Μερικές από τις πιο ενδιαφέρουσες τάσεις της τεχνολογίας για τον μήνα τον οποίο διανύουμε (Ιούνιος 2007). Enjoy!
Photo fun
Friday Fun: Turn your webcam into a photo booth with Cameroid
“The web site is basically a web version of Mac’s PhotoBooth program, offering you different effects for your pics, from colorful filters and scenes to the popular morph settings. After you take a picture, you can save the image to your desktop or their public page, email it, or print it out.”
Tabletop displays
Sony’s geeky backside exposed in Tokyo R&D extravaganza
“the display that got most visitors gawking was a circular table known as ChatScape. The device was really just a laptop connected to a top-down projector in the centre of the table that threw rotating images onto the flat surface below, but the novelty of emailing it snapshots from your cellphone and seeing them appear on and swirl around the table was worth the trip alone.”
Internet health
Virtual Weather Map gives snapshot of Internet health
“The Real-Time Web Monitor identifies the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density).”
Home radio
Make Your Own Internet Radio Station: ubroadcast
“User generated internet radio stations are far from being new. Live365 and Shoutcast have provided similar functionality for years. Where ubroadcast differs is the simplicity and cost: setting up and running a ubroadcast station is free and the learning curve is close to zero. Its more internet radio creation for the mass market. Setup takes no more than 5 minutes. The client is quick to download and registration options are built in. Users can immediately broadcast live content, upload music from MP3s, or select from music uploaded by other ubroadcast members.”
Wireless electricity
Wireless Energy Lights Bulb from Seven Feet Away
“Researchers have successfully lit a 60-watt light bulb by transferring energy through the air from one specially designed copper coil to the bulb, which was attached to a second coil seven feet away […]. The ultimate goal: to shrink the coils and increase the distance between them so that a single base station emitting “WiTricity,” as the inventors refer to the effect, could power a roomful of rechargeable gadgets, each containing its own small coil.”
Tracking a products origins
Product Life Story Labels
“Dole Organic lets consumers travel to the origin of each organic product. By typing in a fruit sticker’s three-digit Farm Code on Dole Organic’s website, customers can find the story behind their banana. Each farm’s section on the website includes background info, shows photos of the crops and workers and tells consumers more about the origin of Dole’s organic products.”
Military robotics
Bear robot rescues wounded troops
“The US military is developing a robot with a teddy bear-style head to help carry injured soldiers away from the battlefield. The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) can scoop up even the heaviest of casualties and transport them over long distances over rough terrain.”
Zero carbon computing
Low-energy server hosting goes underground
“Built in what was a NATO command centre, 100 metres below the wilds of Lincolnshire, England, Smartbunker runs on wind and water-power and uses power-efficient kit such as IBM bladeservers - there’s none of that dodgy carbon-offset going on here, or so the company claims. The power - from renewable energy supplier Ecotricity - carries a “double-digit percentage price premium”, said Smartbunker MD Kelly Smith, but he claimed that the company’s been able to compensate for that through efficient data centre design.”
Displayless organizer
Where a Screen Isn’t an Option, a Hand-Held Uses Audio
“The Icon mobile manager has just about everything you would expect in a hand-held organizer, including a calendar, address book, clock, word processor, calculator, voice recorder, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. What it does not have is a screen, because this pocket-size device from LevelStar was designed for visually impaired users. Skip to next paragraph With its 30-gigabyte hard drive, the Icon can also store and play audiobooks, podcasts and digital music. An audio-based Web browser and an e-mail program are included in the suite of installed software.”
Inaccessible web
Researchers Chart Internet’s ‘Black Holes
“Despite its robust appearance, more than 10 percent of the internet flickers out like a candle every day, according to researchers who unveiled on Wednesday an experimental tool that probes the network’s dark places. Ethan Katz-Bassett, a computer science Ph.D. candidate from the University of Washington introduced Hubble — a network of deep cyberspace probes scattered around the internet - at the meeting of the North American Network Operator’s Group in Bellevue, Washington. For two weeks Hubble queried a sample of 1,500 internet prefixes (a small subsection of the net) every 15 minutes. In the end it found that 10 percent of those prefixes couldn’t be reached from certain corners of the internet.”
Online democracy
In a Virtual Universe, the Politics Turn Real
“This specter of corruption has emerged most recently not in some post-colonial trouble spot but in the virtual nation of an Internet game called Eve Online (population 200,000) where aspiring star pilots fight over thousands of solar systems in a vast science-fiction universe every day. So now, in a sociological twist, the company that makes Eve, CCP, based in Iceland (population 300,000), says it will tackle the problem the way a democracy would. In what appears to be a first, the company plans to hold elections so that players can select members of an oversight committee.”
Using real brain cells for memory
A Step Toward a Living, Learning Memory Chip
“Researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel have demonstrated that neurons cultured outside the brain can be imprinted with multiple rudimentary memories that persist for days without interfering with or wiping out others.”
Technological craftsmanship
Notebook Lust: Asus Wooden Laptop Prototypes Give Us Wood
“Asus opened up the doors to the woodshop to make three gorgeous laptops for the Computex Taipei 2007 show. Although company reps say they don’t have any specific plans to actually sell these PCs, they’re part of a skilled design exercise that shows an delicate interplay between craftsmanship and tech.”
Gadget charging
Chargepod Universal Six-Way Charging System Hands-on (Verdict: It Revolutionizes Charging)
“When we first heard about Chargepod’s six-way charging system with its custom adapters and all-in-one body, we were skeptical. Is it really worth the price premium to combine all our gadget charging into one place? After getting our hands on it and testing it out on just about every portable device we have, we’ve come to the conclusion that the Chargepod is the future of gadget charging.”
Power saving displays
A New Display Lengthens Gadget Life
“Clairvoyante announced last month that it was introducing technology that could allow cell-phone, digital-camera, and laptop makers to develop power-saving displays that could dynamically adjust their backlight and color intensity based on the color and brightness of the content.”
Spinning display
Cool Fan with LED Image Display
“Think Geek has a great fan that displays images of your choice with color LED mounted on the rotating blades. The 5MB storage of the fan can store 128 image frames.”
Thought control
Neural input device hints at gaming revolution
“Destined to radically transform gaming platforms, the prototype from OCZ enables up to 11 signals from an actuator worn around the forehead to be assigned to a specific keystroke or mouse button. The actuator takes its cues from neural signals based on permutations of brain, eye, and facial muscle activity via three sensor pads that rest on the forehead of the user. It takes only minutes to “train” the device which could be on the market as soon as the end of the year.”
3D browsing
SpaceTime: 3D Browser Eye Candy
“SpaceTime allows users to map out their browsing progress in a visual timeline, treating each site as an object that can be manipulated and rearranged within the 3D environment. Users can alternate between a 3D and 2D perspective as required. SpaceTimes search functionality loads multiple search results as a stack of separate pages, simultaneously loading 10 results at a time, each in its own window. Users can the flip through results, re-arrange the pages or manipulate them.”
Interactive paper
Digital paper with interactivity and sound
“By combining paper with printed graphic codes and electronically conductive ink that is engineered to be sensitive to pressure. When the paper buttons are touched, the sound is played out via the printed speakers.”
Heat to sound to electricity
Tiny thermoacoustic engines pave the way for screaming gadgets
“a group of grad students led by professor Orest Symko at the University of Utah has unveiled an array of “thermoacoustic” engines that turn heat into sound, which can be directed at a piezoelectric mechanism to produce electricity.”
Photo a day
New Service To Create One Of Those Picture-A-Day Movies
“Use the site to take a photo of yourself every day using a connected webcam or camera. Flickaday will organize the photos and will let you publish it as a Flash widget on another website.”
Expressing emotion
Ehhhh: Facial Expression Robot Thinks Every Word Means “Creepy”
“The robot was designed to mimic facial expressions to make robots more relatable, and they hope to give him speech capabilities in the future so he can explain why he’s so uncomfortable with the word love.”
Battery free
Sony shows off range of enviro-friendly “odo” gear
“Sony’s showing off a whole range of new environmentally-friendly gear in Japan at the moment, all of which can be used without ever having to be plugged in for a recharge. One of the more interesting devices of the lot is the Spin N’ Snap digital camera (pictured below), which you charge up simply by placing your fingers in the two holes (which also double as a viewfinder) and spinning it around a few times.”
Higher image resolutions
Canon Creates 50-megapixel Sensor, Introducing New File Format to Hold Pics
“They’ve just created a prototype of a 50-megapixel CMOS sensor that’s twice as sensory as the closest competitor and small enough to fit into DSLRs. Them’s crazy talk.”
Fixing your GPS
Error-B-Gone: TomTom Go 720 Lets You Improve Maps As You Go
“You can say if a street is blocked (or unblocked), note a change in street’s direction, add a name or rename a street, add a point of interest, or remove or rename an existing point of interest. If there are other changes to be madesay you’ve discovered a new roadyou can report those in to TomTom with the touch of a button.”
Traveling music collection
Every Song You Own, Available Online Wherever You Are For Free, Promises Lala.com
“Today, newly revamped Lala is launching a free service that scans your digital tracks - everything you own from ripped CDs, iTunes downloads or any other means - and then lets you log into the website anywhere to access that music. You can even sideload tracks to your iPod when you’re far away from home.”
Nose control
Aptative-use interface based on the tip of the nose
“A computerized instrument that allows people to play music with the tip of their nose could give those who suffer from physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, the chance to experience musics positive effects. Not only could the interface allow for musical communication, it could also be adapted for speech, giving physically challenged patients the ability to form full sentences, rather than just providing yes or no responses.”
3D browsing
3-D Web Surfing from SpaceTime
“Today, a New York-based company called SpaceTime launched a new browser, free to download and use, that presents Web pages and search results as floating slabs that can be flipped through, organized, and navigated in 3-D.”
Fake worlds overlapping real ones
Plundr: Dangerous Shores’ location-based gaming weighs anchor on the Nintendo DS
“Using WiFi positioning to track your movements and superimpose landmarks over your neighborhood map, Plundr builds islands that you can set sail for and investigate. Taking a walk to that coffee shop two blocks away will bring up a trading post where you can buy spices and deliver goods. If you head over to the nearby park, there’s a few unsuspecting merchant ships to test your cannons on.”
Network of cars
Turning cars into wireless network nodes
“They say their mobile ad-hoc networking platform (MANET) would allow ‘moving vehicles within a range of 100 to 300 meters of each other to connect and create a network of cars.’ Of course, not every driver would like to be part of this network because of privacy concerns. This is why ‘the first mobile networks will be implemented in emergency response vehicles such as police cars, ambulances and hazardous materials response units.”
Child robots
Eerie Child Android CB2
“The 130cm tall and 33kg weighing humanoid robot kid can see, hear and feel. CB2 has 200 tactile sensors embedded in its silicon skin. 51 actuators inside the CB2 android run on compressed air and enable the robot to make smooth complex movements. CB2 has apparently the physical ability of a 1- or 2-year-old toddler and can turn over and stand up with assistance.”
Streaming music to your friends
Maestro: Social Music Streaming
“Not only can you stream music from your own computer using Maestro, but you can also stream music from your friends on the network (Oboe lets you share channels with friends, but through email links). They plan on expanding to other types of media in the future.”
Alternatives to Second Life
Beyond Second Life
“Starwood Hotels & Resorts (HOT ) is getting ready to bail now, too. Last summer, Starwood made a splashy, widely publicized entrance into Second Life, hoping to draw on the wisdom of avatars to get customer feedback on possible real-world design features for its stylish new brand of hotels geared toward hip twenty- and thirtysomething business travelers on a budget. Although Starwood first heralded Second Life as an ongoing project, it will soon leave, too. Starwood discovered avatars don’t need to sleep, and so a virtual hotel didn’t make much sense in the long run. Unlike Adidas or General Motors (GM ), which sell digital versions of Reeboks and Pontiacs in the online world, Starwood didn’t have goods to selland found itself unable to sustain avatars’ interest.”
Demoing your website
Demofuse: Embedded Website Tours
“Demofuse allows users to create website tours that are embedded in a site as opposed to traditional flash based site tours.”
