By the flickering of my light, some data this way comes

It seems almost every month someone's coming up with some new data transmission technology. Wireless over larger areas, fatter pipes for faster data, but MIT professor Steven Leeb has really come up with something unique - data transmission via

It seems almost every month someone's coming up with some new data transmission technology. Wireless over larger areas, fatter pipes for faster data, but MIT professor Steven Leeb has really come up with something unique - data transmission via fluorescent tube.

All fluorescent lights feature what is called a ballast, the thing that regulates the amount of juice the light gets, and which produces that annoying hum and flicker in older models. Those lights have magnetic ballasts which flicker at the same oscillation as normal alternating current, but modern, electrical ballast flickers independently, and that's where Leeb got his idea. If you could modify the ballast then you could use that flicker to transmit information over an already existing wireless infrastructure.

The technology has been tested and it works. It is being developed with hearing or developmentally disabled people in mind, to be used in public places in conjunction with a PDA-like device that could pick up the transmissions. Once example given is of an airport terminal where blind people can navigate through the airport using directions broadcast via the lighting system.