Motorola’s Smart Tattoos?

Update

It was just a humorous video: but what if this old news article might suddenly become news ?! Especially if it were marketed as free national health care ID or similar benefit?  People might queue for blocks or stand to pay for this new feature?!

http://toprightnews.com/?p=8589

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/22/digital-tattoo-phone-unlock/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/28/5945049/motorola-vivalnk-nfc-tattoo-review

Daily Tech’s Full Original Article

External Gadgets
Motorola Wants to Use Tattoos, Pills Instead of Smartphone Passwords
Tiffany Kaiser – June 2, 2013 10:46 PM

But will consumers want to use them?Imagine ditching smartphone passwords and using tattoos (and even pills) for identification instead.

Motorola is looking to do this with its future devices, and has even started testing the tattoos and pills.

Motorola’s tattoos have already been developed by MC10, a Massachusetts-based engineering firm. They are placed on the smartphone owner’s skin using a rubber stamp, and contain flexible electronic circuits.

Instead of punching in passwords, users just place their smartphones close to their tattoos for verification.

Dennis Woodside, Motorola’s chief executive, showed off the tattoo technology at the 11th All Things D conference (D11).

Internal Gadgets

Motorola is looking to use pills as password replacements as well. They’re called Proteus Digital Health pills, and they’ve already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Users would take a pill by mouth, and the pill would create an individual signal that would be picked up by their smartphone. The computer chip within the pill would be powered by a battery using the user’s stomach acid.

The pill could be taken daily for up to a month.

According to Woodside, the tattoos and pills work, but they won’t be sold anytime soon.

While the idea of using tattoos and pills as verification is interesting, it may be too uncomfortable for everyday use. For instance, people may not want to have a visible tattoo on their arms at all times, or may not want to worry about forgetting to take it off and on.

As for the pill, consumers may think it’s too weird to have signals transmitted from their stomachs. It’s also a nuisance to remember to take a pill each day in order to access their phone.

However, Regina Dugan, Motorola’s senior vice president of advance research (who demonstrated the tattoo at D11), said there are great benefits to the tattoos and pills.

“Authentication is irritating,” said Dugan. “In fact its so irritating only about half the people do it, despite the fact there is a lot of information about you on your smartphone, which makes you far more prone to identity theft.

“Having the boldness to think differently about problems that everybody has every day is really important for Motorola now.”

Motorola has certainly been trying to make a comeback after taking a hard fall recently. Google acquired Motorola Mobility in 2011 for $12.5 billion USD, but it has proved to be a bit of a nuisance for Google — it only made $1.02 billion for the first quarter of 2013, down from $1.51 billion in the fourth quarter. It also reported an operating loss of $271 million.

Aside from that, Google announced an additional 10 percent reduction in the Motorola workforcethis past March (about 1,600 employees) after already cutting 20 percent last summer. That cut affected about 4,000 employees.