in the next nine months three mobile carriers will be launching applications (Immersion) created that allow users to communicate emotions nonverbally.

HT to cellodude on the IV MB. From the Wall Street Journal:

>>Immersion Corp., a haptics developer based in San Jose, Calif., says that in the next nine months three mobile carriers will be launching applications it created that allow users to communicate emotions nonverbally. For example, frustration can be communicated by shaking the phone, which will create a vibration that will be felt by the other party. That person might then choose to respond with what the developers call a “love tap”—a rhythmic tapping on the phone that will produce a heartbeat-like series of vibrations on the other party’s phone.

Immersion’s general manager of touch business, Craig Vachon, says the next step is developing a phone that can deliver a physical sensation based on the position of a finger on a touch screen. One application would be a touch-screen keyboard that feels like a traditional keyboard, so that users could more easily distinguish exactly where each key begins and ends. The idea would be to help users avoid errant taps on the screen and the resulting garbled messages.

“The technology is such that we could blindfold you and you would be able to feel the demarcation between the keys of a keypad, on a completely flat touch screen,” Mr. Vachon says. The technology is being tested in handsets now and should be made available to consumers sometime in the next 12 months, he says.