Monday, February 10, 2003
BT saying it with flowers to keep bosom ‘buddies’ in touch This month's Wired has an article on BTexact's flowers. This was originally announced by BT last October but now they are making waves to commercialize this ambient social interaction device.
The group, with a fair smattering of MIT Media Lab alum, are approaching the problem of social interaction from an interface standpoint, which is nice to see. At $1500 it will have a limited audience, but will at least test the waters for this R&D group that is tasked with becoming profitable on its own in the near term.
The group, with a fair smattering of MIT Media Lab alum, are approaching the problem of social interaction from an interface standpoint, which is nice to see. At $1500 it will have a limited audience, but will at least test the waters for this R&D group that is tasked with becoming profitable on its own in the near term.
Thursday, February 06, 2003
Just Pin It on Microsoft - Computerworld Microsoft is an easy company to hate, and it's downright fashionable these days to blame everything on the "convicted monopolist." But that attitude also serves as a convenient excuse for companies who are not marketing their products well enough.
Although I don't agree with everything Mitchell is saying, its valuable to point to views that are contrary to popular opinion now and then.
Wired News: Deal: No Wireless Traffic Jams The more I read about the US military and US industry compromise on the use of the 5 GHz band (including, I believe, more spectrum to be opened up), the more I think that the adaptive response to radar presence is just a modification of or extension to 802.11h, the European power/signal adaptive modification to 802.11a. Does anyone know for sure?
Japanese scientist invents 'invisibility cloak' This picture would likely look a lot more impressive if it was a moving image.
This is clearly an invention looking for a problem... there should perhaps be an entire school of thought around finding problems for solutions that already exist. In this case the answer for "what does invisibility do for us" is that it let's doctors perform operations without their hands getting in the way. Where else does obstruction cause problems? Sports stadiums, movie theatres... generally anything spectator related.
Ahh, I'll be up late thinking of problems for this one. Alas, tommorow it's back to working on solutions again.
This is clearly an invention looking for a problem... there should perhaps be an entire school of thought around finding problems for solutions that already exist. In this case the answer for "what does invisibility do for us" is that it let's doctors perform operations without their hands getting in the way. Where else does obstruction cause problems? Sports stadiums, movie theatres... generally anything spectator related.
Ahh, I'll be up late thinking of problems for this one. Alas, tommorow it's back to working on solutions again.
Tuesday, February 04, 2003
It's always fulfilling to see new fan communities pop up, so permit a perhaps gratuitous reference to Ambient411.com. One interesting thing to note is how quickly people have picked up on general pervasive computing discussions. Although there are many sites that take a small stab at the field, there is still not a single trusted repository listing all the research and products in market.
