Philips Design Probes
June 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This is a nice little series of experiements from Philips Design Probes. Through tracking trends and developments that may evolve into mainstream issues that have an impact on business, they are focusing on key areas covering politics, economics, culture, environments and technology features which will enable them to understand lifestyle post 2020. There are some really interesting projects going on including how we can create a sustainable habitat in 2020, but being a tattoo fan one that caught my eye in particular is The Electronics Tattoo.
Brand tags
May 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
Noah Brier writes one of the best blogs around and has developed an experiment called Brand Tags. The interface displays a brand logo and asks users to insert the first word or phrase associated with that brand. Noah has included a list of all the brands added to date on the site, and if you click on a particular brand, you can see a tag cloud of all the words entered surrounding that brand. To date over 700,000 tags have been added. Great work Noah, I know this is keeping you really busy so hang in there!
Innovation Edge 2008
May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last week I headed over to NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference at the Royal Festival Hall. I didn’t actually know too much about NESTA before I signed up to the event however they invest in early stage companies who put innovation at the forefront of their offering. The day was made up of talks in the morning and then breaking out into smaller seminars during the afternoon. The morning talks were actually very inspirational with some great speakers including Tim Berners-Lee. Tim discussed his reasoning’s behind making the World Wide Web open source by giving it all away for free and managed to say the best quote of the day when he described the frustrations he experienced of sharing information when new colleagues were brought on board “that’s why I invented the Web”….golden!
After Tim, Sir Bob Geldof came on stage and gave a very heartfelt and honest account of what inspired him to make it when he was living in poverty in Ireland. The main take out of the day that stuck in my mind came from Sir Bob who pointed out that as a nation we have become so engrossed in watching people fail that we have forgotten what we are trying to achieve. We should celebrate trying and not be afraid to fail.
After Sir Bob, The PM Gordon Brown came on stage to give a 15 min talk on the need to develop and support creative talents within the UK and how the government will support innovation within the UK which was pretty good. The afternoon seminars however, were a bit of a let down. I think there was a general feeling that innovation was not at the heart of most of the seminars which I found to be particularly true to one that I attended solely to hear Giles Andrews (founder of Zopa) talk about the company and what they are doing to develop their offering. Unfortunately the panel seldom let him actually speak and after loosing interest I returned to the main hall to speak with Six to Start.
All in all Innovation Edge was great and for those who couldn’t attend, NESTA have put all the talks on the site which you can view here.
Microsoft’s first game for Surface
March 6, 2008 | 1 Comment
Microsoft have developed the first game for Surface. The game is called Firefly and the concept remind me of Hungry Hippo’s whereby the user has to catch the firefly’s and bring them towards them until they can trap them in their glass jar. Sarcastic Gamer give their first-hand review of the game in this video.
Sensitive floor
February 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
This is by no means a new technology however, I haven’t covered it here before so wanted to include it.
Qik live streaming
January 17, 2008 | 1 Comment
I have been watching Charles Frith’s antics in Beijing through his Qik streams, and have been yearning to test this technology myself, and now I can. Qik allows you to stream videos live from your mobile browser directly to web. It is really simple to use and the quality is surprisingly good. One of the best examples of this technology being used so far is to report on current events a la MacWorld where Qikkers streamed the latest product demos from Apple at the event. SMS Text news have also demonstrated it’s great capabilities as a shopping assistant in this post. It’s still in Alpha phase, but i’m really looking forward to seeing this grow over the next few months and for those who are interested, you can follow my streams here.
Top 20 gadgets from CES 2008
January 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
So this week CES 2008 has been running in
Google gas stations
December 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Google will launch a series of internet connected pumps with Google Maps across 3,500 gas stations in the
Digital paint brush
December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment
“I/O Brush is a drawing tool that explores colours, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by “picking up” and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up colour, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special “ink” they just picked up from their immediate environment.” This is a really great innovation and I am waiting for the consumer product version to launch. Source and images: MIT Media Lab
Musical roads
November 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Developers from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute in
