Innovative Remote Control Technologies: 3 New Developments

Following the last report of 6 New Remote Control Technologies, here are three more:

Sony's pretty new remotes withstand soda spills

Ubergizmo is reporting on Sony's new RM-PZ3SD universal remote control that withstands greasy hands and your garden-mill soda spills.

Don't drop it in the toilet, though. It's not that hardy.

I wonder if the pink one will win a Techlicious award for female-friendly technology.

What are you watching? Autoblog from your IBM remote

Doesn't everyone want a remote control that automatically blogs about what you're watching? No more "Dancing with the Stars" for me.

Apparently engineers at IBM think so. The Baltimore Sun reports that they're developing a TV remote control that can be programmed to auto-blog while you watch whatever it is you want to watch, according to a patent filing (#7,519,658)

A viewer selects a media program to view by use of a remote controller with networking capability. Upon the viewer wishing to send a blog posting to a blog, the viewer determines whether a tag to be included in the blog posting is to be a pre-existing tag or a custom tag, wherein the blog posting comprises program information about the media program useful to identify the media program. If the tag is to be a pre-existing tag, the viewer selects the pre-existing tag from a plurality of pre-existing tags using the remote controller and if the tag is to be a custom tag, the viewer generates the custom tag using the remote controller. If a protocol provided by the remote controller to send the blog posting to the blog allows a snapshot of the media program to be included in the blog posting, the remote controller takes the snapshot of the media program and includes it in the blog posting.

OK, that's kind of creepy.

Phone home to change the channel

Evidently, Verizon is working on a way to control your FiOS TV system via a cellphone.

Dow Jones reports:

Verizon is in the middle of a fierce three-way battle for television subscribers, squaring off against the traditional cable providers and the satellite TV companies. Integrating the cellphone with TV, such as turning a BlackBerry into a remote control, is an advantage the competition can't easily replicate.

In the next three months, Verizon will release a program for cellphones that will allow them to act like a remote control. The phone will need the ability to access Wi-Fi, which few current Verizon Wireless devices have. The person can navigate or type words using the phone.

It's important that Verizon push for applications that can run on both cellphones and on TV, said Ruchir Rodrigues, vice president of product design and development for Verizon.

He added that current plans are for just Verizon Wireless phones, but the company is thinking about other carrier devices.

I can see it now. To mute: pick up the phone, flip it open, navigate to the correct screen, wait for WiFi to connect, press MUTE.

Check out 6 more remote technologies here.