I can’t quite believe that nanotechnology is actually being used to get lazy and potentially obese schoolchildren to do some exercise but it’s happening in Worcestershire UK with Nintendo Wii being used to drag kids back to life as part of physical education classes.

I have clients who could bore you rigid about the problems of designing and manufacturing those tiny mechanical structures in semiconductor materials, but I’m certain that none of them thought of using the technology to render fat children thin. This year’s must have games machine has caught the imagination of kids big and small but it’s quite sobering to think that the accelerometers, used in the handsets you fling about so energetically, are based on technology originally developed for air-bag deployment and missile guidance.

Everyone’s discussing the next downturn in the semiconductor industry as inevitable, particularly as the US money market drags us every which way but this demonstrates there are lots of fantastic ideas out there which will keep the semiconductor foundries busy in spite of computing trends, mobile handset preferences and big business acquisitions.

Next – based on something one of our clients announced last week, involving a slightly more commercial spin on the way we use GPS, I give you the cure for the embarrassing ring-tone! If your cellphone knew where it was at all times it could adapt things like ring tones to suit the location, you’d get a sensible ring at work, a loud one in the park and silence in the cinema. It’s coming, everyone will want one. So do remember where you read it first.