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.
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.
Don’t click
February 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I saw a few months ago but never actually noted it down until I wanted to show it to someone this evening. Imagine going to a website and never clicking. Trust me, it’s harder than you would think. German Artist Alex Frank designed and developed a website to test your surfing habits whereby the entire navigation of the site goes against your natural instinct and encourages you not to click, instead by moving your cursor you can unveil the layers within the site. Pretty impressive.
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
Talking CD cases
December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Pre Vu have launched a new talking CD case. The talking case allows you to send someone a video or music CD (or anything the size of a CD) with that extra bit of “you” attached—your own voice giving a personal 60 second greeting.
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
Google launches My Location
November 29, 2007 | 1 Comment
Google have today released the details of a new product on their mobile blog called My Location. My Location uses beta technology (as with a lot of Google’s products) that uses cell tower identification to provide you with approximate location information, so it will work on phones without GPS. Start Google Maps for mobile, press [0], and the map will indicate your approximate location by centering on a blue circle. This is a great piece of technology when visiting other cities when the lure of sushi is just too much to take.
Amazon Kindle
November 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Amazon have launched Kindle, a wireless device that enables you to download books, newspapers or blogs directly to the device directly from Amazon Whispernet so there is no need for a WiFi connection. Weighing 10.2 ounces, users can choose from over 80,000 sources that are updated throughout the day. The device comes with Wikipedia readily installed and the content is displayed at it is in paper form. Read more
Stephen Fry on the iPhone
September 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment
I have come across Stephen Fry’s new blog and interesting to see he has dedicated his first post to the SmartPhone. I know Stephen is a bit of a techie anyway and is obviously already a published writer in his own right, but I think you will agree that this is a superb first post. Interestingly Stephen gives an overview of the iPhone that he had shipped over from the US and although he confesses to go mad for all things Apple, he gives a wonderfully honest account of his experience of the phone. Keep your eyes out for this blog.
