Postcards from the cutting edge

telecom

Kodak has a way to place yourself inside your own postcards, with a new service that does all of the design and mailing for you. Verizon Wireless subscribers with certain Motorola, Kyocera, and Audiovox phones can use the Kodak Mobile Service Postcard Application to take their own pictures and add border designs and personal messages. Kodak prints out the 4x6-inch cards and mails them via the Postal Service to friends and family within the United States. Prolific writers may find they get hand cramps using the application, as it requires you to type your recipients' US mail addresses into the phone. But Kodak tried to make the design part easy, at least, by offering a list of movie and sports-themed borders. By selecting one border, the company says, you are supporting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Kodak mobile postcards cost about $2 a pop, a little more than postcards bought in a gift store.

If the idea takes off, it's time to jump into the collector's market for tequila-stained cards printed with awful puns and bearing exotic stamps. Those handwritten paper products may soon be scarce.

Prototypes

Cellphones and teen dreams

Many cellphone users are jerks, but teenagers can elevate mobile obnoxiousness to a new level. Ever heard a ringtone by 50 Cent followed by a speakerphone walkie talkie-style conversation? Add that to the ability to cheat on tests with sly text messaging, and it's not surprising that many high schools have banned mobile phones.

But in tough neighborhoods, mobile phones are also an important way for friends to keep tabs on each other, and for parents to learn the whereabouts of their kids after school.

''Mobile phones have become a really big part of our lives," says Greg Miller, a senior at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, in one of Washington, D.C.'s toughest neighborhoods.

So Miller and other budding engineers and scientists at Banneker crafted an elegant solution to the ban: a biometric, computer-controlled cellphone locker where you can store your phone during the day. The student simply places a finger on a biometric reader and ''click," his personal drawer pops open. The Banneker group is among 18 high school teams nationwide to win a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams grant for their designs, which were announced at the end of October.

The grants, which are for no more than $10,000 each, hardly approach venture-capital levels. But coupled with a trip to MIT to meet accomplished engineers and researchers, the program can be a real shot in the arm to young inventors. Other Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams grant winners include a remote-controlled treat dispenser for service dogs, a device to help sleep apnea sufferers, and a prototype wearable sensor to tell caregivers when an elderly resident has taken a bad fall.

Prototypes

A solar iPod charger

iPod zombies now have a new gadget to worship, one with a worthy fuel-efficient attitude: a solar charger, the Soldius1, that directly powers their music players and more than 200 models of mobile phones.

A hand-held hydroelectric plant might be better for New Englanders. But it's fun to picture all those hipsters scurrying out of the subway to find life-giving energy for their portable stuff. A Dutch company developed the Soldius1, so presumably its engineers know how to get the most out of a few rays of sunshine.

The Soldius1 is not as pretty as other portable solar chargers, such as the Solio, which has panels that fan out like those of space satellite. But the Soldius1 is lighter and thinner than the Solio. One thing that keeps the weight off the Soldius1 is that is has no battery: Instead, it powers your phone or iPod directly, even while you are listening to music. That's a first for such devices, says the manufacturer.