tech

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.

Terrafugia

Skycar

One of my favorite websites just posted an impressive gallery of robots. An amazing collection highlighting the already ubiquitous role of robots in our society. Just wait a few years and then you will really be amazed and then wait a few more and we just might have a Terminator scenario going for us. The Big Picture always has mazing photos and is always highlighting pertinent issues in the news in a big bold visual manner. Make sure you check out the robots and many of their other wonderful galleries. (Hadron Collider is another of my favorites.)

Here’s an idea how about every time you go to turn on the light, just by using the switch you will know- A: relatively how expensive your energy usage is, B: how much energy you and your entire neighborhood is using at that moment.

No, you don’t need a little led readout, you don’t need to do math, or worry about stats, you will simply by using this switch know. The same way you know where your arms are when your eyes are closed, the same way you have a general sense of which gear your car is in just by touching the stick.

How does the SmartSwitch do this? Easy. It simply makes it a little bit harder to turn on the light the more energy is in use at the moment. You go to turn on the light, there is a little bit of resistance, you think to yourself: “Do I really need this light right now?” and then you either turn it on anyway or you leave it off, “no not right now.”