Walking around New York city, I constantly see teenagers who share an iPod and a single pair of earbuds. They each put one earbud in one ear and in that way they can both listen to the same music while still being able to talk to each other.
Why is there no better solution? I think that a great innovation would be a pair of headphones that connect to an MP3 player wirelessly (most likely Bluetooth since WiFi is such an energy hog) and both pump out the same music for that single player. But the key innovation would be the communication part. Who wants to walk around the mall with their BFF while both listening to the same music if they can’t exchange the day’s gossip?
So, give the wireless headphones a small mic (like the one used in wireless headsets for cellphones) and allow the conversation between the two headphone users to happen in a shared (and private) frequency.
Now, if the digital music player doesn’t have Bluetooth embedded in it (like the iPod), create a separate transceiver that will attach to the player and communicate with the wireless headphones.
I personally love walking the streets of New York listeing to my iPod. The music becomes the soundtrack of my day and many times it even determines my mood, depending on what iPod’s shuffle will bring my way. The idea of sharing that soundtrack with someone else as we both walk around and still able to talk to each other sounds really exciting to me.
Steve Jobs, are you listening?
