Monday, March 31, 2008

Couch surfing

Here's a cool site. If your looking for a place to crash and people to meet, the site hooks you up with people willing to let you stay at their place.

Dangerous? Maybe, but I think we're all a little too afraid of each other. We're warned to not give our names, addresses, pictures, etc. on the internet, but are we all being too paranoid?

Last week I was helping a friend move. It was only myself and two smaller woman, so I volunteered to take the bulk of the load. I seriously hurt my back. I wished there was some sort of service where you can volunteer to help people move, and in return, they'll help you move when you need it.

I guess I long for the community that we used to have, where neighbors helped each other out.

Blame it on the bad apples of society, I guess.

If we could only pick out all the bad apples and give ourselves "fail-safes" we could be closer and more helpful to each other. What I mean by this, is we need a better justice system. One that doesn't allow high-risk offenders out.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

the drop

If "Everything I know is but a drop in the ocean of knowledge"

Then everything everyone has ever known is a sea.

In the sea of knowledge, there is a fringe, a precipice. Most people can spend their whole lives diving deeper in to different areas of knowledge already discovered, but few dare to push the fringe.

Imagine that the sea of knowledge expands in to the ocean and just keeps going on forever.

Imagine what it must have been like for Columbus when he stared in to the unknown and charged forward.

Imagine what it must of been like for Hubble when he discovered for the first time that there were other galaxies out there, that we weren't the only one.


These are people that pushed the fringe of knowledge. They opened our minds to new concepts. Concepts like the earth is round, or the universe is expanding.

Pushing the fringe at this stage is a remarkable feat since it's been pushed so far. But when you imagine the amount of knowledge that our human civilization hasn't discovered yet and compare it to what we do know, it's actually a very small sea.

When you see the world in this way, it creates quite a different perspective on everything.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Big Dog Parody

check out this vid from gizmodo

Electric Car CPR

Here's a movie that everyone should watch:

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Torrent

(The creators of the film deserve the money, purchase it if you can afford it, but if you would have never bought the film anyway, get the torrent)

At the end of the film, they bring up the plug-in hybrids as a compromise. One of the main reasons being that electric cars can only go so far on one charge, and it takes time to recharge them. A plug in hybrid would use the electricity from an over night charge, and then use the gas when it runs out.

Google has taken the initiative by creating RechargeIt.



It's been a while since I've seen "Who killed the electric car?", but if I remember correctly, one of the big problems is the costs of the battery. The costs of the batteries is so high because the oil companies bought them out. While I'm not a hundred percent sure of this, it is plausible, and anything that would save a company millions of dollars and is plausible is most likely happening.

This article addresses the high cost of converting to a plug-in hybrid

Of coarse, the headline, "The payoff for plug-in hybrids: 95 years?" shows the worst possible scenario.

"The good news is that the costs of plug-ins are expected to decline, particularly when manufacturers make cars as plug-ins at the factory. If the premium drops to $5,000 or so, a plug-in fares better in terms of dollars. "You could pay it off in seven or eight years," Proudfoot said."

Seven or eight sounds a lot more realistic then 95.

"On May 7 of last year, Great Barrier, one of the plug-ins, hit 124 miles per gallon on an 18.9-mile jaunt."

Edutainment

The escapist isn't just for zero punctuation. They also have some interesting articles like this one.

It starts with a dinner party where a man says he's a game designer and is astonished by the negative reaction he gets. So, he seeks to find the root of the hatred towards video games.

It's a very well written article. I pulled this section out because Dave Taylor reflects my views:

"Dave Taylor, who worked on Doom and Quake, and who is currently a producer and agent in the industry, agreed with me that it was sad, but wondered if the industry hadn't set a little bit of this fire, too. "I also feel that the game industry in its greed and desperation for sales has been negligent of this growing issue of the fallout of kids playing games. We're all about how addictive the game is, how much replayability there is and making sure it's a popular genre like FPS. That's fine and all, but the result is that you're creating a program that turns kids into game-playing automatons that spend a lot of time on it because of how addictive and replayable the games are, and that makes them very good at twitch reactions for hiding, jumping, crouching, shooting, lobbing grenades, etc. I agree that a great multiplayer FPS can teach valuable skills when it comes to teamwork and tactics ... but it doesn't improve the basics, like literacy, math skills, physical fitness and diet. These are a lot more important to responsible parents, and if your kid is either playing games all day or pining and whining to play games all day because his friends can, then you're not going to have a lovely view of the medium."

Video games can be used for the basics that Dave mentions. Edutainment, the word itself brings images of cheap, simple games that are made for children and are usually not very fun.

On the other hand, a game like Civilization 4 has a plethora of information just ready and waiting for you. In the game, this tiny button brings you to the civilopedia. So if your playing as the Mongols, and it makes you curious about Ghengis Khan, the information is just a click away.

Lucky for us, Civilization is coming out on the consoles. It'll be called civilization: revolution. If you've never played any civ games, or maybe want something educational and fun for your child, I implore you to play civilization.

One cool thing about playing the civ games, is you can get a perspective on the entire history of the human race, instead of just seeing the world from your limited life time. The game can only do so much, but with a strong imagination, the mind can try.

If there was any game that could help you take your perspective beyond the history of our human race, Spore is coming out this September.

Whenever I think about the lack of imagination and originality in upcoming video games, spore seems to be the only game that says "not me!".

I hope it sells more then The Sims and we see more of the gaming industry to follow suit.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

White Space

A very interesting article courtesy of Reuters.

"Rick Whitt, Google's Washington telecom and media counsel, said this class of Wi-Fi devices could eventually offer data transmission speeds of billions of bits per second -- far faster than the millions of bits per second available on most current broadband networks. Consumers could watch movies on wireless devices and do other things that are currently difficult on slower networks."

"Google sees the white-space spectrum as a natural place to operate a new class of phones and wireless devices based on Android, Google's software that a variety of major equipment makers plan to use to build Internet-ready phones"

Monday, March 24, 2008

Holograms

It's about time.

This one looks cheaper, and appears to only project simple images.



This one to show off Toyota's new car looks a little more high-end



Wii tricks

Here's Johnny Lee with a few tricks for the Wii. Game developers need to use their imagination for future games and take advantage of ideas like these.





Here's a cheap way to use the Wiimote for interactive whiteboards.




Johnny Chung Lee's website.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface



It's a big ass table



Here's a cool little game on it



Is anyone else surprised that Microsoft is actually pushing the envelope?


interactive projection.

Here's something really cool. Similar to Microvision's "Show" technology, except interactive. This could be extremely handy for cell phones.

3d TV

Here's a promising technology that we should be seeing in the near future. Sounds expensive though.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Japanese exoskeleton



Kudos to my friend Josh for hooking me up with this link.

I wonder how long until we see these things being used in various job sites here in North America.

Cell

Reading over my blog, I find it interesting how I started talking about cell phones, and am now being amazed by the leukocyte cell.

Calling our cellular phone cell's is misleading, but now that we're using nanotechnology, it's becoming more fitting. I'm not an expert on the subject, but are we not designing our own simple cells?

It's almost scary to think about it. If we're designing cell phones that have their own cell-like structure, we're almost designing a new type of organism.

Sometimes new ideas like these, and particularly biological studies, like cloning and stem cell research, are downright frightening. Terms like "playing God" are thrown around.

We have to remind ourselves that the fear of knowledge is a mistake. Like an evolutionary leftover. A deep sub-conscious irrational fear.

Like the first creature that evolved wings and being afraid of a precipice before it flies for the first time.



I wonder how advanced we could be if the term "tree of knowledge" was never used in the particular version of Genesis which is popular today.

I say this because according to Shai Cherry, one of The Teaching Companie's brilliant professors, there were two very different versions of Genesis. The first one being one where the world was created in one day, not the much more popular seven. The very calendar that we have continued to base our lives on for thousands of generations was based on this story of seven days. Yet, when you think about it, what day are you talking about and from who's perspective. From Einsteins point of view, space-time is not as simple as it looks, and it's difficult for us in our era to comprehend. Never mind the perspective of someone from 6000 or so years ago. So even if someone did get a divine vision from God of how the Earth was created, and wrote it down, we have to assume that he wouldn't have been able to understand what he was seeing. The writing skills were undoubtedly primitive, and he probably couldn't translate what he seen properly, and it just got worse from there as it was passed from person to person.

And yet, somehow, some way, there is this deep fear of knowledge, a fear of getting kicked out of the Garden, a fear of building the tower of Babel. fear of "the number of the beast", like if we put a chip in our skin, we'd some how jump-start the rapture, and all the sinners of the world would die like in the flood. The Y2K scare was inspired from this kind of nonsense. Millions was made on the "Y2K-compliant" scandal. This man-made "doomsday is coming view" has been passed from generation to generation. You can see it in our movies, in the news (Global Warming), and I hear it all the time.

And yet history has shown that technology has made our lives easier. We live longer, see things we'd never see, learn things we'd never be able to know.

For example, if your interested in the alternate version of Genesis, but can't afford to buy it from the link above or perhaps you just want to see if I'm bullshitting you. Youtorrent it, the title is "introduction to Judaism".If you enjoy The Teaching Company, support them in their cause, and buy a few when you can afford it. I highly recommend TTC, I can honestly say I am much more "mentally healthy" since I began to listen to their mp3's.

I can get all that information from electronic signals sent through wires. I listen to it on my tiny cell phone.

I sincerely doubt that a man-made doomsday will come, but we can't ignore the fact that the Earth is not new to mass extinctions.


If we want to survive the next one, we need to change our perspective. We need to dump this fear of the future.

We need to try and view things on the long term.

Ideally, mankind should have two planets, so if a disaster happens on one, the species can continue to exist.

On the very long term, we should have two solar systems, so if a solar disaster happens, we have a back up star.

And if you want to get imaginative, in the extremely long term, we should have two galaxies. Who knows? The milky way could collide in to the Andromeda galaxy in 3 billion years. Perhaps with disaster in all habitable planets.

Freeman Dyson has some interesting far future concepts.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

RoboDog, Attack!


Here is a truly fascinating video demonstrating the abilities of advanced robotics from Boston Dynamics. It's incredible how lifelike the motions are when it slips or is pushed. This video showcases "BigDog". Check this link to see other models from Boston Dynamics

Boston Dynamics is funded by the U.S., and the BigDogs intended use is to take some of the payload off of the soldiers, allowing them to bring more in to a fight when vehicles don't have access.

Although, I wonder what other uses something like this could have. What would it look like with a massive gun on top?

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Augmented Reality Soap Opera

Check this out.

It's still rather primitive, but it's interesting seeing someone interact with people that don't exist. A combination of augmented reality and advanced AI.


Here's a very interesting article that I 'Stumbled Upon' about cameras and glasses, and remarkable object recognition software.

Imagine being able to access a wealth of information on anything you see instantly.


I watched Cloverfield last night. It got me thinking about cameras embedded in sun glasses, like in this video.

I predict that in the near future we'll be able to make movies that are real true stories. For example, if a group of people all had a futurist pair of glasses described in previous posts, and if something interesting happens to that group, someone could edit everything they seen in to a movie.

We could watch real life events as they happen.

Hopefully they'll have such a high resolution that the video could be stabilized so it's not as shaky as in Cloverfield.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Virtual intelligence

Virtual intelligence is evolving

Exoskeletons

I wonder if we'll see these things in the near future being put to practical use.


Education

Our society is due for a dramatic change to our education. We need to get rid of old books, crowded classrooms, and the inefficient teachers. Let's face it, we all had our good and bad teachers in school. Some just had a knack for teaching, others repeatedly assumed things, giving false information, etc.

We need to embrace technology. A laptop for every student. Instead of cutting down the trees to print out the textbooks which need to be revised every year, digital textbooks could be uploaded to the internet. Each section could have forums, and discussions for any curious student or teacher. At any point, teachers can add, edit, and re-organize information. Videos add the possibility of students from any part of the world to see lectures being given by the greatest minds. Instant interactivity can quiz every individual child. (As compared to asking only one child in the room, while the rest sit quietly, hoping not to get called upon). I'm sure every teacher would appreciate not having to mark every single test and homework assignment. The computer can do it for you.

By using computer software, this allows for students to specialize in knowledge earlier. If a child loves physics, and wants to specialize in it, he should be encouraged, and allowed to do so.

These methods are much cheaper as well. Instead of printing out thousands of books for each student, once anything is uploaded to the internet, it is completely free to view it on a laptop. Instead of hiring an expensive college professor, a video can be taken, and viewed again and again.

A more immediate idea is that since almost every student already has an mp3 player, courses should be available on mp3, with tests over the internet. The teaching company is a fine example of high quality education available over the internet. This is not only cheaper then our current system but it would also make education much more convenient for students.

Here is an example of a group of students being punished for working together over facebook on their schoolwork. While the assignment may have been designed for the individual, we should be creating a new style of education that teaches people how to work together. Our society has gotten more and more specialized and will continue to do so. Students need to find their specialties and use them to work together to complete a larger goal then any individual could have.

While throwing out the old textbooks and embracing technology has many benefits, including allowing children to do work from home, there are still many reasons for the traditional methods. For example, while a computer can check for grammar in a creative arts assignment, it can't mark the student for elements like intrigue and so on. Of coarse, there are obvious classes like physical education, and drama that can't be done over the computer. A complication that will have to be solved is how to keep a student from cheating. It's hard enough for our current schools as it is, with ipods, online essays, and tricks being posted on the web.

Maybe it's time for students to be taught morality and the importance of learning so that they don't want to cheat. The option will still be there, and there may be methods to test students every so often in a traditional manner to see who's really learning and who's not.

In either case, it's time that we use technology to make our education more advanced, which will in turn, will make our technology more advanced, creating a revolution.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

One last thought

After writing the previous post, I learned a lot about Microvision. Check out their website
If I had a lot of money, I'd invest in them.

Glasses 2


So in the last post, I brainstormed about some futuristic possibilities, and focused on the positives. Now, I want to take a more realistic approach

The idea of the glasses connecting to any device could be revolutionary. DisplayLink has invented a wireless usb for any display. I think that if they "expanded their view", they could see the technology as more then just a way to get rid of cable clutter.

With that kind of technology, you could be connecting any device to any device. For example, you can have your smaller PSP, or cellphone, connect to a larger computer, and access any of it's data, and run it, just like you were running your home computer. This technology is here. If I had a lot of money, I'd invest in whichever company holds the patent for a cell phone that can run it's own computer in the background, as it connects to a home PC or laptop, and access the entire system. Not just looking in the hard-drive, but actually having a portion of the computers CPU cycles.

For example, your at home with some friends, and you want to show them a video from your vacation. Your cellphone connects to the PC, you access your files, and your PC runs it while your cell phone displays it.

This is one of those technologies that hinges on other technologies. It may be delayed from happening because of our lack of foresight. While I'm sure any gamer would appreciate a significant upgrade to their graphics while playing on a PSP, or DS. Most applications, like those run on Iphones and Blackberries, have enough processing power to run videos and music on their small displays.

That's where other technologies like Microvisions projector technology come in.




Now, when someone is showing off pics, or playing some game, he can press a button and let everyone see what's going on.

You could put a webcam on your roof and project the stars at night as your phone recharges.

Every time you take a picture, you can show everyone the photo in a full screen image, displayed on any surface.

Not only will our new phones need more powerful processors to run applications for large displays, but they'll need more power to run the displays.

Either the product needs to be efficient, the batteries need to be better, or there needs to be a better, faster way to recharge the battery. Or at least "slow the drain".

Smaller, more advanced solar cells may be the answer.

If that technology is promising enough, combined with more efficient batteries and the products that use them, we'll never have to worry about charging our devices.

With unlimited energy, space for data and tiny cameras, people could record their entire lives. Maybe not in the form of glasses, maybe as some other accessory.

How would society react to something like this? People don't like the idea of being recorded all the time. Some may grow comfortable with it, but others may despise those that record everything.

Like any public camera argument, people will say that it's a breach on their privacy. While others will argue, "What have you got to hide?"

Like every technology, the computer, cell phones, a bluetooth headset, people will grow on to them when they experience their potential.

How many times have you been telling a story and you only wished you could show exactly what you seen?



Moving on to the other ideas in my previous post, particularly the virtual display on the glasses. The technology is here , but why hasn't it caught on? I think the resolution needs to get a little higher, and the glasses need to get smaller. Also, this doesn't allow for augmented reality. Augmented reality will allow the user to see through the glasses. There are two ways to do this, one where there is a video camera which records everything and displays it for your eyes, or another way which allows you to see through the glasses.

Here is an interesting article on augmented reality and the challenges they must overcome from howstuffworks.com
Microvision's retina technology is the most promising, but also the most creepy.

"This device actually uses light to paint images onto the retina by rapidly moving the light source across and down the retina. The problem with the Microvision display is that it currently costs about $10,000. MacIntyre says that the retinal-scanning display is promising because it has the potential to be small. He imagines an ordinary-looking pair of glasses that will have a light source on the side to project images on to the retina."

Since Augmented Reality (AR) requires a tracking system, the future will have AR zones where you can access it's features, and some will not. Outdoor locations will be covered first with more tech savvy regions picking it up, with more and more indoor locations following suit whenever its useful for the owner.

A big problem with the current AR models is the massive load you must carry to have the processing power to run it.

Why haven't they tried a wUSB visual connection? If anyone has the details behind the technological restrictions, I'd like to know.






eMotives brain-wave reading technology is one of those things that I would have to experience to understand it's potential better. I imagine that it could be something like voice recognition software, where it doesn't read your message properly half the time. Eventually, both technologies should get more reliable.


Nano technology is extremely promising. We're talking about creating technology in a way that's similar to life itself. Instead of cells, tiny robots. While there is promise to it, and the Nokia video in the last post is exciting, they don't dive in to the challenges they're currently facing. It seems a little too far-fetched for now, some of it may be around the corner, but it may be a long corner.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008


Here's some different ideas on what the future will hold in cell phone technology.

Keep in mind that this is all theory, most of these technologies will happen, but it'll be progressively and some may never work out the way we imagine them.

I say cell phone because it's the one tiny computer that everyone carries around with them now. When really, everyone is carrying a small computer that is a powerful multimedia device with many functions, and it will grow even stronger.

I imagine that I-phones, PSP's, cameras, and even laptops will all be in one convenient pair of glasses. With every feature imaginable.

Depending on the model, you can completely customize it to whatever you'll need. The model may be able to connect to any computer, so whenever you want the power that only something large can bring, you just have to get yourself close enough so that it can connect without any wires.

The glasses themselves will be configurable to whatever amount of light you want in. Automatically adjusting to whatever your setting. Maybe even allowing night vision.



On the side, you can have a camera, it's resolution will get higher and higher over time, and the memory card will get larger as well.

One day, people will be able to record everything they see, either uploading it at home when they put it on the charger, or perhaps it's connected wi-fi and can upload the video to the net, either periodically, or streaming. This has incredible potential, here are some exciting examples:

-Imagine you misplaced something important, and you urgently needed to find it. Just look over yesterdays events, on your heads up display.

-What if your hanging with some friends, and you were bragging about the size of fish you caught. Just upload your video to the TV, or project it on a wall with state of the art projection technology.

-Imagine that you made an agreement with someone, now, instead of getting a lawyer to draw up a contract, you could record a verbal agreement fast and easy. (Of coarse, the courts will have to analyze the video to see it's authenticity. Maybe the companies that make the glasses can embed some code that gets destroyed when the original is edited).

-Witnessing a crime, seeing a shooting star, any sort of spontaneous event that you didn't have a camera for, could all be placed on your private hard-drive, or broad-casted to the web.

-Many different jobs could benefit from quick pictures or vids that you could refer to during the day.

The display will be on the back of the glasses. There will be different modes, or user interfaces. One will be like having a large TV in front of you. This will be the kind used for traditional movies and video games. Another mode will be the same thing, except you can see through the TV, this is used for augmented reality, and 3d visuals. For instance, say you were seeing how much space you had left in the system memory, and you viewed it like it was a 3d city, with larger files, being larger buildings. You could walk around it and interact with it.

It would look very strange to an outside viewer.

The potential of augmented reality is amazing. Here are some ideas.

It doesn't end there, imagine your driving your car, and visuals are transferred from your vehicle to your headset.

Let me create a scenario showing just a few possibilities of this.

With your glasses on, you enter your vehicle. For safety reasons, the law requires your glasses to enter "car mode", the heads up display can show much more information then before. Stress, friction, weight, etc. You can instantly see when something in your car is starting to cause problems. Never mind waiting till that mystery noise alerts you, your car will tell you exactly whats wrong when it happens.

Starting your car, you input your destination in an overhead map, maybe even with up to date satellites so you can see exactly when there's bad traffic in an area. When your destination is mapped out, arrows could be visually on the road telling you where to go.

Imagine that a lot of cars are reading a loss of friction on an intersection up ahead. The cars broadcast a warning to all other vehicles and you can see on your visual heads up display where those slippery sections are recorded. For example, there is a patch of black ice ahead that you can't see, but since someone else slipped on it, there is a small exclamation point above it.

Of coarse the display would have to be designed to be reliable and safe.

Interacting with the display could be done in many different ways.

The augmented reality can create an image of a keyboard in front of you, and detect your fingers interacting with the image. Something like this

Brain wave reading interaction may become a real possibility as well.

So imagine that you wanted to send an email to a large group. You first thought, "email" and it popped open, you thought of the people you wanted to send it to, and it shows there name and pictures, as each one is added. (Keep in mind, this could all potentially be done on a 3d display, for example, each image of each person could be placed on a cube, so you can rotate the cube instead of scrolling through a list.) Why? Well, it could be faster to find who your looking for. (If the brain-wave reading software couldn't find it, or you couldn't remember their face).

So anyways, a keyboard is virtually placed in front of you. You can resize it in any way and place it wherever you want. To other people, you would look like a mime as you type your email message. That is, if the brain wave reading software doesn't get advanced enough to automatically detect what you want to say. Which would be incredible. If you wanted to send a message, picture, or video to anyone, and all you had to do was think about it to do it, that would completely change the way we live.

The futuristic possibilities that are coming upon us fast are mind-boggling. I've only published a few of the possibilities. I'm sure if you use your imagination you can see many other concepts.

Here is a video on the possibilities of nano-technology by Nokia.