THE focus of this article isn’t breaking news, but it hasn’t gotten a lot of exposure and I thought you would all get a chuckle out of it. It is Just another example of how ‘progress’ isn’t always in the right direction.

Jim Mielke may have thought he was on to a good thing when his idea for a skin implanted cell phone won a Notable Entry award at 2008′s Greener Gadgets Design Competition. But when Gizmodo got a hold of the story and panned it back in February, he may have thought twice (if he’s a Gizmodo subscriber that is). Jim’s idea to embed a cell phone inside human skin calls together some really fascinating technologies and bundles them into one of the most useless gadgets to disgrace the 21st Century.

It runs, for example, on blood. A small cell that taps directly into a users veins and converts the glucose and oxygen in the blood into electrical power. That’s a pretty impressive bit of engineering right there.

Then there’s the fact that the phone is operated via a representative ‘tattoo’ on the skin. The image is created with tiny spheres filled with a reactive agent that turns visibility on or off depending on the current signal they receive. It’s essentially a tattoo that you can switch off. Now THAT is an amazing (and useful) technology.

But the actual concept of a subcutaneous cell phone is just ridiculous and riddled with impractical shortcomings.

For a start, there’s the issue of sound quality. The images accompanying the story suggest that the unit may well be positioned on the upper forearm. If you’re in a noisy environment, the only way you’re going to hear your conversation is by trying to jam your elbow into your ear (a stupider look even than the finger-in-ear ‘Bone-phone‘ developed by the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo). Not practical. And it doesn’t have a headset jack option either (actually, now that I think about it, there’s no mention of the audio hardware it uses at all…odd).

The next major drawback is the hamstringing of your text messaging speed. While some people can text faster than they can talk and others painfully peck out messages at a glacial pace, most texters use both hands when typing. Again, based on the concepts images, having the phone implanted into one arm instantly disables 50% of your texting prowess. Even if the keypad is upgraded to a full QWERTY style, efficient typing relies on two usable hands (even if, like me, you only use two fingers on each).

On the plus side though, this technology could revolutionise the humble laptop. Imagine a laptop that is always with you, actually in your lap! You could have a keyboard tattooed on your thighs, ergonomically split across your crotch to avoid RSI. And, if you’re a boy, you already have the perfect place to implant a screen projector. Having to pul your pants down in order to use it could raise a few problems in public places, however.