit cards in your wallet. How about a cellphone which can be programmed to provide an interface to all your credit/debit cards? For example, your cellphone could have an interface to use each of your cards, and once you select a card to use, it sends an encrypted SMS to the shop. Instead of swipe machines, the shop could have smart SMS readers who can decrypt the message and use the card information from the message towards the customer's shopping cart.

Reward: No need to carry physical cards in your wallet. Remember? Jerry: [referring to George's stuffed wallet] "Your friend is morbidly obese".

Bonus: Secure shopping! Since you don't need to carry your credit/debit cards, your shopping can be really hassle-free.

mBackup : A universal phone directory

Idea: Every one of us goes through an experience where you either lose your phone or it gets stolen or your phone becomes unusable when you need it the most. Cost of the phone is the least concern at that point. What's more inconvenient is the loss of data on your cellphone, especially your contact list which you've built over time. You can keep a copy in sync with your cellphone either on your computer or on physical notepad! Keeping the contacts in sync is an annoying task, and so is restoring them on your new device. How about a facility in your cellphone to backup your contacts (and possibly other data) on a remote server. Now you can access not only your voice mail but also your contact list from any phone around the world. Isn't that just convenient? Once you have all the data online, restoring it on a new device becomes easy and so does sharing it.

Reward: Once you have all the data online, restoring it on a new device becomes easy and so does sharing it across any number of cellphones.

Bonus: With all the phone directories online, CIA (and other anti-terror organizations) can have tighter control over global communication!

Babel fish in your cellphone

Idea: BusinessWeek recently published an article chalking out cellphone revolution. Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts "a huge revolution" in the way cellphones are being used by various people. It started me thinking. What if your phone could do on-the-fly language translation for you? Now, you don't have to worry about honing your foreign language skills. If you're an effective speaker in your language, your are an effective speaker everywhere. Cellphone being such a universal device is always going to be with you. We already have facilities like text-to-speech and language translation. To achieve on-the-fly language translation in phones, we would just need to combine these two technologies, and you will become a polyglot immediately.

Reward: No more "lost in translation"

Bonus: Douglas Adams' soul can rest in peace when we'll have a babel fish in our pockets.

Flying ringtone

Idea: A couple of days ago, I read an article about flying alarm clock. This clock would just make your life miserable in the morning if you're not willing to really wake up. You can find the original article here. This got me thinking, what if we could design our cellphones like this. As soon as you receive a call, you phone (or better yet your bluetooth headset) should come flying to you. As soon as you catch it, and click "stop flying" button, it can stop, and you start talking.

Reward: No need to carry cellphone or bluetooth headsets while at home.

Bonus: Your flying headset could make different shapes in air (or fly differently) depending on the caller.