I meant to post this earlier (along with the FIPS post), but I forgot. Anyway, here it is now: Yoshio Hayasaki and his colleagues at the Tokushima University in Japan can encode 6 megabits of data onto a human finger nail.

8 bits = 1 byte, so 6 megabits is 0.75 megabytes, which is about half of a floppy disk, or, um... around 45 seconds of 128kbps mp3 music. Basically, they use a laser to draw little dots on your nail. Each dot is 3.1 microns in diameter, and each dot is 5 microns apart (for comparison, your average human hair is 100 microns thick).

As for how it works, well apparently shining this laser on your nail makes it more reflective, so they can then use fluorescent light to read back the data (sort of like how a CD player reads data on a CD).

The data is expected to last 6 months, which is how long it takes for the fingernail to be completely replaced due to growth. Also, currently they've only written to a detached nail. They're still working on getting this to work on a fingernail still attached to a living human's hand.

The researchs say they plan on using this technology for biometrics (i.e. identifying a person), but I don't know if that's such a great idea. I mean, we already have finger print readers, and it would seem that this nail method is less secure (for example, if I find out what my boss' nail-code is, I can just burn the same code on my own nail and then pretend I'm him).

Also, it sounds like this data is "write-once", meaning once you encode the data on your fingernail, you'd have to wait 6 months for the data to get erased before you can write else. So this technology isn't useful for storing your documents or anything like that either.

Hmm, what kinda of data would it be useful to encode that doesn't change more often than once every 6 months, and it won't matter if other people can copy or read the data? I can't really think of anything. Any one else here have any ideas?