Virtual Personality is Yours to Manipulate. “Andrine, developed by The Pooch at Lancaster University (UK), is a virtual personality projected on a screen and reacting to messages sent via SMS. She uses an array of facially expressions to portray her emotions when reacting to the messages.”
networked_performance
NTT DoCoMo’s Object-Recognition Binoculars. “The examples they offer include looking at a passing plane and seeing the flight number and destination displayed in the eyepiece, or looking at a flower and having its name shown to you. This sort of technology could make its way into camera phones and the like, perhaps affording us an automatic photo-tagging system somewhere down the road.”
Gizmodo
Wittier Wireless. “We’re trying to build a cognitive radio that would be aware of its environment,” says Niknejad, a member of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center. “It would decide what specifications like frequency and power consumption are appropriate and adjust itself accordingly.”
Berkeley College of Engineering
EDEKA offers a fingerprint-pay-system option. “When it comes to modes of payment the leading German food retail chain EDEKA will in future also be relying on a fingerprint pay system.”
heise online
IBM puts Millipede on public display . “Millipede works with thousands of fine tips that “write” tiny pits representing individual bits into a thin film of highly specific polymer. The principle is comparable with the old punch cards, but now with structural dimensions in the nanometer scale and the ability to erase data and rewrite the medium, IBM said.”
Tom’s Hard News
Scented Smart Clothes. “British designer Jenny Tillotson has developed a line of multi-sensorial clothing that acts as a ‘Smart Second Skin’. The fabric interacts with the human emotions of its wearer and releases a selection of scents based on your mood.”
Gizmodo
The New Science of Mind over Matter. “When hooked to a special computer via a cable, the chip translates the young man’s thoughts into commands that let him move a cursor across a PC screen and open e-mail. He can draw a circle with a computer painting program. And he can use a robotic hook to perform simple tasks like picking up a candy and sliding it across a table. All he has to do is think.”
Business Week
RFID Zappers Will Save Us. “For the incredibly privacy-conscious (or those with something to hide), the TagZapper by West End Laboratories is a handheld device to wipe RFID transmitting devices.”
Gizmodo
Biometric Speed Dialing. “For instance, touching the [sensor] with an index finger would dial Mom; touching it with a ring finger would dial Sweetie; touching it with the middle finger could dial the office.”
Gizmodo
For Troops, Home Can Be Too Close. “Learning the best use of e-mail, cellphones and other interactive devices is critically important to the military, where careless communication can cost lives. But experts say that even seemingly mundane exchanges have implications for troop morale and the emotional health of service families.”
The New York Times
IBM Mouse Aids Trembling Hands. “IBM said Monday that it has developed a mouse that compensates for the manual tremors that can plague the elderly.
The new mouse treats the hand tremors as noise, and uses algorithms based on image-stabilization systems used in digital cameras.”
Extreme Tech
Sony Ericsson said to plan cellphone with ‘auto-adaptive’ themes. “The ‘auto-adaptive’ phone will apparently snap pictures periodically, and then build a theme based on what it sees. [...] you’ll be able to set your phone to create a theme based on the overall ambience of your surroundings (i.e., green if you’re in a forest), or one based on actual recorded images.”
Engadget
Busker Ringtones. “For people who want to make a living of live and spontaneous music on the streets, the Busker Ringtones project, by Tamsin Fulton, offers buskers a new revenue stream but gives also the public the possibility to get unique ringtones for their mobile phones. The ringtones would normally cost £1,50: with 75p going to the musician and the rest to the requester’s mobile phone network.”
we make money not art
Gallup on Blogs. “Some useful results … about 75% of people in the US use the Internet … just 12% of people read blogs at all … and 56% of consumers dont appear to know what they are. Most of the results are regarding political blogs.”
IFTF’s Future Now
Shadow monsters. “Philip Worthington made a fabulous application to frighten children or make them laugh. You move your hand and its shadow on the wall not only has spikes or a long tongue, but it also makes burps and other strange noises.”
we make money not art
Peer pressure. “You can lend up to £25,000 through Zopa and your money is divided among 50 borrowers (who have already been screened to ensure they have good credit ratings) to minimise risks of default.”
Guardian Unlimited
Invent in-game moblogging. “How about a Flickr uplaod button -in game-. See something cool? Hit the button, add the tags, designate it to your guild, upload. I suspect this would mean tens of thousands of accounts for a service like Flickr, but on a more macro level, people are going to start moblogging their virtual worlds just as much as the real world, why not use Flickr.”
Boing Boing
Samsung Develops LCD for Color-Blind. “Samsung Electronics has announced that they are developing LCD monitors for people with dyschromatopsia (color-blindness for the lay-folk). The color correction technology will allow users to control red, green and blue output at 10 levels so that people can set the monitor to adjust the contrast of the colors giving them the most difficulty.”
Gizmodo
Taggs Rule!. “Yesterday, a team from BBC Radio showed how it allowed listeners to “tag” songs using their cell phones – thanks to Phonetags – and they pointed out how this information helps to organize songs in different ways — suggesting new playlists for DJs, but also helping people find other songs, albums, or shows of interest.”
Smart Mobs
PLX -parallax of the game. “PLX, by Kuwakubo Ryota, is a battle game for two people sitting across from one another at a table with a double-sided LED monitor, but while one might play a sci-fi shooting game, the other could have cupid shooting arrows into hearts that come fluttering down.”
we make money not art
Eye-controlled video camera. “We’ve seen stuff like this years ago with eye-scanning viewfinders that track focal points, but this working prototype developed at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians University does full camera movement. It is expected to have applications for psychology and market research…”
Engadget
Philips Finds New Material for Future Memory Chips. “Dutch Philips Electronics said on Wednesday its researchers have come up with a new material to integrate memory in very advanced semiconductors featuring very thin circuits.”
EWeek
Phone ban to stop ‘text bullies’. “A secondary school plans to ban its pupils from bringing in mobile phones as a way of stopping bullying via text.”
BBC NEWS
Time-drift technique fingers PCs. “Security researchers have developed a technique for remotely fingerprinting an electronic device using clock skews – small, microscopic deviations in device hardware. [...] …the technique could be developed to track hardware wherever it is on the net, or in applications such as computer forensics”
The Register
The Sound Fountain. “You clap your hands, speak up or make any other noise and the sounds are captured as bubbles. Over time they pass from one screen to the other till they are gone.”
we make money not art
Virgin Radio starts daily podcast. “Virgin Radio is making highlights of its breakfast show available for digital audio players in what it says is a first for “podcasting”.
BBC NEWS
TV, Computers a ‘Full-Time’ Activity for U.S. Youth. “Using computers, watching television and listening to music are nearly a full-time activity for most U.S. children, with the average 8- to 18-year-old taking in 6 1/2 hours a day, a report published on Wednesday said.”
Reuters.com
Broadband set to revolutionise TV. “IPTV is a similar idea to VoIP services, like Skype. Both use broadband net connections to carry information, like video and voice, in packets of data instead of conventional means. Since it uses internet technology, IPTV could mean more choice of programmes, more, more interactivity, tailored programming, and more localised content outside of conventional satellite, digital cable, and terrestrial broadcasts.”
BBC NEWS
Flexible Screen For Phones Just Two Years Away. “A little mouse told me that Philips Polymer Vision scientists have made dramatic progress on a flexible, 5-inch display for cell phones the company plans to “roll out” in two years. Called the Polymer Vision PV-QML5, it’s a 5-inch ultra-thin and very light 320 x 240 pixel active-matrix display. You use it by grabbing a part of the phone and pulling it like a scroll.”
Personal Tech Pipeline
New TomTom Rider navigation system for bikers. “A closely guarded secret indeed. As far as I know this will be the first Satellite Navigation system which is designed specifically for a bike with a Bluetooth audio system. I know other manufacturers make bike kits, but this is really a bike system not a dual purpose one.”
PocketGPS.co.uk
It’s all about location!. “Earthcomber is free software for Palm devices that allows users to mark spots places on the map and then share those places with public and private groups in the Earthcomber community. Members of each group can load the group’s locations onto their own Palm-powered devices, or browse the locations on the web. The result is a collaboratively built “map layer” that contains just the information contributed by the group.”
Smart Mobs
Japan’s virtual bus tour guides. “They’re not just playing back a tape, though, the whole thing is actually connected to the bus’s GPS navigation to sync up the virtual tour with the real current location.”
Sony offers pizza feature for hungry gamers. “Sony has built the ability to order pizza into its latest online multiplayer game. Type the command “/pizza” while playing Everquest II, a fantasy game with 330,000 active players, and get the Pizza Hut Web site, where you can place orders for delivery.”
CNN.com
Charge a battery in just six minutes. “Li-ion batteries work by forcing lithium ions from a lithium cobalt oxide cathode to migrate to a carbon anode via an electrolyte solution. Altair’s patented modification is to make the anode surface out of lithium titanate nanocrystals, using chemical tricks to give it a surface area of about 100 square metres per gram, compared with 3 square metres per gram for carbon.”
New Scientist
The Bleeding Edge of Computing. “Tomorrow’s computing landscape may include trinary rather than binary coding, DNA computers, and wearable computers that act as a virtual assistant who helps us on a second-by-second basis.”
KurzweilAI.net
Virtual Reality Psychodramas. “So, as the human user proceeds through the drama, his or her actions are being recorded computationally over the Internet, interpreted psychologically and used to prompt the responses by the virtual characters. Because of this, the drama is different every time, a factor that the researchers say is both a more challenging and exciting type of entertainment, while also more computationally demanding.”
Tech Trends
Computer log keeps joggers up to speed. “Cities across Germany are being equipped with the world’s first electronic jogging paths to beam runners’ heart beats to a computer. [...] Organisers promise that good results will win the runners rebates on health insurance premiums, which amount to a compulsory 14 per cent cut of salary.”
Telegraph
EverNote Product Overview. “With EverNote 1.0, you can easily store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos, webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more!”
EverNote
Wireless USB killed the Bluetooth star. “Designed to operate at a range of 10 meters or less, data transfer speeds will top off at 480 Mbps. [...] Kevin Kahn demonstrated a USB dongle that fits a standard USB 2.0 port and would allow any device with a USB port to send its signals wirelessly. The key advantage of this technology over Bluetooth is ease of use…”
Engadget
rb.log. “The video you are about to see portrays the kind of technological advances that could transform our world over the next ten years. The events depicted are fictional, but the potential of NTT DoCoMo’s cutting-edge technology is very real. Our third-generation (3G) FOMA service is already operational throughout Japan; and by 2010, we hope to have fully brought our vision of advanced mobile communications to fruition.”
DoCoMo
2WEAR. “In the 2WEAR project we explore the concept of a personal system that is formed by putting together computing elements in an ad-hoc fashion using short-range radio. Certain elements are embedded into wearable objects, such as a wristwatch and small general-purpose compute/storage modules that can be attached to clothes or placed inside a wallet. Others have the form of more conventional portable computers, like PDAs and mobile phones. Also, there are stationary elements as part of the environment, some of which are visible, such as big screens and home appliances, while others are not directly perceivable by the user, such as network gateways and backend servers.”
2Wear
Peerflix – Netflix alternative?. “Beta web service Peerflix lets you trade DVD’s you own with other members for a pay-as-you-go 1 dollar a trade rate. [...] Peerflix provides the mailers – send out a DVD, receive a DVD. Keep the movies you get for as long as you want, until you trade again.”
Lifehacker
Audio Location. “Audio Location [...] is a low-cost location sensing mechanism based on the use of off-the shelf microphones attached to cheap PCI sound cards in a standard PC. The system doesn’t require the user to wear any tag, it can detect human-made sounds such as the clicking of fingers or clapping to accuracies of around 15cm for a 3D location.”
we make money not art
The table that senses your mood. “The key table , part of Equator Weight Furniture project, gets a sense of people’s emotions from the way they dump their key or wallet onto it when they get back home. The table even warns the rest of the family to be on their guard if your mood is not good.”
we make money not art
RFID triggers SMS at after-school cram schools. “RFID triggers SMS at after-school cram schools
Tomas, after-school cram schools in Tokyo metropolitan area, introduced a system that uses RFID to send SMS messages to parents when their kids arrive at and leave cram schools.”
RFID in Japan
Kowa Vista View. “Kowa is hoping to replace some of those traditional tourist binoculars with their new fangled LCD-based version. These have the advantage of letting more than one person use them at a time.”
Engadget
Blind computer users are playing by ear. “Justin Daubenmire, founder of BSC games, is one of a tiny band of game devotees who specialize in computer games for the blind — games that use precisely recorded stereo sound rather than 3D images to guide players through the action.”
we make money not art
Kenyan school turns to handhelds. “At the Mbita Point primary school in western Kenya students click away at a handheld computer with a stylus.
They are doing exercises in their school textbooks which have been digitised.”
BBC NEWS
Mobile Phones Now Social Fabric. “A report by researcher Michael Hume about our relationship with mobile phones suggests that we’re moving towards a real time of dependency, where if we lose our mobile we begin to feel cut off from our network of friends, cut off from our contacts, and absolutely disabled. Also, the mobile is very much a device of control. We are using it to control our relationships with others, how others contact us, and increasingly to control information.”
PSFK
The speaking drug label. “The technology integrates RFID and voice recording to allow drug labels to tell the name of the medicine, give instructions on its use and information about its possible side effects. A small RFID chip will be attached to the drug label. To make the drug talk, users use an RFID reader which will match the information with a drug directory in a small database embedded in the reader.”
we make money not art
Sensitive Objects. “…tap the flat surface and the acoustic signature unique to the point you tapped is analyzed. If it’s recognized, the intended action is executed. While that’s not new to touchscreens (surface acoustic analysis has been used for a while in flat-panel touch-screens), it looks like Sensitive Objects is trying to apply the technique to a whole range of objects, so that your future gadget might respond to touches all over, not just on its screen.”
Gizmodo
Parkinson’s hope over ‘glasses’. “A pair of glasses which use virtual imagery could help people with Parkinson’s disease cope with walking problems, scientists say. The device uses light to project images in front of the user, helping them to focus and control their movement.”
BBC NEWS
Fujitsu to commercialize RFID Information Kiosk Terminals. “For example, at an airport, (suppose a passanger’s air ticket is RFID’d), UbiWall gets information about where s/he is traveling and shows a route to his/her gate. In a department store, UbiWall gets information about a customer’s age and gender through his/her RFID’d phone and suggests some sales floors.”
RFID in Japan
hugms“…once hugms is connected to your mobile phone all you have to do is send it the phone number of the person you’d like to hug and then squeeze. sensors inside the device read how long and how hard you have squeezed and will format a text message based on your hug. for example, a long squeeze would look like
‘hhhhhhuuuuuuuuuuggggggg’ while a short and hard squeeze would look like
‘hhHHUUUUUUugg’”
mobjects
UK pioneers digital film network. “Most cinemas currently have mechanical projectors but the new network will see up to 250 screens in up to 150 cinemas fitted with digital projectors capable of displaying high definition images. [...] Cinemas will be given the film on a portable hard drive and they will then copy the content to a computer server.”
BBC NEWS
Virtual Reality Goes Round. “Instead of being surrounded by images, you’ll play with the VR Object Display, a two meters tall cylindrical column with a diameter of 1.6 meters, which has been specifically designed for advertising, trade shows and presentations.”
Tech Trends
Turn that Jobo Giga Vu into, well, whatever you want. “…a recently released SDK for the device opens wide the device’s warm, chewy inner Linux center, making it ripe for all sorts of hacking, from loading up PDA software (Qtopia, for instance), to loading up Doom – they have a step-by-step for that one.”
Engadget
NID GALLERY “People and works from Nagaoka Institute of Design.”
Nagaoka ID
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