Researchers at Swansea and Glasgow universities are working on a system for integrating satellite navigation into portable music devices, so that you could input an in-town destination and set out on foot while listening to your music on headphones. As you approach an intersection that requires you to adjust your trajectory, the music in the corresponding headphone will grow louder, prompting you to take a right or hang a louie. It sounds like good design to me -- inobtrusive, simple, effective.
Other applications for this could include assisting the sight-impaired, or pointing out landmarks known to be of interest to certain users (skate ramps for skaters, bike lanes for cyclists, record stores for vinyl collectors, etc.).
Hopefully nobody from the cellphone providers catches wind of this concept. As music phones grow in popularity, it'll be awfully tempting for them to use this technique to point out McDonalds and Starbucks (in case you somehow don't see one from where you're standing).
(on bbc; via p2pnet; image from huge-entity)
