Cool, polished stainless steel and smoked black glass will look subtle and smart on your wrist. When you’re ready, touch the button to initiate the time display and be prepared for things to brighten up.
via Kisai Round Trip USB Rechargeable Digital Tube Watch.
Wii Fit making your defibrillator flutter? Balance Board taking your back out?
Some researchers suspect the video games industry, which touts the health benefits of so-called exergames, is paying little attention to the risks those games pose to players.
And the FDA is taking notice…
via Healthy games offer risks, too – The Boston Globe.
Too good to be true (Happy April 1), but oh, what a great idea:
“When the iPad was announced, we all crammed into a conference room to watch live and drool over every shiny corner and reflecty icon. After the glow of the initial announcement wore off, many of us came to the conclusion that the iPad was actually pretty useless. ‘It’s a giant iPhone!” some said. Others exclaimed, ‘WTF, no Flash!?’. Still, we knew that most Apple fanbots (us included) would have to have one anyway.”
via ThinkGeek :: iCade – iPad Arcade Cabinet.
I smell a setup, but I know Swann Security will deny that “Willy Wu” (who is this guy?) wasn’t paid to “rob” its CES booth earlier this month.
One thief was either not paying close attention to the booth he decided to target or he was just very confident. What the thief didn't realize was his whole act was caught on camera at the booth he had stolen from.
via Thief Steals from the Wrong Booth at CES – Las Vegas Now.
Stranger things have happened. As I mentioned earlier this month, on this blog, a major Japanese consumer electronics maker approached me with an offer to be their corporate spy at the show.
These furry, quivering, cooing, critters are a “must bring” for the opening of the new Trek movie in May.
Here’s a bit I wrote for the Boston Globe this week:
I’ve seen the trailer for J.J. Abrams’s upcoming “Star Trek” prequel about 30 times. I’ve picked through the high-definition video, checking the battle scenes against the starship-size reference charts in my office, and confirming that the license plate on the Kirk family car is from Iowa.
Sadly, I have seen no mention that Finnegan, Kirk’s tormentor at Star Fleet Academy, will be in the new movie. The original series’ famed tribbles, those cooing guinea pigs that love grain and hate Klingons, are rumored to be in the new “Star Trek” picture, however.
via Sharp images, not looks, in ‘cinema’ headset – The Boston Globe.
Image: LOTR: Mines of Moria, from Westwood, Mass.-based Turbine
In my Boston Globe column today, I embrace the latest Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, and note the growth of a Middle Earth MMO. Both products are from Massachusetts-based companies.
Please take a moment to read the column, and comment at Boston.com!
Just in time for Great Depression 2.0:
Westwood-based Turbine (it’s at www.turbine.com) last week launched a game that will keep you busy for as long as you can keep the lights on.
The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria is the first expansion pack for Turbine’s massively multiplayer online game about hobbits, wizards, and whatnot.
LOTRO: Mines of Moria shows there is even more to Middle Earth than MMO players could have imagined.
L.A.-based Oblong Industries offers this mesmerizing demo of its Minority Report-styled gesture interface product, G-Speak.
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G-Speak “redresses the dire constriction of human intent imposed by traditional (graphic user interfaces),” according to the Oblong blog.
In other words, keyboards are out, and each of us will need to be a performance artist to use Photoshop.
One of the guys behind this company was a science advisor on the film, The Minority Report.
More Steampunk nonsense, this time from London designer Arthur Schmitt. This concept phone is one you program (i.e., place calls) with punch cards. (A 41, I am old enough to have used the last of these.)
I do like Steampunk’s return-to-tactility ethos, and Unplggd’s suggested term for forward-and-backward oriented design: retro-vation.
We love the creativity and innovation (retro-vation?) that comes from Steampunk modifications to modern technology. Some great ideas come from taking a completely new gadget and making it something that looks like, and in this case sort of works like, something from the 19th century. This steampunk cell phone concept has no display. No 3G. No data plan. No games. It doesn’t even have a dial pad. You make your calls with binary-coded punch cards, steampunk.
via Apartment Therapy Unplugged | Steampunk Cell Phone Takes Tech Backwards
First good frackin’ thing I have seen for the iPhone. This application, like several I have seen for the Nintendo DS, responds to the force of your breath against the device’s mic.
Smule’s new iPhone app, Ocarina turns your iPhone into a fully-functional musical wind instrument. This amazing little application works very much like the real deal, combining touch, tilt, gestures and human breath to create ethereal sounds which bring out your inner Zelda.
via iphone ocarina: go blow (into your iphone) on [technabob]
Photo: A different kind of picnic in Amsterdam. CC Mark van Woudenberg (http://flickr.com/people/mindcaster-ezzolicious/)
The speeches by leading futurists, celebrities like Sir Richard Branson, the yoga classes with Woody Harrelson: Picnic in Amsterdam is a great big party for the global technorati.
Futurist speaker Adam Greenfield at the conference next month will address the loss of privacy and independent thought caused by ubiquitous computing devices.
In an interview at the Picnic website, Greenfield describes how a mobile device might present you with map, minus a route through a bad neighborhood. In other words, it has already done some of your thinking for you.
Greenfield, a former PSYOP sergeant in the US Army’s Special Operations Command, is now head of design direction at Nokia.
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