tech

These two concept videos offer different takes on what the future of digital displays might look like.

First a swarm of tiny illuminated helicopters

how about a swarm of digital display blocks using any available surface?

Curious Displays from Julia Tsao on Vimeo.

(both via boing boing)

not the actual thing just a random flickr image of a 3D printer for illustration purposes only

Everyday I am amazed by how fast “the future” becomes reality, so I guess it was inevitable that with all of the 3D printers everywhere, someone would have the bright idea to start printing human tissue with these things.

“The company expects that within five years, once clinical trials are complete, the printers will produce blood vessels for use as grafts in bypass surgery. With more research it should be possible to produce bigger, more complex body parts.”

from this economist article (via kottke)

Is this really what the future of magazines looks like? More importantly, will people be willing to pay for a rich media magazine experience? What’s wrong with paper? Why do people gravitate towards bits and away from atoms? I love atoms.

I love this amazing video, it visualizes the complex process that goes on behind the scenes of a project in development. I love how clumps of data fly around form person to person and when huge amounts of new bits fly in. Trying to correlate that to my own dev experience is fascinating.

You can see more code development visualizations at
vis.cs.ucdavis.edu/~ogawa/codeswarm

This was on the other night but I missed it, I was stupidly watching LOST. Thankfully it’s available online. The video of course is emblematic of its own subject matter.

This is freakin’ amazing. Maybe a little scary too? The AR.Drone is an iPhone (or iPod Touch) controlled “toy” helicopter. It connects via Wi-Fi and uses either device’s accelerometer and touchscreen as controls. The freaky part is that it also has an on-board camera so that you can see what’s going on while piloting it with your iPhone. Add on to that, it also has an augmented reality video game mode that mixes real world flying skills with on-screen game action, like robots and missiles.

On it’s own it sounds awesome, but can you imagine hundreds of these? Each one flying around the streets and invading your privacy? They make me think of the annoying City scanners from Half Life 2.

more info on the AR.Drone

Something about this app appeals to my artistic sensibilities. (via engadget)

Google has a new product coming out soon, it’s called wave. Generaly I am almost a luddite when it comes to adopting new technology. I never trust it will actually make my life easier, instead of complicating it further. And how often does something come out and actually do what it advertises?

Somehow wave seems like it might be a game changer. (there is a reason i put this under the tech category and not just web.) Despite the somewhat stilted and halting demo, this is no steve jobs presentation, I do have high hopes for this.

what does wave do? Well, in short, it combines e-mail and chat into one tool, throw in gmail style threading and near instant sharing, collaboration and replication of a conversation across many platforms. All in my browser without downloading any additional tools or software*. I’m definitley intrigued. If you have an hour you should watch the video.

(more…)

nice. very nice. full size.

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