What if you could have a way of turning all those countless little USB thumb drives into a mass, useful storage device?

I’m imagining a wire, similar to fairy lights or a Christmas tree lights, that have a number of USB ports dangling off it. You simply stick a thumb drive into each one and add as you gain more. This way you build a bigger storage device. If you run out of ports, you just add another wire to a spare port.

The downside is you’ll end up with a big bunch of wires, but perhaps, with clever design, it can be pretty and tasteful – and a low cost backup device.

iPhone and iPod touch can control iTunes libraries via a wireless network. Turns out that is a very useful tool.

What if these devices could also control a user’s Mac over a local area network or even a wide area network? It would be great to at least have access to a documents folder or at least sharing a screen.

===UPDATE 01/24===

Just noticed that the Apple app store contains a new application for iPhone/iPod touch that allows the mobile device to connect to the new Keynote ’09 to control it over a wireless network. Useful, as the slides appear on the screen, is flicked with your thumb over the touch screen and your presentation notes appear nice and legible alongside the slides.

There is no doubt that the iPhone/iPod touch pairing with the Mac is going to yield plenty of possibilities.

People have become very good at typing on ITU-T text entry interfaces – the common multiple key-press interface found on most phones. With the rising popularity of sub-notebooks, it makes me wonder if the form factor wouldn’t be better suited to follow the ITU-T input mode rather than squeezing in the traditional QWERTY layout. This would mean more space for the buttons, possible two hand, faster typing (with practice, of course). It could also leave space for more useful keys, like arrows, and an enlarged trackpad.