Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Keep it Simple

Take a simple teenage problem, ‘how do I share my music with my friends without getting tangled up in cables or blastling everyone with the same music?’ Now take one smart and persistent kid in California and technical savvy dad and we have ‘NoeStringsAttached'.

What it does is enable devices to share music transmitted using FM radio waves from a portable music player to any other specially equipped player within 15 feet. Each one plugs into the standard headphone jack found on most MP3, CD, and tape players. A user selects one of five radio frequencies and then opts to transmit or receive music by flicking a switch. The five frequencies were specially selected because they are not often used by traditional broadcasters, but in theory, the device could pick up FM radio stations.

Listeners don't even need a music player if they just want to tune in to someone else's music. All they need is a pair of headphones plugged into a NoeStringsAttached unit.

Kristyn Heath says that she and her dad decided to take a ‘low-tech approach’ and utilise FM radio to keep costs down and avoided other more expensive wireless options, such as Wi-Fi. The target audience is 15 to 20 years olds who don’t have money but want to share music.

A bit like those tin cans and a piece of string we uall played with as kids.