In the UK we have a competitive electricity market. Only one set of wires comes to your house, but you can buy your electricity from a number of providers. Some only offer organic, corn-fed, Wind Farm power - others promise price stability - another gives you a discount at their electric car chargers - one gives you loyalty points at a supermarket.

We increasingly have smart meters. Second-by-second they measure our energy consumption and report it back to our power suppliers.

Domestic appliances are increasingly coming with Internet connectivity. We may laugh at the "Internet of Shit" - but soon every device we own will come with an app. We will control them from our phones, and they will report back their usage to their manufacturer.

Let's mash these ideas up.

According to the Energy Savings Trusts' report "Powering The Nation" a typical fridge/freezer uses 427kWh per year.

At an average price of 15p/kWh that's an annual running cost of £64.

Suppose your fridge manufacturer buys electricity in bulk at wholesale prices. The current wholesale price per MWh is £40. That's 4p/kWh. Or about £20 to run a fridge for a year.

Would you buy a fridge which costs £100 more but comes with 5 years worth of free energy?

You register your fridge online. It *wavy hand technobabble* talks to your smart meter and tells it how much electricity it has used that day, the sum is deducted from your bill.

Perhaps it does clever things like works out when the spot price for electricity is low and then cools down. Or it keeps your food a little bit warmer when energy prices are high.

Or perhaps it could *mumble mumble* blockchain *something something* cloud computing?

Is this the future? I think so.

I've been reviewing WiFi connected plug sockets which measure how much power an appliance consumes. They cost about $10 per unit at retail pricing. Soon it will be normal to receive an electricity bill which shows you just how much your Playstation 5 costs to run.

Your typical bill will tell you how much energy each of your appliances use. At which point it will become obvious that replacing your old TV with something newer will save you money in the long run.

Tesla gives customers £50 worth of "free" electricity with their cars - but that's only at their branded charging stations.

In the future, a new electric car will come with 10,000 miles worth of "free" electricity when you charge at home. You won't notice an extra £300 on the price of a new vehicle, and the manufacturer can securitise their wholesale energy purchases.

Your appliance talks to your smart meter which talks to your energy provider. With a little bit of thought, this could change how we buy energy consuming products.

Well, it has been a dozen years and no one has released my killer idea, so I'm setting it free.

It's simple. A set of Bluetooth headphones with a built in display to show off album artwork. Here's a quick mock-up:

Original photo by Thomas Hawk

The nearest that I've seen to it is these cheap headphones which have a fairly dull LCD status screen:

Or, these monstrosities, with an LED graphics equaliser display.

There's nothing technically unfeasible about this idea. Bluetooth's AVCRP 1.6 specification supports Cover Art. If you've ever paired your phone to your car and seen artwork on the dashboard - you'll have seen this in action.

The three big drawbacks are...

1. Weight. Headphone wearers want them to be as light as possible. Will a screen on each ear add significantly to the weight and bulk? Not to mention the heavier batteries needed because...
2. Battery life. Charging headphones is boring. We're still waiting for colour e-Ink to reach critical mass. Is the benefit of displaying what you're listening to worth the reduction in listening time. And, for that matter...
3. Privacy and approachability. Do you want everyone to know about your terrible taste in pop music? Do you want people to talk to you when you're wearing headphones?

Right - who wants to create a Kickstarter for these awesome concept cans?

Take, for example, this tweet and image:

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

http://twitpic.com/2dhr3 - Loving #mint09 :-)

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Well... ok... fun at the moment it was taken, but does it have any use beyond that? On the off chance that I become a subject for scholars in the year 3723, perhaps.

Should some media just be declared ephemeral? The word comes from the Greek εφήμερος – ephemeros, literally "lasting only one day".

Services like SnapChat allow you to send a message to a single recipient, the photo then expires after 10 seconds. Perfect for sending sexually charged images which then vanish into the æther.

That's how it used to be. A photograph had to be handled carefully or it would start to disintegrate.

Can we do this digitally? Of course, bits rarely perish. Neither do they lose any fidelity unless we expressly ask them to. And, yes, anyone can save a pristine copy any time they want.

But, conceptually, it's very easy to create a photo sharing service where the images irreversibly degrade every time they are viewed. Until there's little left but a clump of colours.

Imagine, for a moment, that every time a tourist glanced at the Mona Lisa and then walked idly by, a little bit of the image went with them.

Initially, she would be resplendent.

After a few years, she would be a bit dog-eared.

Eventually, she would succumb to the ravages of time.

We could progressively add more Instagram style filters onto an image until it was last behind a miasma of faux nostalgia. (From Instagram "Improves" Art)

We could degrade video quality, add scratches and blemishes, reduce audio fidelity an introduce the crackle of vinyl. Text could gradually disintegrate.

Perhaps social networks should build in The Right To Be Forgotten - make it a core feature, rather than a law to slavishly follow?

As time passes, gradually reduce the remnants of our past until they slowly fade away. Mere ghosts in the machine.

I love my SpinVox service. For the uninitiated, I turns your voicemails into transcribed text messages.  I no longer have to interrupt my day to dial in and listen, I get send a text and email like this.

"Hey honey, it's me. Sorry to say that I'm just leaving the office now. So give me a call when you get this and I'll text you and let you know what train I'm on later. Love you. Bye."

• spoken through SpinVox

That's when it works. Other times I get messages like this.

"Hi Terry, it's Mum. I'm on the beach in Boomas(?) and I've been to a puzzle and it's lovely. Sand is gorgeous. My phone well obviously is turning off actually cos I'm gonna go for since(?) 11:30 and anyway like I told you let's have it sometime. You can always try reaching me. Ok. Hope you're having a lovely day too. I'll speak to you soon. Bye."

• spoken through SpinVox

It's usually enough to get the gist of what's happening, and I can always dial in and listen to the specific message.  Much like the eponymous Dancing Bear, I'd be impressed with half the accuracy.

Being a tinkerer, there are some things I'd like to change about Spinvox.  I'm aware that some of these are out of their hands and are the MNO's responsibility.

• MP3 delivery. It's great to receive an email with the transcript, but I'd really like to get an audio file as well.  Useful for record keeping, error checking and blackmail.
• .mobi site. I'd like to be able to go to spinvox.mobi and see a list of all the voicemails I've received - including transcripts and audio downloads.
• Personal API. I'd like access to an API for personal use.  To enable me to generate wordles or similar.  To grab all the voicemails from a particular person or containing a certain phrase.
• Personalised Greetings. I'd like to set different greetings for different sets of numbers. I keep the same number for work, friends and family. My friends don't want to hear my work Out-Of-Office message and my work colleagues don't want to hear my James Bond impression.
• Along with greetings, I'd like to be able to quickly flick between my regular voicemail message and my out of office message. It's great fun recording a new one every time I go away for a few days.
• AudioBoo integration.  Perhaps this is something that their Developer API could do?
• Direct Dial Voicemail. On Vodafone UK, I can dial 121 before any number and go straight through to voicemail - handy if I want to avoid someone! I'd like a number I can give out which would just go direct to my voicemail.

Overall, the service is great. But with challengers like Google voice now on the scene, SpinVox needs to create some innovate services.