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techy techy

our MoMA project has been nominated for a WEBBY!

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our MoMA project has been nominated for a WEBBY!

Heyho. I am thrilled and honored to tell you that POKE has been nominated in the Mobile and Experiences category of this year’s Webby Awards. We want to win and we need your vote!

Vote here.

The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The online community, determine the winners of The People’s Voice by voting for the nominated work that you believe to be the best in each category. That’s where you come in. Thanks for all your tweets, shares and votes!

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bring on the internet of things

The more real world objects pop up that connect to the Internet, the more demand there is for network infrastructure like sensors and routers. 

Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.

The number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth. So this is a big trend - and big business for Cisco and other technology companies.

via readwriteweb

ciscoinfographic_iot.jpg

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markup any webpage - and share

Screen shot 2011-01-13 at 7.44.56 PM.png

Meet MarkUp.io It lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your thoughts, make a point or just simply edit. Just grab and drop the bookmarklet from the site to your bookmarks bar to use any time. Yes, no downloading needed! When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the MarkUp toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts.

Seriously rad.  Lucky you for knowing me.  :)

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Foursquare on steroids

Psst! I Tweeted about this one today, but loved it so much I thought it was worth a post. So here y’aar. :)

wsn.jpg

Assuming you haven’t been tweeting under a rock recently you’re prolly aware of Google’s aggressive run at the local business market. (Its Places offering and Interior store view endeavor for example). And as geolocation departs from trend to basic need and digital desire many a digerati have found themselves hunting for more out of the geo-apps they rely on. (Personally, I’ve been using Foursquare by proxy through Instagram because of its robust photo sharing feature, for example).

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Well get ready peeps! Local is heating up fast and Google isn’t the only one looking to give a simple, smart and social kick in the arse to the run of the mill location model. Meet What Spot Now. It’s bound to be on the tip of your tongue a few times this year. (And lets face it, I’m right about these things.  :) )

Unlike any other location-based app on the market, What Spot Now? combines software and hardware to help patrons both save money and discover new places to hang out – discovery not based on hearsay, but reality — through its trademarked “SpotCams” mounted inside neighborhood venues. (How flippin’ awesome would it be to get a quick stream (or photo set, even!) of a potential spot on your hit-list?) You can! If you live in Portland. :)

spots.jpg

WSN currently has 11 Portland locations you can view from your phone before leaving your home. Portland residents will recognize such names as Saucebox Café & Bar, Bridgeport Brewing Company: Brewpub, 23 Hoyt Restaurant & Bar, The Someday Lounge, Schmizza Pub & Grub, Backspace, On Deck Sports Bar & Grill, Bo Restobar, Bailey’s Taproom, La Costita on Barbur, and the Crown Room.

Im big on this one, Portland. You’re privy to exciting technology that might very well change the way patrons and venues think about the age-old concept of “happy hour”.

Kudos to Spotlight Mobile. WSN is a slick way to discover nearby venues and a practical alternative to the location-sharing services offered by Foursquare or Facebook. Its a sure hit if you can keep that WiFi network in place. Keep it comin’.

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the coolest friggin' way to find music.

Alrighty. I was browsin’ the interwebs looking for a few new ways to discover music because welp, my collection sucks. And after a pile of usual (and not so usual suspects) I found a few that are pure awesome. Longer post on the lot of them coming, but for now meet my new favorite way of discovering music - Shuffler. Internet-radio made by music blogs. (Think Blip.fm but (you do know what Blip is, right?) but across the internet instead of locked in one site.

Huh? Think of it this way. You’re channel surfing the music web. The web is your player, bloggers are your dj’s. It’s rad. I wish I thought of it. It leverages the Mesh. It’s Simple Smart and Social. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve have some new music to go listen to.

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mercedes gets it: simple smart and social service augmentation

Mercedes-Benz just announced a new app that connects its in-car navigation systems with its customers’ iPhones. Mbrace version 2.0 still lets drivers unlock their vehicles and, more importantly, find it in a crowded parking lot while adding location-based personal assistance ranging from entertainment, restaurant, directions, and traffic updates via Mercedes-Benz’s Concierge service — assuming you’re are an mbrace PLUS customer. Destination information is then fired off directly to your in-vehicle navigation system to get you there. The updated app also includes enhanced Roadside Assistance that transmits the driver’s location whenever a call is initiated.

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boxee in the man cave!


I got a bit tired of my Apple TV last year and decided to hack the Boxee Beta onto it (among other things). The promise of a Boxee set-top box was amazing. I had played with the app on my computer for some time, and it worked fairly well when I installed it on my laptop. I figured the jump to Apple TV would be just as good an experience. Nope. Well, maybe that’s too harsh. It worked pretty well at first. But over time it became sluggish, unresponsive, and would crash more than actually do what it was supposed to. Par for the course for Beta stuff, I suppose.

All in all, though it was a great conversation piece in the home, and really demonstrated for me how close we really are to completely transitioning from clips on your ‘puter to clips wherever you want them. Then YESTERDAY I got fed up enough with it crashing, etc I decided to reset my Apple TV and updated it to the latest Apple firmware. I gotta say - I love it all over again. It’s not quite Boxee, but I seriously love my Apple TV. Good news!

better news

Holy shit balls, look at this little gift from our friends at Boxee. A clever, handsome, useful piece of hardware that promises to work just like the Boxee app (and then some).

Getting the awesome web-to-TV software, set up in your living room used to be a headache if not disfunctional. Not anymore thanks to the Boxee Box (around $200; Q1 2010). This angled wonder lets you consume all the free movies, TV shows and music from the internet, all from your couch — and hooks it up to your system with just a single HDMI cable. Like the standard Boxee software, it also sucks in your own videos, music and photos, playing just about any media format that still resides on your broken down laptop. I’m in. Santa, you listening?

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everything (most people) need to know about cloud computing

Psst! Hey! You! (Yeah you!) The one that keeps hearing the term “cloud computing” come up in meetings recenty. Yes, you — the one that nods his head, pretending he knows what it is. Right, YOU!

:)

I just found a great explanation of it online. It’s everything you need to know about “the cloud” but were afraid to ask. And now I’m posting it here for you. Go ahead. Print it out. Take it with you. Whatever you want. Just uh, next time ASK when you don’t understand something, OK? Geez.

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did you know?

The latest Did You Know video will blow your mind with interesting facts and figures about the social web and how it’s changed your world.  Here’s a uber-post of all of them, starting with the latest (version 4). (Also, see below for some screen grabs if you don’t have the time to watch).


Version 3:


According to Digital Inspiration, This video is part of the popular “Did You Know” series that originally started out as a PowerPoint presentation [Shift Happens} and, once people caught on, the presentation was converted into a video by xplane. You can watch all the previous versions of the “Did You Know” series here or download source presentations and high-res videos from the Shift Happens wiki.

Version 2:



And finally, Version 1:



Screen grabs:

internet facts

youtube facts

online advertising

shrinking mobile devices

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go 360.



360° video isn’t new, necessarily (there are a lot of programmers who have done created similar executions). But this is the first time I’ve really seen making video like this get so accessible, so quickly.

Meet Yellowbird. BTW, their URL is “yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com” (which is awesome in it’s own right).

By using a Google Streetview-like camera, a system with six lenses, not as a photo but as a video camera, an all-encompassing picture is captured. From the point where the images were recorded, the viewer can look in any direction, let his eyes wander through the crowd, or stare at the ground or the air, which makes viewing a video an experience without boundaries.

Oh, and as soon you figure out how to strap your 6 iPhones together with Duct Tape, you’ll even be able to embed and share all your 360 videos with your nerdy, jealous friends.

You’re welcome. :)

 

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augmented reality, your iphone and you

The following is an homage to an awesome post I found over at Rubbishcorp. Go read it. Or read it here. Or whatever. Either way, its the best compilation of the affects of Augmented Reality on your fancy pants mobile device. It’s about to become as big a deal as Ron Burgundy…

Augmented Reality technology isn’t new, but it is taking on a whole new meaning in your mobile device. As positioning and recognition technology strengthens it will find a much more mass audience. Devices sporting geotagging, triangulation, recognition, wireless and compass technology have raised the virtual/physical mobile experience bar as they all work seemlessly together (behind the scenes) to now serve everyone with masses of information layered over the ‘real’ world.

No longer will you have to haplessly unfold a map at a museum, search endlessly for the semolina in a supermarket or not know exactly how much further to go before you reach your a bar, train, resturant, etc.

Your face is even free game! This TAT demo shows your social network(s) profile, media, personal data etc. all hovering around your noggin’ when someone points an at you.

Nokia are in on the act with their indoor location systems as well as Point & Find and apple has also raised the bar by getting involved with this little beauty.

Add to that ViPR technology which has been around for a while and can recognize actual objects (via a connected database) and best not forge RFID that registers objects within close proximity and again can pull data from a connected online source.

Time people spend with mobile continues to rise and compete with other sources as a direct result the increasing usefulness of the technology in making connections in the ‘physical’ space. And the raft of Augmented Reality applications that make use of a devices enhanced positioning and recognition capabilities are not limited to phones - increasingly gaming devices and MP3 players use the technology.

Screen-based experiences are increasingly overwhelming our experience of the physical world making, further blurring the lines and making the virtual a very “real” part of our lives. Social networking has already transformed our relationships and Augmented Reality looks to be the thing that does the same for shopping, traveling, culture, drinking, language translation and pretty much everything else.

Like the MP3 player and camera before it location and recognition technology will soon be ubiqutous on mobile devices. The influence that has on our lives cannot be underestimated, it will be massive.

 

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Alternate reality meets the iPhone

Rad, rad, rad! Meet Nearest Tube, but Acrosshair. One of the first augmented reality apps to go live in the iPhone AppStore.

Wandering around the UK and want to locate the closest Underground station? Simply look at your iPhone! This app displays All 13 lines of the underground network, pointing them out with colored arrows.

Users can see the nearest station, what direction they are in relation to their location, how far and what tube lines/stations etc. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons.

Available to Apple iPhone 3GS users. Enjoi!

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watch this YouTube video without Flash

this one is for the markup nerds

The image below might look like a regular YouTube video player but the interesting part is that the YouTube video clip will play just fine even if you disable (or completely remove) the Flash Player from your browser.

How? The next major release of HTML, dubbed HTML 5, will include several new tags for embedding <audio> , and <video> as well as several other graphical types of content in web pages. These new tags will let you play video files in the browser without the Shockwave Flash plugin. Yay!

Currently, your browser needs a plugin to play embedded multimedia content. For instance, you need to install Adobe Flash Player for watching videos on YouTube while the QuickTime player is required for viewing movie trailers that are available on the Apple website.

Visit youtube.com/html5 to see the HTML 5 video tag in action.

Note: You need either Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome or Safari 4 to view this video. If you attempt to go with an older browser, it won’t be able to understand the content that’s wrapped inside the <video> tag. You’ll most likely get some kind of error message upon arrival. That said, HTML 5 still looks very interesting and exciting.

Enjoi!

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the twitter gold-rush, direct marketing and Twitterhawk

I found this posting this AM from Guy Kawasaki on a new service called Twitterhawk. Basically an app that turns The Tweet into direct marketing on steroids. I for one am not a fan of the Twitter Ad-douche gold-rush, but I must say - there are some compelling points in here. What say you?

from the Twitterhawk site:

TwitterHawk is a real time targeted marketing engine…with true CPC link tracking…that will find people talking on twitter now by your chosen topic and location, allowing you to really hit your target mid conversation with ease. It will periodically search twitter for you and either auto-reply or generate a list of matches for you to respond toor reject from your twitterhawk account.

from Guy’s article:

Twitterhawk is a “real-time, targeted-marketing tool”—or the ultimate spam machine. First, let me tell you why I’m telling you about it: Because it can help you use Twitter as a marketing tool. Second, let me tell you how it works. You create keyword searches like what you can do at Search.Twitter.com.

For example:

Then you compose up to five responses to the tweets that it finds for each search condition and schedule the search intervals. An Audi dealer in Palo Alto, for example, can use this to find sales or maintenance prospects on Twitter. Twitterhawk will then tweet your responses for when it finds the right keywords in the right area.

Essentially this is a way to monitor public conversations for keywords without being the NSA while Dick Cheney was running things. In other words, this is as good as it gets for targeted marketing. The closet analogy I can think of is how Gmail searches your email and inserts ads based on the words it finds in your messages.

This is when the panic ensues: “Holy kaw, if many people started using Twitterhawk, it would mean the death of Twitter as a means of social networking and communication!” Let me tell you why this isn’t true:

1.  Twitterhawk charges $.05 for each tweet that it sends. What spammer can afford to pay $.05/tweet in order to ask you to help get money out of Nigeria or to sell you penis-enlargement products? By the way, Twitterhawk tracks how many times people clicked on the link, so that you can determine your per click cost.

2.  There is a blacklist of terms that Twitterhawk will not respond to. I don’t know what’s on the list, but I suspect words like “the” are probably on it to prevent too many matches.

3.  There is a limit of twelve fully-automatic tweets per day per search. At this rate, it will take a long time to find someone to help get money out of Nigeria or a man who wants to get his aforementioned penis enlarged.

4.  You cannot send the same person more than one tweet based on the same search. This means that the Audi dealer cannot send you a tweet every time you mention the word “Audi.” The dealer gets one shot at you.

5.  You can edit each outgoing tweet when you set Twitterhawk to manual approval. This means that you can use Twittehawk to find tweets to respond to and queue them up for individual answers. (The reason to manually approve each tweet is that you wouldn’t want to send a tweet such as “We’re an Audi dealer located in Palo Alto. We’d love your business,” in response to a tweet like, “I’m so glad I just sold my 1970 Audi. It’s given me nothing but trouble.”

At this price and at this rate, Twitterhawk is hardly a spam tool. It is, however, a very powerful marketing tool if you use it sparingly and precisely. The Audi dealer, for example, might find that it sent out 100 tweets at a total cost of $5 and got one oil change customer out of it. That’s probably worth it—particularly if the customer returns for more expensive work or buys a car.

Looking at it another way: How else can you find people within driving distance of your dealership who are interested in Audis? Radio, TV, and newspaper advertising? Don’t make me laugh. It’s certainly worth trying—although, in truth, you can try Twitter targeted-direct marketing without Twitterhawk by simply using Twitter’s search capability or most Twitter clients anyway.

I close with an interesting story. When I first heard of Twitterhawk, I went nuts and set up searches for mentions of text like “Fashionweek” which resulted in automatic tweets to visit Fashion.alltop. After sending a few thousand tweets like this (perhaps TwitterHawk created the twelve/day limit in my honor!), my @alltop account was suspended, so I’ve cooled it. Clearly, there is some danger in pushing the edge of marketing, and I’m figuring that out too.

See Guy’s original article on OpenForum here.

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fresh pizza made with computers

Italian food is famous for being cooked fresh with fresh ingredients, but an entrepreneur wants to popularize his automatic vending machine that will cook pizza with fresh ingredients, including the dough.


A new pizza vending machine will cook an entire pizza with fresh ingredients, flour, water, tomato sauce and ingredients in less than three minutes.

Claudio Torghele, 56, become successful by selling pasta in California, and now wants to sell his automatic pizza vending machines in Italy.

Rad.

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scary human kill switch gets denied patent - for now...

Ooof. Have a read of this excerpt from the German Publication The Local:

A Saudi Arabian inventor has filed for a patent on a potentially lethal science fiction-style human tracking microchip, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) told The Local on Friday. But the macabre innovation that enables remote killing will likely be denied copyright protection.

“While the application is still pending further paperwork on his part, the invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law – which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals,” spokeswoman Stephanie Krüger told The Local from Munich. 

The patent application – entitled “Implantation of electronic chips in the human body for the purposes of determining its geographical location” – was filed on October 30, 2007, but was only published until last week, or 18 months after submission as required by German law, she said.

Monday, Germany declined the patent application.

But the device, naturally, still exists. Scarier still, we can only presume it’s already in use. Patenting it would just make anyone else liable if they copied and sold it.

Sometimes technology goes too far…

 

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time(less). purpose(less). beauty.

3.16 Billion Cycles” is a clock designed by Che-Wei Wang. 1 cycle takes 1 seconds, 3.16 billion cycles will take 100 years. After that time the clock will fall apart due to the gap in the outer arc.


3.16 Billion Cycles from che-wei wang on Vimeo.

from the site:

A 60 rpm (revolutions per minute) motor drives the entire mechanism. It rotates once every second. The following pulley rotates once every 5 seconds (1:5 ratio). The next rotates once every 60 seconds or 1 minute. Then 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, and 1 decade. The decade wheel carries the load of the large arc. The large arc rotates once every century. The final ratio between the 60 rpm motor and the large arc is approximately 1:31.6 billion.

Each wheel is marked with a black nut to highlight a position that could be tracked over time. Along the arc, 100 lines mark the divisions of each passing year. When the clock finally reaches the end of a 100 year cycle, the arc falls off its track onto the floor.

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another (perfectly) nerdy fashion trend

Having a virtual personality and social network online is as important for todays and especially tomorrows Netcitizen as having a physical presents in this world. The line between online and offline is getting blurred with todays communication tools that allow us to stay connected almost everywhere, anytime.

Meet the “clickable” dress.

Nadya Peek, an MIT Media Lab student, created a unique interactive dress to close the gap between our presents in the physical and virtual world. Her project Caché aims to bring interactivity, a virtual poke into the physical presents via clothing.

And it’s awesome.

But how cool would it be if you rigged up a lil’ arduino in there and automatically posted a Tweet or a “Poke” to the person on Spacebook or MyFace just by touching them. Ok, now I’m just crazy. Enjoi!

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