If you have not yet read Accelerando I suggest that you purchase or
download (Yes! He has a free version that you can download!) a
copy. I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson’s SnowCrash and Diamond
Age, and this is yet another a fun book to read. Charles Stross
has done an awesome job of extrapolating today’s technology and
research into a great possible future.
Go get it … read it. Welcome to the future …
I have to admit that I am geting tired, and really just wanted to
listen to this presentation and not think about blogging. The Participatory Panopticon
was the theme … and it was a great talk … well presented … on the
future world of always on cameras. Jamais is a very good
presenter …
Well … that sure didn’t take too long! Here it is that I’m just
blogged about the fact that I can’t imagine that it’s too long before
Apple has a Tablet PC … and wham! It’s done! (Ok … sort
of!) One of my co-workers came across this post today … one of
the Tablet PC hackers out there got OS-X working on a Toshiba Tablet
PC. This whole Intel migration might just occur pretty quickly!
Installing Apple OS X operating system on a Tablet PC
Apple’s Developer Transition Kit offers information, sample code, software,
and hardware developers need to build Universal Binary applications to run on
Macs using Intel processors. As expected, people are also trying to install OS X
on Intel platform computers that they already own.Charles Alexander installed OS X on his Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC. The
system runs. The digitizer functions. He’s run into issues with screen rotation,
networking, USB, etc. He writes on TabletPCBuzz.com,
“But with apple’s inkwell (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/inkwell/) this thing is
really showing potential.”I admit, I’m curious about this and would like to see this working. The
install process appears to be fairly complicated – certainly not an average
Apple or PC user experience for people. Nevertheless, a curiosity. [What is New]
As we continue to make progress on our next version of GoBinder at
Agilix Labs, I am continuing to look at all of the potential plug-ins that
might be attractive to students, and our customer base in
general. One area that I am anxious to explore is Peer to Peer
solutions. I am already looking at the Microsoft Peer to Peer SDK,
and have an initial project that we are going to complete. Once
we have our first P2P plug-in, I want to create the next. Phil,
as usual, has given me an idea of where to look next!
I’ve been interested in distributed back-up systems for some time.
For example, I’d love to see a P2P client given to BYU students that
allows them to commit a percentage of their disk to a distributed
back-up system in exchange for that much storage on the overall system.
Rather than the University having to commit capital to a back-up system
for students files, excess direct-attached disk and software would
solve the problem.I’ve also be enamored with erasure codes
for reliability. Using erasure codes would allow the distributed
back-up network to provide reliable storage in the face of a certain
percentage of nodes going down, leaving the network for some reason,
and so forth.A couple of students in my Middleware class this semester picked
this theme up and did some further exploration. There were a couple of
items that caught my eye.
- PStore
is a secure P2P storage solution from some researchers at MIT. Overall,
the feature set seems quite nice, but the code is not available and it
doesn’t incorporate erasure codes as fas as I know.- DIBS is a similar idea written in python that does use erasure codes. The UI is something only a geek could love.
Apart from being genuinely useful in a campus environment where
its difficult to provide effective back-up solutions for even critical
files, this is an excellent example of a P2P network beyond mere “file
sharing” which has grown to have negative connotations. I’d love to see
the headline “BYU Embraces P2P Technology.”
This is something that Ray Kurzweil can only love to see. This is
a facinating article that talks about a patent that Sony filed … but
the coolest thing is that it is all about neural stimulation from
outside of the skull. If you can cause neural stimulation, then
you can cause neural activity … which a human can now “experience” as
though it were a real experience. This is a huge step forward in
the next generation of augmented reality. Don’t try to stimulate
the senses … just go directly to the brain!
Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix.
Sony has patented a device that fires pulses of ultrasound at the head
to modify firing patterns in targeted parts of the brain, creating
“sensory experiences” ranging from moving images to tastes and sounds.It could allow for movies and compute… [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
When I was growing up, I remember seeing the Heathkit HERO Robots
… kit robots that you could buy from the premiere electronic kit
company. They were too cool, and of course made me and friends
think about owning our own R2D2 robot.
Yesterday, I found out about the RoboBusiness Conference & Exposition
that was held this week in Cambridge, MA. I am really impressed
at the conference, and the speakers, and I am sorry that I was unable
to attend. I would have really liked to hear about the progress
that has been made in the areas of robotics and telepresense. It
is really this second topic – telepresence – that really interests
me. This is where robots are being used to extend the “senses” of
a human operator. In military applications, these robots can
enter a building or cave and allow the human operator to look around
without being in danger. In personal applications you could
remotely interact with one of your grandparents, and look around their
house for them and to keep an eye on them.
If you visit the website you will see a lot of companies working in
this space … and some very innovative solutions. One of the
interesting robots is White Box Robotics and their new Model 914 PC-BOT … the next generation of hobbyist/experimental robots. Is is available for purchase now, or at least to reserve one, and it is priced very aggressively.
There are many other examples, and again I really am impressed by the
list of speakers. I’ll have to talk Doug Kaye into getting the
conference proceedings on ITConversations!
Ok … I have to get to bed. But I started to follow links and wander the net …
I found this now … Chordite … Yet Another One-hand Keyboard …
Very cool … there is more wearable stuff out there brewing …
I haven’t really been tracking the Wearable Computer market as much
lately. It’s not that I don’t want to … it’s just that the
high-tech crash really crushed a lot of the innovators and stopped the
progress cold.
One area that was getting so close to delivering was in Head Mounted
Displays (HMDs). I recently found that some vendors are again
stepping into this space. I’m not sure that I saw Icuiti before, however I have to admit that I am pleased to see their progress!
Check out the monocular HMD, and binocular HMD … these are pretty good, and the price is not too high. I might have to pick one up to check them out …
A friend of mine Dave Cline just sent me a link to EnOcean.
This is a very impressive company that is leading the wave of the
future when it come to distributed sensor networks. They have
addressed some of the key elements of a successful solution:
This is some very impressive work, and ought to get people thinking about what is going to be possible soon.
Today
I bought an i-Top at Toys ‘R Us for $4.98 plus tax. Several of
the engineers that I work with had shown them to me. When I first
saw them, I was immediately
impressed … using a moving surface of a top, along with a strip of
light emitting diodes (LEDs) to turn the top into a digital
scoreboard. This week I was at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference in San Diego, and I saw a similar concept … on a cell
phone and on a pager. That’s what had me buy the i-Top. All
of these products are doing similar things … using some sort of
accelerometer to detect motion and then pulse the LEDs on and off at
the correct rate to make LED numbers, words, and images that seem to
float in the air. Or on the surface of a top.
There
are three really cool aspects of these toys … first, it is a
demonstration of the rapidly declining size and costs of the next
generation of sensors. Second, it is the presence of computing
power in the smallest of objects. Third … it is cheap.
The chips in this little top, for example, are able to detect both
time, and rotation … tracking each rotation of the top to know
exactly where and when to blink a particular LED to represent a
particular pixel in a letter or number. At the O’Reilly
conference it hit me that there are numerous places that these displays
will probably show up before long. I’m thinking about how to
capitalize on this stuff.
First, I started to think about how to create a version of this for
bicycle wheels. Imagine if your bicycle had patterns and messages
being displayed to others while you pedal down the street. Of
course for this to work, you would also have to have a way to track
“up” or “down” so that the messages were always readable and not upside
down. The next idea that hit me while writing this post is to put
these on car hubcaps. We already see the “spinners” that people
are putting on their cars, and the neon tubes underneath the car
body. It is only a matter of time before we’ll start to see these
new forms of art … these new expressions of emotion or message … on
a wide range of the surfaces around us.
In all, I am left impressed. At the innovation that can turn the
simplest of toys … a top … into so much more. In to a new
generation of toys that demonstrate just how inexpensive and powerful
our capabilities are growing. Go buy am i-Top … they are a fun
toy … and can make you think.
[P.S. You can right-click the images and select View Image to see a
bigger version of each image. Maybe next time I’ll make them
links …]