Microchip movies

Stick-on memory

Better and cheaper camera technology has made us all closet documentary-makers of our own lives, and an offshoot of this is a growing scrapbook culture. Scientists at Hewlett Packard's UK research labs are aiming to make the most of this. They have created the world's smallest wireless data chip, which will allow us fit more images in our scrapbooks. Called a Memory Spot, it can store up to half a megabyte of video, audio or hundreds of pages of text and it's tiny enough to be attached to postcards, photographs and other memorabilia.

Looking for a digital wireless solution to adding sound to photographs, the HP scientists came up with this experimental chip, based on CMOS (a widely used, low-power integrated circuit design), about the size of a grain of rice. Program manager, John Waters describes the concept, 'We are running at 2.5Ghz and using the same system for transferring power from one circuit to another, we can transfer information either to or from the chip.'

Photos and movies

Information can be read using an adapted mobile phone, PDA, camera, printer or pen-like device. Positioning the read-write device close to the chip transfers power and information to the display of the phone, camera or PDA, or can be printed out by the printer. Waters explains, 'The current reader-writer design is a prototype in the lab to demonstrate the technology. Depending on the application you can take the reader-writer and integrate the functionality of that into a chip that you could put in a mobile phone or other device. It really depends on where the application of the Memory Spot is as to how to create the final form of the reader-writer.'

It's possible to attach digital information to any surface, object or document. Your favorite seaside postcard could accompany photos of your family at the beach. A wedding photo could contain clips of the wedding video or an audio recording of the ceremony.

Digital tagging

Other possible applications include hospital wristbands containing patient medical information or authentication tags for prescription drugs, costly electronic components and other frequently counterfeited items.

'One of our challenges,' says Waters, 'is to look at the opportunities offered by this technology. We devised it originally with the photograph in mind but realise its potential for businesses.'