Don't know if there are any 30 Rock fans out there, but I had to share this. Sitting on my toilet this morning, I was leafing through Wired as usual when, wonder of wonders, my eyes befell in advertisement in on the second to last page: the iwavecube.
For anyone that watched last week's 30 Rock you know that a main story arc was Jack's launching of a pocket-sized microwave. Well, truth is stranger than fiction because apparent this puppy really does exist. This one-foot cubic wonder promises to blast your vittles with 800 watts of juice. Perfect for kittens too!
Another kudos to the iwavecube for having one of the more absurd taglines(?) I've seen in a while: "Small. Light. Quiet. Personal. Portable. Versatile. Energy Efficient." Catchy. Sure to be the next "Just do it."
Googlovation slays yet another industry. Now, with a few clicks of the mouse you can buy an entire television advertising campaign. This video will blow your mind. (Perhaps only if you are in advertising.)
I vote for Google to take over the cable industry. Comcast blows. Plus, I have this idea about in the future being able to serve only relevant ads to television consumers that choose which ads they want to see. And I think Google can make that happen.
I wrote a little while back about the idea of exclusively iPhone-produced music.
Well, here it is. Middle-aged women dressed in funky clothes to make them feel better about their waning hipness playing "Kids" by MGMT on their Apple-birthed devices. (I'm sure that's not what they titled it; they just called themselves The Mentalists. But I find my nomenclature more accurate.)
My Entourage notifier just popped up telling me I had a new email. "No subject, probably Nuno," I thought. But when I clicked on it, this is what I saw:
I think someone from the past is trying to send me a message through email. Maybe someone time traveled back to 1904, and is attempting to reach me to tell me that they're trapped.
I'm trying to think of who I know that could possibly have time travel capabilities, and I'm drawing a bit of a blank. If you're the person that's trying to contact me, leave me a message scrawled under the right back table of the Laughing Goat coffee shop (or whatever it is in 1904) in Boulder, Colorado.
Want to feel bad about how lazy and stupid you are? Perfect!
See this little kid right here? This nine-year old kid? Well, he just wrote an app for the iPhone that allows you to finger paint on the screen. It's called Doodle Kids.
That's not all. Our little Chinese wunderkind here is already fluent six programming languages. Yes, Lim Ding Wen "first started using a computer when he was two-years-old, discovered programming aged seven, and has since completed more than 20 programming projects."
Lim Thye Chean, his fathers seems proud. This is what he had to say about it:
"Ding Wen is an above average boy with an interest in computers, especially Apple IIGS and Macs, likes to do programming, and that's it. Doodle Kids is an extremely simple program that can be done by anybody. Everybody can program - if Ding Wen can, so can you."
Don't be too excited, dad. Geez, I was happy when I was able to set up my wireless network. Google better snatch up this kid before the Chinese government does.
Not super-impressed, but hey, there's got to be a first everything, right? Well, coming from my man Mr. Mind, here's what I'm assuming to be the world's first song completely composed with an iPhone (except maybe the vocals?). It's actually not bad. Check it.
Finally. After all these bitter years of having to deal with the broken promises of "It." (Remember how they said It was going to change the future, the structure of our cities, our very society?) Finally, someone pays.
Most of you have probably seen this video from TED talks two years ago about the amazing program Photosynth by Microsoft. Previously the best example was Notre Dame. So many people had taken images there that by using simple Flickr tags the program could aggregate massive amounts of knowledge and create a 3D, explorable environment.
Along with many of today's advances comes this one from a partnership with CNN. Over the past year I've been extremely impressed by the news organization's utilization of new and emerging technologies and social media (even if that hologram thing was a pretty bold-faced lie). Today they've brought us a new way to relive the inauguration through a Photosynth library. Check it out here. It's very rad.
The really cool thing about this is that—as far as I know—it's the first time Photosynth has been harnessed so instantly. The Notre Dame example works well because so many photos have been taken of the building over years. But this is from a singular event, shared by millions. And within hours we have this.
As more people add to the database it'll become even more power—and cool. This is web 3.0, folks. Harnessing a collective cloud of data to explore the world with depth and total transparency. You can't give Obama credit for it, but somehow it seems like pretty appropriate timing.
Want to know everything piece of technology/gaming/entertainment/music/design/social media/websites/application/integrated/viral/mobile/outdoors/places/content/green from 2008 that was amazing/mind-blowing/game-changing/surprising/huge/explosive/overpowering/inescapable/breath-taking/jealous-inducing/revolutionary/just-plain-awesome?
Well then. Check out Contagious Magazine's Contagious 2008. Click here to download the whole PDF. It's a great wrap-up to a pretty amazing year. Makes you wonder what we'll do this year. . . .
The ability to put insert new images or video into an existing video is nothing new; advertising's been hot on it for a year or more now, from Dexter to Toyota Matrix to Barack Obama to even the last year's CP+B holiday gift site. But what (apparently) makes this cool is that it democratizes the process by making it easily generated by any user.
I'm not sure this is a great thing as it could eventually lead to even more clutter and ad overload, but it may be an easy way for YouTubers to make some cash. Undoubtedly the technology isn't far off where you'll be able to designate an area in your video as ad space, and it will be served advertisements, just like banners are served now.
This technology has been around for a little while. (If you haven't seen it then it's obviously pretty new and exciting to you too.) Before, this type of interaction has to be run through a PC-based program, but this new version runs through Flash which opens up a lot of possibilities.
Essentially, Papervision uses your webcam to read a symbol on a sheet of paper and generates the images on-screen. Code can also be written so that two symbols interact with each other when placed in close proximity.
If you want to try it out for yourself, click over to Digital Pictures Interactive, print the symbol and then allow Flash to read your webcam in the second player down the page.
Thanks to Ken Slater, digital person extraordinaire, for the tip.
Speaking of melding the digital and physical, there's a pretty good article in last month's Wired about how our technology now is actually a pay-off on the promise of virtual reality that was all the rage in mid-80's teen comedies all the way up to the late-90s. Check it out here.
Remember Virtual Boy from Nintendo? That red-interfaced contraption your pressed your face into and played tennis?
I remember being 11 and calling BS on that. I also I remember going to a car show with my dad about a year early. Besides the cars they had several virtual reality game consoles the size of a Yugo set up. For $5 and a 45-minute wait, you could strap yourself in an be immersed in a totally virtual world for about 90 seconds. I remember feeling rather underwhelmed at the experience but having to feign excitement because my dad has just dropped a pretty hefty note for a stupid video game on it.
The amazing thing about technology is that we've developed it to the point within the last 15 years that we're able to do some amazing things on-screen. The new frontier is how this on-screen technology integrates into our physical lives: augmented reality, semacodes, OLEDs, e-paper, NFC, NTT and more.
Big tech story today, the October issue of Esquire magazine was just released with an e-ink cover. There's also a Ford ad inside. A small start, but this is just the beginning.
So, if you were wondering what the future might hold, here's a pretty good look into that crystal ball. Except that crystal ball isn't quite so much telling the future as just something to look through to see the present on the other side.
According to a few sites including TechRadar and Pink Tentacle, a Japanese company named NTT is releasing a technology that uses the body as a transmitter of data. Available by the end of June, Firmo (yeah, sweet name) promises to revolutionize (perhaps) the way that we touch the world.
Essentially what happens is that there's a thin transmitter device in someone's pocket that, when the person comes in physical contact with a receiver-linked device, sends a weak AC current through the person's body to the receiver in the form of electricity. The initial application for such technology is for electronic locks. As soon as a subject with a transmitter in their pocket touches a door handle fitted with an electronic lock and Firmo receiver, the door will unlock.
The price tag for a 5 transmitter, 1 receiver set is ¥800,000 (or around $8,000US), but that's expected to drop once it begins to be mass-produced.
Right now the speed is only 230 kbps and works unidirectionally, but NTT is working on a version that will be 10 Mbps and send and receive data from either side. (It may be about two years or so before that.)
Think about that for a second. Theoretically, you could receive all of someone's contact information from them the moment you shake their hand. (No more business cards to keep up with!) You could send and receive video to and from a computer, poster or even your friend just by touching it (or him or her). This technology may eventually be incorporated into cell phones and other mobile devices so that when you're looking at products in the store, your phone will receive discounts or additional information for a product when you pick it up.
The technology starts to get a little scary when you imagine that such chips could be implanted into the human body so that they never can be turned off. I have my own theories about all that future tech stuff, but I'll spare you at the moment. I'll just let you keep thinking about your body being used as a data network.
(Oh yeah. One more scary thing: The first commercially available super-human-strength robotic exoskeleton was announced today in—of course—Japan. The even scarier part: the system is called HAL (Hybrid Assistive Limb) and was developed by a company named Cyberdyne.)
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