It's been synaesthesia week online:

1. From the BBC, "A blind student has developed software that turns colours into musical notes so that he can read weather maps."
2. Mr Jones on Mr Moore and the idea of synaesthetic handset user interfaces: "It would be wonderful to harness synasthesia in the UI of mobile devices. Going beyond multimedia output and multimodal interfaces - delivering meaning in Gladwellesque thin-slices of preattentive recognised patterns."
3. Mrs Jones on autism and synaesthesia: "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think."

A few years ago I read the excellent Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens, a book on the subject (recommended). Interesting stuff, but I'd never even considered its relevance to work-stuff like user interfaces before...

Savaje are close to launching a handset in 2005: "Savaje aim to attack the mid tier sub $50 build price sector with its products. Let's hope they can make it.".

We have no relationship with Savaje, but I'm keeping as close an eye as I can on what they're up to. The idea of opening up the whole mobile phone OS to be easily modified by third parties is mouth-watering for us.

Other mobile bits and pieces that have accumulated over the last week and I've not gotten around to posting:

• The Register have a good piece on the state of mobile gaming today;
• English language DoJa emulators have been released by DoCoMo. We did some of our first J2ME work on tools like this, for Japanese handsets, ages back. Great to see they're finally engaging with developers outside Japan - does this signal an intention to roll out DoJa to European I-mode licensees?
• Mark Curtis on interacting with advertising: "I certainly think that there will shortly be a great deal of interaction between mobile devices and things in the environment (maybe advertising posters) but not until it's one click or less or not even a click to kick it off.". I'd go further - it's crazy that, in an age where print and TV adverts regularly feature a website address, we don't enable instant response by letting interested parties text in to register interest.
• Killing the iPod: "So while something sold as a phone had ruddy well better function as a decent phone, something pitched primarily as a music player could quite acceptably have music information and purchase as the primary purpose of the wireless capability, with a bit of texting and voice as 'free' extras. Which maybe just gets you one of those weird-shaped things from Nokia that nobody much loves.". It's the same question that gets asked whenever any new functionality (cameras, text messaging, etc.) is integrated into a handset: what does being permanently connected to a network allow us to bring to this service?
• More on tilt and motion sensors in phones: "Wouldn't it be great if natural gestures could be scripted in to it? Imagine: your phone is on the table and it rings; you don't want to take it so you simply turn it over to reject the caller and silence the ring. Or, to transfer a picture from your phone to your friends you just flick the phone in their direction. Or, by fidgeting with it in just the right way you get a canned rescue call to save you from that horrible blind date."
• Quick 3GSM roundup
• Some strong-sounding numbers which seem to indicate that people are actually using this mobile data stuff.

Mmm, lovely mobile technology/local government crossover here - you can report problems with graffiti, fly tipping, etc. to Lewisham Council through your cameraphone now: "The idea is that you download a programme that'll allow you to send photos from your mobile phone (or if you've got a digital camera from your computer desktop) to the council and then those are turned into a piece of casework."

It's been blogged to death elsewhere, but the Fickr Colr Pickr is a beautiful piece of work.