Recently in Emerging Tech Category
This year's Where2.0 was a blast. Met a ton of cool people, saw some great demos, and enjoyed inspiring talks.
As you can see, Chad and I really nerded out...
I'll be going to a few interesting events in the next two months:
April 26 GoRuCo (Gotham Ruby Conference)
from the site: "A technical conference aimed at highly motivated programmers interested in all things Ruby."
April 30 Visualization Day at CUNY
This looks really interesting, with presentations by Ben Schneiderman and other HCI & Visualization notables. The conference is free, which is always a plus.
May 12 - 14 Where2.0 in Burlingame, CA
I've been wanting to go to this conference for a couple years. Always a great line-up of speakers and lots of interesting people and projects. This year's Where2.0 should be excellent - with all the LBS apps and platforms that are launching.
May 17 Smart/Models (AIGA/NY Biz Conf)
AIGA/NY has put together a great looking conf featuring a diverse group of designers and producers discussing... the biz. I'm especially looking forward to Jason Fried's talk on 37signals' approach. There has been a lot of talk about new business models in the creative space, and this looks to be a great round-up of some super intelligent people with highly innovative ideas and methods.
Despite some misgivings, I was still almost excited about the Chumby project. But when one arrived this morning at Organic, and we gleefully ripped open the packaging [cue montage of kids in a candy store on Christmas]... that excitement pretty much faded to complete disappointment.
The device is chunky - like a little, ugly, bloated change-purse. The material seems cheap. The LCD is lack-luster. The touch-screen is trash. In a weak attempt at customization, a few 'chumby charms' are included in the package - which can be attached to a metal stud on the side of the device.
As a ubiquitous device, the chumby fails miserably - tied to a power-outlet. The sheer size of the thing is a limit on its mobility. And it feels so goddamn out of place in pretty much every setting... with the exception of a child's playroom.
I felt the future of ubicomp crashing down into a pit of sharks...
...and then I pulled out my iPhone to check my email.
It looks like Apple is locking down the iPhone pretty tight. The phone will be locked to the Cingular network (soon to be AT&T?) and really protecting this. Also bad news: no full 3rd party application development for the iPhone will be supported. This makes no sense to me. Apple is putting out an amazing platform here, and developer access would only make it more amazing. Killer app = making calls... my ass. Looks like I'll be either looking into open Linux phones, or hacking the iPhone to pieces. When will the wireless world learn?
Greg Linden's post on the issues surrounding small displays (cell-phones etc.) reminded me of a point Edward Tufte makes quite frequently: Current display technology is crap. Even modern computer monitors don't offer the resolution of paper. Cell-phone displays offer an abomidable resolution in too small a size. Display resolution clearly isnt the only issue—size, color-accuracy, and refresh-rate play a huge part. I believe that technology should open us to the world, and so I'm opposed to the idea that a tiny display with huge resolution could be held close to the eye. This is not a solution, but a hack—and a poor one at that. Projection is an interesting idea, both holographic mid-air sci-fi style, and direct-to-the-retina sci-fi style. From what I've found, the eye-glass displays are still bulky and of terrible quality (think mid-90s arcade style VR helmets, only a little smaller). In any case, I'm rooting for some kind of projectiong, either direct-to-the-eye, or eye-glasses projection - offering a layering method. Think of the possibilities, what with all the virtual Earth software (GOOGLE Earth, etc.), LBS applications, and so many other emerging fields that are made for pervasive and ubiquitous computing.
Great new audio synthesis interface popping up around the blogosphere. Jeff Hanh on oscilators.
via City Of Sound
UPDATE :: project site can be found here — thanks Fino.
An interesting article on a dispute between Tim Berners-Lee and a Google exec Peter Norvig on artificial intelligence and the semantic web. Berners-Lee consistently argues for the adoption of AI-readable meta in internet-published content. I tend to agree with him — for the most part. Computers need help in understanding content in context. Norvig raised the issue of data-integrity, worrying that deception is immenent — the intentional misuse of the aforementioned computer-readable meta-tags. Of course, Norvig is correct in his fears. But this isn't new. The issue needs to be solved with [human] peer-review, filtering, and intelligent analysis from the actual artificial intelligence.
Read about GSM Location on 7.5th Floor, one of my 'dailies'. The project looks interesting, as a new viral location-aware tech. One of these days I'll build that Python app...
