I always have this big issue to deal with when I’m travelling “light”: “what should I do with the dozen of plastic cards I have in my wallet?”. I have plastic cards for almost everything: of course my credit card, ID card and driving licence, but also my various customer cards, membership card from various associations and finally frequent flyer card for different airlines.
I let you imagine what my wallet looks like at the end of the day. So it’s always a big deal, when I’m trying to travel light, to decide which card to take or to leave in a drawer.
One other issue is that every time one card expires, its plastic adds to the trash. So do the numerous receipts that we accumulate after swiping our CC.
But a wind of change might blow (soon?)…
The fundamental of the One Card Electronic Card is quite simple: it wants to eliminate the trash and give a break to our poor ever growing wallet (and resolve issues like identity theft via discarded expired CCs) by proposing to be this all-credit-cards-in-one device.
On one end of the gadget is a Memory Card Slot that will help the user upload their various card Details.
The other end has a turning-knob that allows one to choose the appropriate card to be swiped.
The display on the device reflects an identical copy of the card front, while the strip on the back mimics a card’s magnetic strip. Once the transaction is completed, the receipt generated is displayed on the device (no paper receipt) and the info gets stored on the memory card.
The concept is pretty clear in what it wants to achieve, namely combine all cards that a person uses under one umbrella, reduce generation of paper/plastic trash, identity security etc. The only block is the compatibility with various banks and the willingness of people to rely on a gadget for daily CC transactions. Yes, we do use online, virtual services, but something like this is quite different.
As a matter of facts this concept may one day revolution our approach to the concept of wallet itself! Imagine that this all-in-one credit card may give us the ability not only to pay our goods, but also services (a virtual e-ticket for public transportations or airplanes, social security, insurance) and feature everything from our secured personal data (passport/ID card/Driving licence) to the family picture we carry everywhere…
Of course there’s always the issue of losing it with all the critical information it carries… but it is just the same problem as loosing your real wallet. Except that we can imagine that this all-in-one wallet will be able to be deactivated remotely and thus safeguards all our data.
A very nice concept indeed.
Designer: Kim Young Suk
That was a looooooooong time ago. 
Want to surf the Internet while you’re on a plane? You’re not alone — there’s a growing demand for in-flight Wi-Fi, and the airlines are stepping up to meet it. Currently there are three separate services — Gogo, Row 44 and LiveTV — that provide Wi-Fi on planes in U.S. airspace, and which ones that are available to you depends on your airline.
Microsoft has recently published