The Joy World Pacific $28,000 calorie counter. “By placing a food item in the unit, one can get the protein, sugars, and fat content of any food. The unit runs on Windows, although it was initially intended for Linux.”
Engadget
All watched over by machines of loving grace:. “It is a future structurally latent in the new schema for Internet Protocol addressing, IPv6, which, with its 128-bit address space, provides some 6.5 x 1023 addresses for every square meter on the surface of our planet, and therefore quite abundantly enough for every pen and stamp and book and door in the world to talk to each other.”
Boxes and Arrows
“AMD aims $185 “Personal Internet Computer” at half world’s population. “AMD today revealed its plans to create a low-cost Personal Internet Computer (PIC) in a drive to equip 50 percent of the world’s population with Internet connectivity and computing capabilities by 2015 — an initiative dubbed 50×15.”
WindowsForDevices.com
Loyalty cards idea for TV addicts. “Viewers who stay loyal to a particular TV channel could be rewarded by free TV content or freebies from retail partners.”
BBC NEWS
QR Codes Getting Popular. “QR codes are 2D barcodes that are widely available in Japan. Consumers, for example, use their cell phones to take a picture of a QR code and automatically access a corresponding website. According to a recent research conducted by C-NEWS, more than 70% i-mode cell phone users knew QR codes and almost 60% people actually used QR codes.”
RFID in Japan
The PicoServer, sensor control in a pack-of-smokes form factor. “…essentially a web/mail server with an Ethernet port and three sockets for sensors (one out, two in). Suggested uses include hooking up a heat sensor and have it mail you when Widget No. 24 is overheating…”
Engadget
Secom’s schoolkid-tracking GPS satchel. “They’re teaming up with Kyowa Bag to create satchels for elementary school kids that come with a transmitter neatly installed in a colour-coordinated pocket so increasingly-paranoid parents can track their every move.”
Engadget
Hospital networks Wi-Fi patients. “A UK hospital is tagging patients with Wi-Fi transmitters and tracking their movements with a wireless network in a bid to reduce medical errors and reduce litigation costs. When patients arrive for an operation at the Heartlands Hospital in the Midlands, they will be snapped with a digital camera and tagged with a transmitter. The picture and transmitter details will then be paired with their electronic record.”
The Register
Lokomat robot helps people walk again. “A Swiss company has developed the Lokomat, a robot which helps semi-paralyzed and stroke victims learn to walk again.”
Engadget
Parents log on to watch pupils in the classroom. “A preparatory school in Lancashire has become the first in Britain to allow parents to watch their children’s progress from the comfort of their homes or offices.”
Telegraph
The elderbots. “The PALS–Personal Assistance Living System– voice-activated, two-armed “elderbot” would be able to store the groceries, help the senior out of the bathtub and prepare meals. This robotic assistant would delay the need to move its owner into a nursing facility and offer an alternative to in-home nursing care.”
we make money not art
The Other Exponentials. “20 years from now, a teenager will probably be able to shuffle down the street with every movie ever made in a $400 iPod. There will be tremendous business opportunities in digitizing old television shows and films, and for developing technologies that will let users browse and search them all. And of course we’ll witness epic battles over content ownership and compensation.”
Technology Review
Wikinews. “We seek to create a free source of news, where every human being is invited to contribute reports about events large and small, either from direct experience, or summarized from elsewhere.”
Wikimedia
The SwiMP3 bone conducting underwater MP3 player. “Finis just announced the SwiMP3, a waterproof MP3 player which uses bone conduction to vibrate the sound directly into your head via your cheek bones…”
Engadget
Home PCs Plagued With Problems. “Internet users at home are not nearly as safe online as they believe, according to a nationwide inspection by researchers. They found most consumers have no firewall protection, outdated antivirus software and dozens of spyware programs secretly running on their computers.
One beleaguered home user in the government-backed study had more than 1,000 spyware programs running on his sluggish computer when researchers examined it.”
Wired News
How To Backup Social Bookmarks: Del.icio.us Gets Foxy. “Foxylicious is a free Mozilla Firefox extension developed by Dietrich Ayala that integrates your del.icio.us bookmarks into your Firefox browser’s bookmarks.”
RG News
Exec says Pentium M may add location-based services in 2006. “These include the ability for computers to switch default printers and automatically connect to a wireless network based on the specific location of the computer. In addition, users will be able to get directions and search for services offered by nearby shops.”
InfoWorld
British Telecom may turn phone booths into MP3 download portals. “Apparently something like 60 percent of their 70,000 booths lose money and they think that people will be interested in stopping for a moment to download the latest Kylie Minogue track in a right jiffy.”
Engadget
New display ‘as clear as a glossy magazine’. “HP reckons it can make an A4-sized screen with 7000 by 5000 pixels – matching the quality of a glossy magazine. HP says it will be able to replicate this quality on screens all the way up to large electronic posters and billboards.”
New Scientist
A creative generation. “…the study found that 17% of young people have sent pictures or stories to a website and “online creativity can be encouraged through the very experience of using the internet.” That is, the more time kids spend online, the more likely they are to produce their own content.”
foe romeo
‘Knowledge discovery’ could speed creation of new products. “”If you were a chemist, you could walk right up to this display and move molecules and atoms around to see how the changes would affect a formulation or a material’s properties,” said James Caruthers, a professor of chemical engineering at Purdue.”
Purdue
Automatic Site-To-RSS Feed Creation: FeedFire. “You simply register at FeedFire, input the URL of the page and FeedFire dos the rest for you in the fraction of a second. And it does work great too! FeedFire really helps you create, quickly, simply and with no prior expertise, RSS feeds from virtually ANY web page.”
RG News
LEMUR MultiTouch control surface. “What do you mean by “Multitouch capabilities” ? It means that it allows the use of multiple fingers at once, thanks to its multitouch sensitive LCD.”
JazzMutant
‘Brain’ in a dish acts as autopilot, living computer. “To control the simulated aircraft, the neurons first receive information from the computer about flight conditions, then they analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane’s controls. Those signals alter the flight path and new information is sent to the neurons, creating a feedback system.”
we make money not art
Blu-Ray Has Already Won. “Blu-Ray is not only technically superior to HD DVD, it has a far stronger corporate backing, and has demonstrated the ability to have more content available to push the format. After the jump, we break down the three areas – technical, financial, and commercial – where Blu-Ray has set itself apart from its only competition.”
Gizmodo
Jet Turbines to power Mobile Phones. “Microengines have at least 10 times more energy per volume of fuel than conventional lithium batteries. They take up less space and work apparently better fuel cells.”
I4U News
Flash Brightens Outlook On Its Future. “Since its launch on both DoCoMo and KDDI, 13 percent of Japanese have Flash Lite on their handsets, according to a recent interview with Macromedia CEO Robert Burgess. That translates to between 10 and 16 million Japanese Flash Lite users depending on semantics…”
TheFeature
American Passports to Get Chipped. “New U.S. passports will soon be read remotely at borders around the world, thanks to embedded chips that will broadcast on command an individual’s name, address and digital photo to a computerized reader.”
Wired News
The Bluetooth shopping centre. “Tomorrow will be launched the bluepulse location-based service which enables people within a Sydney shopping centre get on their phones the information they want about their surroundings. Based on a shopper’s “profile” which is developed over time, the system is always looking for things of relevance.”[1].jpg)
we make money not art
Samsung develops world’s first five-megapixel camera phone. “The latest model, called the SCH-S250, has a charge-coupled device camera and high-sensitivity flash which allow users to take high-quality pictures. It can also function as a camcorder.”
Yahoo
Texts to alert HK emergencies. “A new scheme to allow people with disabilities to send a text message to summon help from emergency services is being launched in Hong Kong. [...] The system is designed to help those who would have trouble talking to the operator because of difficulties with speech or hearing.”
BBC NEWS
LG Philips claims largest OLED display (20.1″). “The display weighs in at a 2048 x 1536 resolution – a whopping 3 megapixels. OLED is cheaper (well, it will be), brighter, clearer and consumes less juice than LCDs…”
Engadget
The New York Times (may require free subscription)
Article: Smart fabrics make for enhanced living. “Imagine a handbag that warns you if you are about to forget your umbrella or wallet, and which you can later turn into a scarf that displays today’s pollution levels. Or how about creating a wall hanging that glows if someone tries to use your home’s wireless internet connection?”
New Scientist
When Robots Rule the World. “By the end of 2007, some 4.1 million domestic robots will likely be in use, the study said. Lawnmowers will still make up the majority, but sales of window-washing and pool-cleaning robots are also set to take off, it predicted.”
Wired News
Keeping up with the Dosanjhs: The Rise of North America’s Ethnoburbs. “More and more middle-class immigrants are skipping traditional ethnic enclaves and heading straight for the boonies, where strip malls are now filled with ethnic businesses, bubble-tea parlours dot the landscape and schools fill up with kids from any number of different backgrounds. Forget suburbia; this is ethnoburbia.”
maisonneuve
The CertifGate. “A USB Base Unit and a name tag wirelessly communicate with each other. For example, an office worker wearing the name tag can lock her computer automatically when she leaves her/his desk. Similarly unlocking is done automatically.”
we make money not art
Wired, but everyone on hold. “It’s an axiom of our times that the more technology lets people reach out to the world, the less they want to be reached. [...] But there’s a second axiom of the age: People want to be available, sometimes ’round-the-clock, for certain family members, friends, or even business offers.”
csmonitor.com
MYbi Cards – cellphone style with RFID shopping capabilities. “Shopping via RFID tags has been seriously taking off in Asia, and these cards enable a stop-gap solution for those waiting for the perfect compatible phone (though yes, we know they could technically be attached to your keychain or wallet).”
Engadget
Splashpower. “It enables you to power up your mobile phone and other portable devices, simply by dropping them on a mouse-mat-sized pad, called a SplashPad. No physical connection is required between the SplashPad and the device – power is transferred wirelessly.”
Splashpower
InfoSign: GPS Without the Satellite. “…this new technology would enable users to seamlessly transfer between GPS and Bluetooth positioning systems when entering and leaving buildings. Moreover, an added bonus of the Bluetooth system is how works on three dimensions.”
Gizmodo
Motorola bares its Bluetooth grin and points to the PMG. “…at a conference in London, product manager Fred Zimbric predicted that the phone itself would become “just a little green circuit card.” He said: “A phone will be embedded in cars, computers, other devices. The Bluetooth accessory will be the thing you use. You will wonder which is the accessory, and which is the phone.”
The Register
Browser-Based Research Tools. “These are the new tools that allow information gatherers to search, collect, organize and often share/publish your “news bits” into unique comprehensive reports.”
RG News
TV-B-Gone. “Thank you to the over 500 people who ordered TV-B-GoneTM universal remote controls yesterday, our first day of sales!”
Cornfield Electronics
BlogFlix creates photo videos for photoblogs, works with any blog hosting service.. “Welcome to BlogFlix, a new online service for creating and deploying moving pictures in blogs and webpages. As a web-based tool, BlogFlix brings pages to life with videos and video-like photo effects.”
BlogFix
HP offers peek at future of large, plastic displays. “Imagine sitting down to your computer and seeing thin, plastic color displays on either side of your monitor, showing high-resolution text pages you can refer to and print from. On the wall next to you is another large display on which you can show colleagues a power point presentation, or display family photos and notes.”
InfoWorld
New York about to get all into broadband over power lines. “The building’s residents shouldn’t expect more than DSL speeds to start, but they’ll be among the only ones in America being offered such as service, and speeds are only going to get faster in the future.”
Engadget
Robbie album sold on memory card. “Robbie Williams’ Greatest Hits album is to be sold in memory card format for mobile phones and hand-held computers.
It is believed to be the first time a major artist has sold music on the small, portable format.”
BBC NEWS
Tokyo Cabs to Try RFID Payments. “Credit card company JCB International is launching a trial of its QUICPay contactless payment system in November with Tokyo taxi drivers.”
RFID Journal
SBC To Use Wi-Fi To Extend Cingular’s Reach. “He says the phones will automatically sense when a user is near an SBC access point, and automatically handoff, and that SBC expects such equipment by the end of 2005. He adds that SBC can fill in gaps in Cingular’s cell coverage using hotspots in restaurants and homes to alleviate some of the spectrum demands on the mobile carrier.”
TheFeature
Will Robots Kill Joy of Browsing?. “Some faculty at the University of British Columbia are concerned with a new storage system the school’s library is planning. The system will use a robotic crane to retrieve books; students will be able to browse book lists, but they won’t be able to wander along pulling and flipping through books.”
Smart Mobs
Sushi USB KeY. “Combining two of the things that the Japanese love best: technology and food (they’ve got their priorities straight over there, oh yes) these USB memory keys from Solid Alliance (the same crazies who brought us the USB Duck keys) have got plastic sushi stuck to them.”
shiny shiny
How Tech Helps Liberate Women. “True, on average, working women spend about 90 minutes a day on domestic chores, while for working men, the figure is about half that. The gap is still great, but the 50% improvement over the last quarter century represents substantial progress.”
Business Week
Japan, home of the cellphone’s future. “In less than two weeks, I have ceased counting the number of people I see on crowded Japanese subway platforms playing with a mobile phone – the record was about one in three – and find myself becoming one of the statistics. Like most Japanese, I have begun to use the phone whenever there is a down moment. I’m not doing it to make a call but to play with it, explore the possibilities, check out the games or surf the Net.”
IHT
Intelligent shopping carts. “Stop & Shop is testing 1,000 carts with wireless computers to allow customers to e-mail their grocery list to the store and call it up on their cart’s screen. The “Shopping Buddy” also lists what shoppers bought on their last trip, notifies them a product is on sale as they enter the aisle, where it’s stocked, creates personalized coupons as they approach an item and allows customers to place a deli order and get a message when it’s ready.”
we make money not art
Zigbee is buzzing, says Bob Metcalfe. “With Zigbee networked microprocessors you can link your lights with your cellphone. It is being promoted like Ethernet and applications include sensors monitoring power or lighting, medical devices and asset management like RFID,” Metcalfe said.”
The Register
Reuters.com. “It means I don’t have to carry a phone, an iPod and a PDA with me everywhere I go,” said Daly, 32. “I may still get an MP3 player for all my music, but I just don’t have the money right now.”
Technology News Article
New software lets toddlers e-mail and surf. “Children as young as two are the target audience of a new software that will enable toddlers to both surf and send e-mails safely without help from their parents.”
BBC NEWS
Malawi: Farmwise. “…the project developed a computer database system with a web interface and email facility to help women farmers to determine what they can expect to harvest from their land, which crops they can grow given the soil type and fertility, and what inputs they should use.”
ICT Update
Mitsubishi wearable display to give momentum to wearable computing marketplace. “Designed for mobility and practicality, the Mitsubushi SCOPO wearable display is not the first available such display, but we expect its low cost (US$400) and ready availability will stimulate the market and further accelrate change in portable computing.”
Gizmo
Electronic underwear warns of heart attack. “It also represents a step up from the current portable elctrocardiograms, as it does not require electrodes covered with electrolytic gel to be stuck to the wearer’s skin. These can be uncomfortable if worn for long.”
The Register
First look at the Sony EBR-1000 Librie eBook reader. “The screen is unbelievable. Not quite paper, more like a dull plastic like look. My first impression of the device was that it was not an actual working unit, but a plastic mock up made for stores. With high contrast black text on a reflective background, the screen has a readability rivaling actual paper.”
dottocomu
Paralysed man sends e-mail by thought breaking science news headlines. “An pill-sized brain chip has allowed a quadriplegic man to check e-mail and play computer games using his thoughts. The device can tap into a hundred neurons at a time, and is the most sophisticated such implant tested in humans so far.”
nature.com
Vatican tags 40-million book collection with RFID. “Two million of the 40-million piece collection will be tagged in the near future, allowing staff to complete the library’s annual inventory in less than a day, something that previously forced it to close for a whole month.”
Smart Mobs
Injecting ID chips in patients. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the practice of injecting humans with tracking devices for medical purposes.”
Smart Mobs
A lighter approach to computer control. “Fabrics woven from light-sensitive fibres could soon be embedded in computer and projector screens, making it possible to control computers by tracking the position of laser pointers, or other light sources, on the screen, researchers say.”
New Scientist
Motorola and MasterCard giving Near Field Communications payments a run for your money. “The convenience factor could be huge, though: potential uses, aside from purchases, include concert tickets, ID checks, and even a contactless reader. What’s a contactless reader? Well, it means that you could get McSpammed by simply walking by a McDonalds…”
Engadget
Core77 and Timex present 2154: The Future of Time Design Competition. “Designers from more than 72 countries explored and visualized personal and portable timekeeping 150 years into the future.”
Core77
WAZ Tempe’s Mobile WiFi Carts. “WAZ Tempe has placed these mobile WiFi electric carts at various locations in Tempe. These cute two-seaters have communication modules built in the trunk and antenna to broadcast signals.”
what tian has learned
Mobile Pocket Printer: Fuji Film Pivi. “Fuji Film has a announed a pocket-sized photo printer for mobile phones. The Fuji Film Pivi as you can see in the photo fits in a back pocket.”
I4U News
CatchBob! Project Page. “Running on a mobile device (iPAQ, TabletPc), it’s a collaborative hunt in which groups of three persons have to find and circle a virtual object on our campus.”
CatchBob!
Robot Tongue Sounds Out Sweet, Sour. “Researchers at University of Warwick, England, have created an electronic tongue able to identify the four basic tastes: sour, sweet, salt and bitter.”
we make money not art
Cmode2. “Cmode is a vending machine with built-in computer, display, speaker and printer. Consumers can buy cokes by showing 2D barcodes displayed on their mobile phones to Cmode vending machines.”
RFID in Japan
Touch and Feel Web Pages for Fashion Retail. “Click 2 Touch produce unique web pages that allow consumers to see garments as 3D objects, enlarge important details and experience ten tactile sensations. A web page for each garment is created that is easily linked to from an existing e-commerce site.”
Click 2 Touch Ltd
The Bluetooth ‘life-saving shirt’. “The fall is communicated via Bluetooth to the victim’s computer or mobile phone, which in turn alerts family or friends with a phone call, message or email.”
we make money not art
RSS Feeds From Your Notes. “What is particularly useful about this free tool, is that you can create an RSS feed for any particular note page that you create. If you are sharing your notes with friends or colleagues, they can subscribe to the feed and thereby be notified whenever you make edits to your note page.”
RG News
Human Ethernet. “You step on a copper platform containing a server computer and hold a computing device, then data are sent from the server through your body to the computing device. For example, you can view streaming video transmitted through you body on your handheld device.”
we make money not art
Flash Animation Website Characters (Avatars), Text to Speech, Audio for WebsitesDesign Speaking characters through an easy to use online interface. Add your characters to any web page.”
Oddcast VHost SitePal
Visionaries outline web’s future. “Amazon already has 65,000 developers who are working on ways to plunder information on its site for their own ends. The payback for Amazon is the selling of more stuff through its site.”
BBC NEWS
Photos from the CEATEC show in Japan. “Panasonic’s wall-size “wallpaper” touch screen can serve up television, e-mail, multiple video streams and games simultaneously.”
CNET News.com
Transparent map over satellite photos of London. “This overlays a streetmap on an aerial photo of the Tower of London (and, presumably, with other cities as well). Move the mouse around to see the overlay move. Very cool hack.”
Boing Boing
The watch that reminds you you’ve forgotten the keys. “The UW smart watch system works as follows: an RFID reader senses the tags on, say, your books, relays the data to the personal server in your pocket. The server checks if anything has been forgotten, and if so, it sends a prompt to the wristwatch to alert you.”
we make money not art
Connecting Paper and Online Worlds by Cellphone Camera. “On these posters are symbols the researchers call SpotCodes: concentric rings of black-and-white blocks representing ones and zeros. Focusing your camera phone on the code and then clicking any button launches a wireless service – for example, the ability to buy a train ticket, check an airplane’s departure time or download a ring tone from a store display.”
The New York Times (may require a free subscription)
The Long Tail. “People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video, Tower Records, and Barnes & Noble. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander further from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a lack of alternatives, and a hit-driven culture).”
Wired
Reality Mining: Browsing Reality with Sensor Networks. “As sensors become inexpensive and easily deployed, individual measurements may become less significant than the sensor data relationships within the network. Sensors act as pixels, allowing us to construct views of the people, processes, and events we care about.”
Sensors Mag
RFID: Robot for infinite decluttering?. “Every item in your house – socks, eyeglasses, Cheez-It boxes, hockey sticks – will eventually come from the store with a tiny, almost invisible RFID tag attached. The tag will contain some information about its item, like “I am a box of SpongeBob Cheez-Its that expired last February.” The tag will be able to transmit that data wirelessly over a short distance. This will be the norm in 10 years.”
USATODAY.com
How-To: Podcasting (aka How to get Podcasts and also make your own). “To put it simply, a Podcast is an audio file, a MP3, most likely, in talk show format, along with a way to subscribe to the show and have it automatically delivered to your iPod when you plug in to iTunes. The show isn’t live, so you can listen to it whenever you want.”
Engadget
SqueezeMe. “Squeeze Me is a squishy toy that detects certain bio-readings and responds to change with visual feedback using light patterns.”
Enable Arts
Mitsubishi Electric demos Future DVD Shop. “DVD packages are RFID-tagged and when a customer picks up a package RFID readers embedded in a shelf detect it. Now, the customer can preview movies etc. on her HMD.”
RFID in Japan
Ten years ten trends. “Ten years after electronic portals to the Worldwide Web were first opened to millions of computer users, ten significant trends have emerged that vividly illustrate how the Internet affects America, according to findings from the comprehensive year-to-year study of the impact of online technology by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.”
USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future
Adidas creates ‘smart shoe’. “Adidas says it has created the world’s first “smart shoe” by mating it with a computer chip that adapts its cushioning level to a runner’s size and stride.”
The Gadgetbox
Smart Mobs: Come and see me in my hompy. “Cyworld’s main feature is a blog-like “mini hompy,” short for mini homepage. What differenciates Cyworld is the “mini rooms” that users can customize with items, arcade games or music they buy with “acorns” –they cost 100 won (9 cents) each– from a cyber shop.
Cyworld is making about 150 million won a day from acorn sales.”
Location Reigns Supreme With Future PCs. “Panelists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during a recent Emerging Technologies Conference described a future where nothing ever gets lost and your SUV always knows the coordinates of the gas station with the cheapest prices on super unleaded.”
PCWorld.com
Casio combines LCD and fingerprint sensor. “Casio Computer Corp. has developed a fingerprint sensor layered on top of a 1.2-inch LCD screen, providing a convenient way for phone makers to incorporate biometric security into their handsets.”
InfoWorld
China leads world on broadband. “The massive growth in China has partly been down to the growing community of online gamers, but also because the authorities have pushed towards using broadband in education. “Video over DSL is a very big hit and the vast majority is local content for entertainment and education,” said Mr Greggains. “Another thing which is big is interactive learning, group learning where kids will get together and do homework jointly using the internet.”
BBC NEWS
Wi-Fi Moves In. “The relatively small home wireless market, 8.7 million households in 2004, will climb to 28 million in 2008, according to a Jupiter Research [...]. These households represent a growing segment of young, affluent, tech-savvy, early-adopter consumers. They express interest in Wi-Fi applications beyond the Web, including mobile devices, entertainment, and digital content.”
wifiplanet.com
radioSHARK. “The RadioSHARK can record any AM or FM radio broadcast in real time. You can also program it to record a scheduled show, or to ‘pause’ live radio so you can return right where you left off moments or even hours before.”
Griffin Technology
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