Wearable Gestural Interface

March 13, 2009 | 1 Comment

You gotta love MIT.  Sixthsense is a wearable projector that interacts with your surrounding environment by overlaying interactive content over everyday items that allow the user to find out more information.  Nice.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Data Visualisation, Innovation, Technology 

Spinvox saves my relationships

September 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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I hate voicemails in quite a strong way.  When I want to pick up a message it doesn’t always go through the first time so I have to hang up and redial.  When I do get through I have to listen to the woman with a plum in her mouth, talk about how many messages I have, which message she is going to hit me with first, and then when it was sent.  I am a product of the digital age, I am notorious for having a short attention span so it is unfair to expect me to answer every voicemail when this is the ritual I have to go through.  I had been seeing Mr James Whatley (Whatleydude) twittering about a company he works for called Spinvox and decided to see what he actually did for a living to justify being on Twitter more than I am (props BTW).  Spinvox takes your voicemail messages, turns them into text messages and delivers them directly to your phone as a text message.  Golden!  I tend to go to a lot of conferences and it’s so annoying when people leave voicemails during the day and are then put out when I don’t answer them immediately, so having them converted into text message that can easily be accessed if going to save a lot of my relationships.  I think one of the great things that Spinvox has done is to really focus on their brand by employing someone specifically to promote the service across various social media, establishing a relationship with those who are most likely to take up the service before it hits the mainstream.  Thanks James :)

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Mobile, Social Interaction, Technology 

Touch Sight, Camera for the blind

August 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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Every now and then, I see an invention that just blows my mind, and this is that time.  Designer Chueh Lee at Samsung China, has developed the `Touch Sight’, which may be the world’s first camera for the blind.  The camera works when the user presses down the shutter.  Instead of visually capturing an image, the camera records the sound for three seconds once the shutter is pressed.  Obviously the camera does not have an LCD, but instead has a braille display sheet which displays a 3D image by embossing the surface, allowing the user to touch their photo.  “The sound file and picture document combine to become a touchable photo that is saved within the device and can be uploaded to and shared with other Touch Sight devices.  Via 

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Bizarre, Blog, Invention, Social Interaction, Technology, UGC 

Philips Design Probes

June 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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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.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Art, Blog, Design, Innovation, Technology 

Innovation Edge 2008

May 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment

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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.

Posted by Jamie Coomber | Filed Under Blog, Conference, Events, Innovation, Technology, Video 

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