Turn your body into a human router

(Credit: Engadget)

Great, just what the world needs: Another networking acronym. We finally figured out LAN and WAN, and now we have BAN--for "body area network."

South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, or ETRI, is developing a technology that could turn your body into a human router with a control strapped to your wrist. "For example, if you have a document file to print in a wrist information device, you just wear the device and touch a printer with the hand, then you would get the printed paper," Aving.Net reports.

We think we'll stick with Kinko's for now.

[Ashwin Mudigonda]

ETRI? What about Redtacton?

The IEEE spectrum magazine carried an article about BAN a year ago. A company called RedTacton (http://www.redtacton.com/en/info/) in collaboration with some bigwig (Matushita?) patented this technique. Their selling point was that this would be the uber-cool way for businessmen to exchange business cards - by a handshake. Other cumbersome perks would involve hauling oneself to the printer endlessly to "Touch and print" while consciously shunning painful methods like Bluetooth or Wifi.

That is why RedTacton is a resounding success. Good like ETRI.

[mail1]

People will be able to exchange information..

...simply by shaking hands. This also means hackers could theoretically steal information from you by accidentally brushing by you while passing.