10-16-08
TelePresence in public?
Can you imagine when you go into a club or pub or somewhere and the person sat next to you is actually sat somewhere else in the world but has decided to ‘dial-in’ to be there ? Virtual clubbing? Popping out for a drink via your iPhone app? Hmmm. . .
Updated . . . just noticed a ‘what that brings to the table’ non-intended pun from the guy at Cisco !
[Via a 'multimedia news release' with details of the first 'public' TelePresence rooms in conjunction with Tata Communications]
09-23-08
Some thoughts on GPS, AR, magic and the technology adoption curve
[Image from tdub303 on Flickr - he uses these to make super cool photos]
Where have I been? What have I been doing? What have I been thinking about? Everywhere. Lots of things. Even more stuff. You could say I’ve had a bit of a blogging dry patch and you’d be right. I’ve been sharing loads of stuff on Twitter, perhaps a little too much, but as you’ll see, I just haven’t been bothered about blogging lately.
So, in order to kick things back off, I thought Id offer up a quick round-up of some stuff I’ve stumbled upon lately, things currently on my radar and just some thoughts I’ve been thinking.
1. Geo-Location/GPS stuff
I cracked and finally bought an iPhone last week. That’s meant I’ve been checking out loads of Apps and thinking much more about the potential of GPS and geo-locational goodies. So far, Vicinity, Twinkle, GPS Tracker and of course Google Maps are all on my homescreen. And I’m well up for trying out a load more. Killer thing that needs building . . . . GPS + Facebook App. Dangerous.
2. Augmented Reality
Iain posted a while back on AR and that rekindled my interest in the area. It kind of ties into GPS stuff of course, then there was that company at TC50 that blew everyone away. Then today I checked this out. Awesome stuff, can’t wait for more exciting things in this space.
3. It’s good to be in the audience sometimes
Well not all of us, but most of us. We don’t appreciate what’s going on around us – we’re too close to it. Way too close to it to appreciate it. If we go with the magic analogy that forms the tagline of this blog, then we’re quite literally standing behind the magician and spoiling the illusion. I;ve been doing a fair bit of training recently with all different types of people and that’s been great for making me appreciate what’s going on in the technology world. It’s all happening very very quickly and sometimes I think it would be nice to be in the audience from time to time.
4. There’s still a massive chasm for technology to cross
The technology adoption curve is nothing new. In fact it may even lie behind the name of something I’m working on . Tied into the point above, the tip of the curve is moving super quick, but from what I can see it;s taking time to push things down the curve and gain more early/mid/late majority adoption. Twitter is of course something we geeks love. But has it gone mainstream yet? Nope. This is something (not just Twitter, for all technology products/services) I think about a lot. How do you cross that chasm? What factors need to be in place? Is it simply how good/relevant/magical the product/service is? Hmmm. I’m going to think even harder.
5. Give Twitter back its magic wand
I’m in there all the time and I’ve noticed the following things that have happened. I no longer visit Popurls to get some quick link fixes. I blog less *cough*. I miss outbound SMS so so much. That was the magical bit. Why oph why doesn’t an operator jump in there and basically score the biggest load of love with the early adopter/tech community by striking up a deal with Twitter and taking some of the slack? Just cut out some of those slick adverts or drop a celebrity . . . Orange, Vodafone, O2, 3 or T-Mobile. (And yes I have mentioned you by name in the hope that you’ll pick this up and add it to the nagging thoughts in your mind that it’s a really good idea)
09-08-08
Esquire E Ink front cover
Wow. This is pretty cool. Exciting and a bit scary – high “more adverts shouting at us from more places” potential.
[via Engadget so you;ve probably already seen it – and actually originally a guy at Poke called Will)
09-01-08
Live Hurricane Gustav streams
UPDATE: I’ve taken the embedded players down – they automatically play and are a little annoying when you;re not actually looking at this post. Just follow the link to Ustream to check out the (now not live) feeds.
Wow. This sent shivers up my spine. Live streams of Hurricane Gustav. You can hear news reports on the radio in the background and there’s the odd bit of commentary from time to time. As they say over on the Ustream blog – hope everyone is OK. The live web is most certainly upon us.
[via @noodlepie]
08-21-08
Surface DJ
After a tiny spot of Microsoft bashing earlier today – here’s a nice use of Surface as an audio sequencer with a rather nice UI from the guys at vectorform. Essentially though isn’t Surface just like a big iPhone? Multi-touch is the way forwards and if this patent is anything to go by – it’s going to be Apple versus Microsoft all the way, as usual.
08-20-08
A tool to help fix PR?
Pitchspace is featured today on the Guardian Tech podcast and also over on pda in more detail. Over to Jemima to explain:
The idea is to offer a platform for PRs and journalists. PRs seed stories and releases, and journalists can pick up the stories they like and use Pitchspace to organise the material for that story. The system also ranks PRs (and, I assume, journalists!) according to the relationships they build up with journalists, so the more they work together the more contact details they get, and so on.
PR is definitely broken as is, so it’s good to get the debate going as to what the solution is. So get involved if you care about such things, which I suspect a lot of people don’t. They’re just excited about the prospect of all this ubiquitous invisible connected technology stuff.
PS – I think the wrong URL is used in the podcast – it’s space not base, so don’t fall into the ‘rant about not having a live website when you’re featured on the Guardian and wasting an opportunity’ trap I fell into this morning. But then again a bit more info on the site would be nice, but they are probably still very much in protective phase I imagine.
One to keep an eye on.
08-18-08
Qik Football Reports
Just seen this via the Journalism.co.uk blog – the Express & Star using Qik for post-match video summaries from their reporters at the match.
Done just after the final whistle, still with lots of stuff going on in the background, I love seeing free web tools used in a wider variety of applications like this. The gap between consumers and producers really is getting pretty tight now (actually it’s pretty non existent in some places) and the use of Qik here makes perfect sense – to get video reports that capture the atmosphere of the match out super quick as possible for next to nothing. Bring it on.
Oh and while we’re at it, Qik (now with iPhone 3G support)should talk to SpinVox (now with social networks support) and enable on-the-fly video transcripts to be converted and posted alongside videos. That way, it’s text and video heaven, complete with SEO loveliness and the potential for comments, quoting, jump links to different video sections and all sorts of other nice open access stuff and maybe even the dirty word – ads.
07-15-08
3G Airport Express?
Just a thought, but what if you could plug in your 3G USB dongle (Mine’s a Vodafone Pebble thingy) into an Apple Airport Express? Would be very useful indeed. Maybe you can do it already?! (Surely it’s all in the software, though I’m sure there is a really obvious reason why it couldn’t happen)
That also got me thinking about lots of other things that could, should and will happen. As hardware gets more and more connected and connectable, things like X10 get more mainstream and Maplin keeps on having sales – then who knows what we’re going to come up with. And I’m not just talking about brands/companies. I mean us, the geeks, the ones tinkering with things and doing all that stuff that voids warranties, infringes copyright and breaks new boundaries.
07-02-08
Touchscreen Turntable Action
Uh oh. So awesome, I just reached for my credit card of the future. Waiting for iPhones to be used as turntables at some point this Summer and loads more impossibly cool stuff like this. Bring. It. On.
Final Product // ATTIGO TT from Scott Hobbs on Vimeo.
UPDATE – Just looked more closely and it looks like Mac OS X in action, using touchscreens with the software action running on the side.
[Via here, source of much goodness]
06-26-08
Chrysler Car Clouds?
I saw this headline, got VERY excited, then clicked on it and was only a little bit excited. You see, I immediately jumped into thinking that all you’d have to do in the near future is make sure you’re near a Chrysler car to be sure of getting a WiFi connection. And not just your own car as it turns out to be – I mean any car. Surely this could be an option though, as a kind of mobile version of Fon using cars to share their WiFi connections?
Anyway, as ever, the future looks pretty cool but one full of questions that are often unanswered. Personally, I just want to pay one amount of money for my data stream and then be free to connect whatever I like to it and use it how I like. Not pay separately for everything and be told how to use it.
More here at USA Today.
middledigit_
If technology doesn't seem like magic, it's probably obsolete . . .
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I'm a digital creative/strategist/doer that blogs about all kinds of stuff that usually involves brands, digital marketing, technology or cats.