The Hindu Business Line : That e-mail to Santa

It's that time of the year, dear St Nick, when I almost wish I believe in you, so I can justifiably send you a wish list of unmitigated materialism and greed. The only problem with a job that involves observing the latest in innovative product design is that it leaves me drooling at possibilities, and grappling with the aftermath of unfulfilled acquisitiveness. However, it is also that time of the year when one begins to draw up another list - of noble intentions and goals. So to demonstrate my ability to contain wants I will restrict my list to only those products that I believe could help in implementing my New Year Resolutions.

Resolution 1: Get up early

As you know, Santa, if my house did have a chimney and you really did slide into it any time after midnight you would find me wide awake. A biological owl, I feel perpetually jet-lagged in a city of larks. I've been trying to wake up early for my entire life, with little success. I began with a jangly old-fashioned Junghans key-alarm clock that would jolt the entire neighbourhood out of its slumber before it intruded on my REM cycle. I even tried serial alarm clocks, but as long as they were within arm's reach, I perfected the art of silencing them and dropping back to dreamless sleep in one smooth act. And when I graduated to the electronic alarm, the snooze worked fine. That is, I snoozed for hours after the alarm rang, putting out one sleepy hand to tap the alarm into temporary submission when it beeped in ten-minute cycles.

So I was both amused and hopeful when I saw that a solution to my diurnal dilemma should be shortly available. That's why, dear Nick, at the top of my wish list is the demand ... er ... request ... for Clocky. In case you haven't heard of it, you could contact its inventor Gauri Nanda at MIT's Media Lab.

Gauri, who like me is not a morning person, dreamt up Clocky to goad sleepyheads out of their beds. Clocky is an extremely smart clock, for something that looks like a furry animal on wheels. Its cuddly and endearing appearance is actually a good defensive ploy for something that could be a victim of morning rage ... that is, if you could catch it.

When its snooze button is pressed, Clocky rolls off the bedside table (cushioned by all that fur) and runs away (small wheels are concealed in the fur to enable it to move and reposition itself), bumping into objects on the floor until it finds a resting place (a built-in microprocessor randomly finds a new hiding spot every day).

When, minutes later, the snooze alarm sounds again, the sleeper must get up out of bed and search for it to turn it off, hopefully waking up in the process of the quest.

For its potential saving of precious early morning productivity, Clocky won the Economics award at the 15th annual Ig Nobels, a tongue-in-cheek award instituted by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research that celebrates the lighter, more irrelevant side of science.

Clocky isn't commercially available as yet, but I am putting in my early bird order.

It's comforting to know that the hugely positive response to Nanda's idea means that there are a lot of other owls out there to keep me company till I can get my own runaway clock.

Resolution 2: Eat healthy

Next year (if I get up on time) I plan to kick-start the day with just fruit. Everyone says fruit is the best breakfast, and everyone tells me to go in for papaya as the least calorific option. I suspect you don't get papayas in the North Pole, Santa, but perhaps you've also faced the angst of choosing a ripe one? Isn't it depressing to tenderly palpate a papaya with quasi-surgical sensitivity, and then slice it open, only to find unrelenting un-readiness? It isn't only papaya - I annihilate so many custard apples before finding the right one; the less said about my ability to zero in on ready chickoos, the better.

How can I help, you must be wondering, in improving fruit-appraisal skills? Well, what I'd like in my stocking is an adaptation of the RipeSense sticker. Have you heard of it? It was one of Time Magazine's top 36 coolest inventions of 2004. Invented by New Zealand scientists, the sticker changes colour as the fruit ripens, by reacting with the chemicals released by the ripening fruit, so you can gauge when it's ready for the knife.

An elegant diagnostic aid, all it took was some horticultural and chemical knowledge to dream this one up. Currently the sticker comes as part of the produce packing for pears, but I am sure it could be adapted to create a reusable version at home. I can see it at work already, letting me know with chameleon-like colour changes just when a fruit is ready for my knife.

Resolution 3: Keep the house clean

Honesty prevails me to confess that though my resolutions sound spartan and austere (are there any other kind, though?), I have already thought up a solution for this one that doesn't involve hard labour on my part. I hate dirty floors. I hate swabbing. And I hate dependence on erratic help. Ever since my childhood, Irona, Richie Rich's wonder robot, has haunted me with the impossible fantasy of a sparkling home without human intervention. So when the Roomba appeared a few years ago, I saw the beginning to the end of my problem.

The product of 12 years of robotic research and 30 prototypes, Roomba uses heuristics designed for robotic clearing of minefields: it "estimates the size of the room and the number of obstacles it encounters on its travels — checks that it has covered every part of the room several times over, it stops, beeps cheerfully and shuts itself down."

Roomba wasn't perfect - it left out bits of fluff in corners and could get wedged under sofas, but it got a fair bit of the job done. No wonder then, that over 1.2 million Roombas were shipped in three years (microwave ovens took nine years to hit a million units.) However, it only vacuumed, and so it didn't quite fit in Indian homes and our penchant for the wet mop. Which is why, dear Santa, I don't want the Roomba. I want its baby brother, the Scooba. It uses the same AWARE Robot Intelligence Systems as Roomba to intelligently navigate the floor, adjusting for difficult-to-reach places and sensing walls. What's better, it's been adapted for hard surfaces - it mops!

I can just see it at work - I'll fill it and set it off at night, and it will scurry all over my house, not only vacuuming but also squirting, scrubbing, and mopping my floor dry. And unlike my maid who artistically spreads the same dirty water all over and puts the fan on to let the gook dry, Scooba uses fresh water on each round. Some nifty engineering has condensed the device's components, keeping the bot to the size of a 3.5-inch-high dinner plate so it shouldn't get stuck under the bed, either. Santa, if you can get me one, I'm even willing to pay for it - at the price of $400, I am sure it's within the reach of Indian households which enthusiastically opted for washing machines. Suddenly, liberation from the erratic bai is a distinct possibility.

Resolution No 4

No, I think this is enough for 2006. One mustn't get too greedy after all, in either materialism or noble intentions.

Thanks, Santa. If you can't find any of the items on my wish list, just SMS me and I'll send you the URLs.

Till then,

Radhika

(The writer is a Chennai-based management consultant. Karate-gy is the proprietary name for strategic exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow.)

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