Wish you were here...

Last week I left GBC in the capable (if jealous) hands of my colleagues, and travelled to Turkey for a quick dose of sunshine. Holidays are the perfect chance to get away from it all, and for me that usually means technology too.

The end of our five hour flight was signalled by mobile phone start-up jingles all around me. While for some, the whole point of going away is to be unreachable, for others it seems that news from home is just too good to miss.

But on day 4, calamity struck, as my digital camera took its last ever photo, and my trusty mobile phone stepped into the breach to capture those pina colada moments. For the first time I even taunted friends from afar using my phone's postcard function, (at least they beat you back to England).

True, there was more texting on the beach than ever before, but it’s not replacing the stalls brimming with tacky souvenirs and traditional postcards. After all, you can’t get Turkish Delight by satellite signal, and you can’t put a digital postcard on your mantelpiece. Old habits die hard.

We have the technology…

A couple of years ago, Jason Bradbury created the phone glove. A relatively simple idea, he took apart a Bluetooth headset and implanted the contents within a gentleman's driving glove. He was then able to answer his phone and even re-dial numbers with a simple flick of his wrist, whilst hold conversations using the classic hand phone aka your thumb and pinkie.

Fast forward to 2008 and Nokia have extended the concept of the wearable mobile phone device with their announcement of Morph-based handsets. Using nanotechnology, the handsets could theoretically clean themselves, recharge by solar energy and even be transparent where that helps and much more.

So what can we expect next? Qualcomm seem to believe a combination of the above, with the creation of a microsite promoting the Hand Solo Phone.

Although clearly a joke and fun marketing activity, it is clear that nanotechnology, once the subject of science fiction movies has moved into the laboratory and we are now exploring the true potential of this technology.

I wonder how long it will be until a similar advert appears on our screens for real.