Stickies RFID Project: Post-Its With AI

MIT PhD student Pravan Mistry is the latest person to try to recreate Post-It notes for the digital age.  His 'Stickies' project relies on both a digital pen – similar to Nokia's - and sticky notes with embedded RFID tags allowing them to be located at a later point.  Handwritten notes are automatically converted into text when on the computer.  So far, nothing new, but Mistry' project adds in artificial intelligence (AI) which uses a "commonsense knowledge engine" to put each message into context; that means, for instance, it can prompt your cellphone to remind you to buy milk when you're actually at the grocery store, from a note you scrawled earlier that day.Check out the video demo of Stickies after the cut 

Other applications include bridging the divide between the tech-literate and those who are less comfortable with technology.  Mistry suggests a parent who prefers to handwrite messages rather than email, but whose notes to a child or grandchild are automatically sent via email or SMS.  However those reminding herself to take back a library book are kept separate, and not sent. 

Right now it's a working concept, with a prototype setup (that you can see in the video) but no commercial application.  However it would be relatively straightforward to implement.  Apps such as EverNote and OneNote can already recognise handwriting and make it searchable, and they can even perform instant text-recognition on photos. 

[via Guardian]