Month: February 2009

6th Sense

Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen. The wearer can summon virtual gadgets and internet data at will, then dispel them like smoke when they’re done.

We don’t have sense organs for data. Thanks to efforts such as Tim Berner-Lee’s all of this knowledge has become available online. Could we evolve a 6th sense that would give us access to meta-information that may help us make the right decisions? When you go to supermarket and you look at all the different kinds of toilet papers, you don’t pull out your cell phone to look for which brand is the most eco-friendly. Pattie is wearing web-camera, a battery-powered projection system with mirror. It lets you walk up to any surface (including your hand) and interact with the projected interface. It responds to his gestures. If you hold your hands like you are taking a photo, the camera takes a photo, and then when you go back to the office, you can project all your photos and sort through them using natural gestures. She showed a projection of a phone keypad on her palm and dialed a number to make a call. She shows a video of a guy looking at products in a supermarket. It projects a green, yellow, or red dot on a product, telling you whether or not it’s eco-friendly (or whatever criteria you set up). If you look at a book, it’ll project the Amazon rating on the book.

i ignored this when i read about the 6th sense bla bla, but it is genuinely interesting. could we overlay our perception of the world with a sense for data?

DIY electrophoresis

Well, what’s a narrow rigid tube that’s easy for anyone to acquire? A clear drinking straw! Paper clips make for appropriately sized electrodes, and since a drinking straw is rigid, it can be used in either the horizontal or the vertical orientation. For extra bonus points, when you’re ready to cut a band out of the gel, no need for mucking around with razor blades — just take a (sterile) pair of scissors, snip snip, and you’re done! Plus, disposal is extra simple, even with polyacrylamide — just dispose of the entire straw, gel and all, properly. Tito Jankowski tried this out, using a single 9V battery as a power supply, and after some debugging, it worked beautifully. (He also used alligator clips as electrodes, and they worked just fine.) We’re calling these “keiki gels” because they’re so small and cute — and so simple, even a little kid can do them. This is crowdsourced science at its very finest. Behold the power of collaboration!

DIY bioscience is real.

ESPN blood money

If your ISP doesn’t want to pay for you to watch ESPN360, there’s nothing you can do about it, short of switching to a provider that pays for it. While other companies strive for a more direct, one-to-one relationship with consumers, ESPN is doggedly pursuing the same strategy online that made it a success in the TV world: licensing pipes, not people.

this is why bway.net is my ISP. i don’t feel like subsidizing the glandular issues of slobbering morons.