http://www.deepzoom.com/

Been waiting for this EXACT application to come out for awhile.

Very slick little video.

Karthik will be happy to see that it culminates in the iPhone.  :)

One of the stumbling blocks with regards to creating a true conscious machine is that the way silicon chips are designed makes them perform inherently different than neurons.  Researchers at IBM are working on designing a system from the ground up that would emulate how the human brain is put together.  Not just try to make silicon “think”  but to first reverse engineer the architecture, then institute the method of thought.

In what could be one of the most ambitious computing projects ever, neuroscientists, computer engineers and psychologists are coming together in a bid to create an entirely new computing architecture that can simulate the brain's abilities for perception, interaction and cognition. All that, while being small enough to fit into a lunch box and consuming extremely small amounts of power.

read the whole thing: Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2009/44.president/inauguration/themoment/

Brilliant use of technology.

CNN takes all submitted pictures from the public and stitches them together using Microsoft’s Photosynth technology.  Go check it out.

Genius.

There is so much in this story.

1. The genius of the Greek proto-scientist/engineer to create this is extraordinary.
2. The discovery itself - how improbably that it was found?  And then properly saved and studied.
3. The creation of special technologies purpose built to decipher the inner workings of the Antikythera device.
4. The Genius again of Michael Wright, the former curator at the science museum in London to recreate the device.

Read the whole thing over at Wired: World's First Computer Rebuilt, Rebooted After 2,000 Years

Also here is the article on the technology used to decipher the inner workings of the Antikythera device: Imaging the Antikythera Computer

I wonder how this companies sales have done over the past year...I would expect they have gone up a bit.

http://www.scangauge.com

I'm going on a long car trip in June, maybe I'll pick one up. I'm not sure if I could save that much gas on a long highway trip but it might come in handy afterwards.

Like a grandfather clock.  This is brilliant, but not produced yet.

To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour-glass like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gently glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp,

That is very cool.

The LED lightbulb should last a lifetime so you are looking at a family heirloom.  Kind of a 21st century candle. 

Check out this cool demo for the Prius' main gear.

http://eahart.com/prius/psd/

There is a simulation at the bottom of the page that let's you vary the input parameters and watch the gearing adjust.

The PSD is a planetary gear set that removes the need for a traditional stepped gearbox and transmission components, and also the familiar rev-lurch-rev-lurch of acceleration in an ordinary gas powered car. It acts as a continuously variable transmission (CVT) but with a fixed gear ratio.

Cool stuff.  They need to get their car designers to work on the car though because it is the ugliest thing on the road...well maybe that Pontiac Aztec thing was uglier, but it's close.

Are you a fan of James Bond? 

Yeah me too.

Do you dig the scene "The Spy Who Loved Me", where bond and lovely agent "triple-x" take their lotus and drive it right off the dock into the water and it becomes a submersible? 

Yeah me too. (even when dubbed in Italian)

Well Rinspeed has made a concept car submersible out of a Lotus Elise.

Crazy but true.

This guy Peter Rakos, created an entire rendering engine/technique in Excel.  I'm not sure it is quite up to the requirements of Halo 3, but it is still a nifty example of how versatile Excel can be.

Check out the video.

And you can download the excel files yourself and try it out.

This is cool.

On a typical dive, the Poseidon Discovery lets divers stay underwater at least three times as long as scuba gear can, and since you don’t exhale into the water, you don’t create bubbles or noise that can scare off fish.

Instead of being limited by the amount of air you bring with you, a re-breather extends your time underwater by scrubbing what you exhale.

How about a 3 hour dive instead of a 1 hour dive.

The envelope was seriously pushed in Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

That scene was probably the biggest cinematic event that's happened to date.  Up until about 20 years ago there was only one side, and that was us, and now there's two sides.  and uh it's made movies better.

John Frazier - Effects Specialist, of the physical/mechanical variety.

Wired Article: How Physics and Computers bring an Ocean to Life for the Movies

So the concept here is good...I guess.  Use the alluring aroma of bacon to help you wake up in the morning but I just can't imagine the greasy smell lingering in my bedroom forever after days and days of the Wake n' Bacon alarm clock.

So you have to get a frozen piece of bacon and put it inside the alarm clock every night...hello health department.

And what about vegetarians?

Kinda reminds me of the "memo" machine from "Risky Business".

Check this out.

An enterprising midwesterner, George Lawrence, devised and patented this ingenious system of kites and wires, right, that carried a 46-pound panoramic camera 800 feet into the air.

Kites!  Brilliant.

If the X-Prize worked to get the private commercial space race kicked off and it was only $10 Million, what would a payout of $1 BILLION do for results. 

This is an ambitious set of problems laid out by the Victory Project. 

To the first person(s) that solves any of these Problems:

1. Develop a cure for breast cancer.
2. Develop a cure for diabetes.
3. Reduce greenhouse emissions from petroleum powered automobiles by 95% without increasing the cost of a normal car more than 5%.
4. Achieve 150 miles per gallon of gasoline in a 3,000 lb. car, using EPA standards; without increasing the cost of a normal car more than 10%.

Is it big?   Yes.

Is it different?   Yes.

Will it work?   Yes.

This is inspiring.  But some of these might take the full Billion dollar prize to develop.

They're looking for donations, feel free to contribute.

I want to revisit this topic.  It's been awhile since I talked about it.  For a quick review go and read this article: Job v3.0 - 21st Century Jobs

I want to focus on crowd patronage.  There are a variety of people out there now attempting succeeding? at this route of self-financing.  The journalist Michael Yon mentioned in the article above is but one.

Here is someone else trying to fund their effort via the web. Jill's next record

Bringing people with a need in touch with people that want to fulfill that need.  In this case it is Jill Sobule's wish to create a record.  She has been frustrated by an industry that seems to be in obliteration mode.

I am very skeptical as to whether she would have been able to accomplish this in any way prior to the internet,  Because if you are interested in her music you can go out and find a video of her and see what she's all about.

You can then go read a review of her shows. 10 February 2002: Tin Angel -- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

And then, if you are convinced that she makes good music and music you want to be made so that you can listen to more of it...you can click click and give her some of your money.  Easy.

Connecting the crowd to the producer.

...how would you do that in 1988?

I've been lethargically trying to purchase a Wii for months now, without success. Apparently you have to be quite serious about hunting one down because they're sell out everywhere that they crop up. Amazon.com reported that when they had them in stock, they were selling 17 of them a second! If the technology in this clip starts to make it mainstream, we're going to continue to be constrained on these puppies. The clarity of the description of the technology, as well as the demonstration itself, is first rate.

Make sure to check out Johnny Lee's other Wiimote projects.

Beautiful.

While there are plenty of pie in the sky nano-technology dreams out there: space elevator ribbon, artery cleansing robots, oxygen increasing blood.  But in reality those are still far off.

What we will end up seeing in our day to day lives will be more mundane applications that appear to have marginal impact on change, but over the long term may have as much impact as the grandiose ideas.

For example here: Nano-layered plastic sheet is strong as steel

This stuff could be used in a lot of applications ranging from grocery bags to space vehicle linings.  It will all depend on how efficient the process can become.  It sounds like the process uses simple materials and that there is potential for big automation.

It will be very interesting to see what other "mundane" nano-technology innovations come out over the next several years.

This is cool and actually one of the clearest explanations of what makes up the header information of the packets that are flying around the intertubes.  Gallery includes: IPv4, IPv6, TCP, UDP and ICMP.

That is for touch typers.

http://matias.ca/halfkeyboard/demo/

This is cool.  It means never having to let go of the mouse again.

They've got an online demo that lets you try out the technology.

This is just dang cool and once again shows us how the world does not stand still.  Innovation continues apace.

http://translator.live.com/Default.aspx?MKT=en-US

So you say...big deal that's just like babel fish from years ago.  Well yes and no.

techRivet Translated

Voila'.  There's techRivet translated for you.

Still you doubt it.  Been done already.

OK, check out the techRivet homepage.  Look up in the top of the right hand column see the translator drop down?  For the vast international audience of the techRivet blog, this must be a welcome relief.

Choose language, click and go.

And for techRivets IT staff it was a simple implementation.  I didn't even have to get the Project Managers involved just spoke to the developer directly and he had it up and running in a matter of minutes.  (The layers of bureaucracy over here is mind numbing).

The UI is intuitive and easy and configurable.  All goodness.

Windows Live is starting to bear fruit for Microsoft.  Once the Office suite goes online it will be an interesting change of the playing field.

ht: Scott Hanselman's ComputerZen.com

All open API's...meaning, you Mr. Phone company can take this platform and use it on your technology.  Freaking cool.

And as an aside doesn't Sergey Brin have a weird eye thing going on?  Freaky.  Is he trying to compel us with his evil mind-powers?

Would Deep Thought have been so dismissive about the new supercomputer from NEC?  The NEC SX-9 Vector Supercomputer System.  (Although Milliard Gargantubrain is a much cooler name for a super computer.)

• Consisting of 16 nodes.
• Capable of a peak vector performance in excess of 100 GFLOPS.
• Available in six colors including periwinkle.

The SX-9 is the current fastest supercomputer in the world.  It closes in on the PFLOPS range.  World's fastest vector computer goes live.

 Update: Ok I lied about the colors, you can only get it in black.

So I've read this great book just lately called: A Man On The Moon. It's really cool.  The author, Andrew Chaikin, does a great job. He interviewed a lot of the astronauts and gives a great telling of the adventure.

I highly recommend it.

Well one of the subjects that he covers in the book is how the first spacecraft were very much like floating latrines.  The capture and disposal of calls-of-nature was a rather crude amalgamation of poorly functioning technology.

I was curious how this might have changed over time.  I mean there are now a significant number of women going up into space as well.  Some of the technology described in the book about the Apollo mission just wouldn't work.  I mean...well...how do they do it?

 Here is a good article from the BBC that describes it clearly.

How do you 'go' in space?

So now you know.  Thought you might like to have that question answered.

This is brilliant. 

Eye-Fi.

Here's how it works.

1. You get the Eye-Fi card. 
2. You plug the Eye-Fi SD card into your machine. 
3. Onboard software initializes the SD card. 
4. You put that card in your camera and you're done.

When you use it.

1. Take pictures.
2. The Eye-Fi card uploads the picture automatically to your computer.
1. You don't  have to connect any wires
2. you don't have to tell it
3. no buttons
4. it just does it
3. You can also tell it to automatically upload those photos to an online photo account of your choosing.
4. Sweet.

The only hitch is you need a wireless network.  I have Cat-5 all through my house so I would need to turn on my wireless router, but most people are wireless now I expect.

This is a brilliant implementation because it does not require you as a user to buy a new camera to get this automatic functionality.  All you need is to replace you SD card and you are good to go.

Great product design.

I was wrong...I know, I know what you're thinking, it is crazy isn't it.  But when I said back here: [Accelerating Change and MP3 Players] that a 2 Gigabyte MP3 player would look like this:

I was wrong.

this:

in 2011, will likely be a terabyte mp3 player.

Terabyte Thumb Drives Made Possible by Nanotech Memory

Researchers have developed a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could put terabyte-sized thumb drives in consumers' pockets within a few years.

Unbelievable.  But only in a totally believable way.  This is a result of accelerating change in its purest form.  Here we have Michael Kozicki, director of ASU's Center for Applied Nanoionics, a field that probably didn't even exist 5 years ago and certainly 10 years ago, taking the breakthroughs in one avenue of research and applying it to another.

The beauty of it is, this doesn't need to be a whole new form of technology, this new memory can be made with much of the same technologies as what is currently in use in the industry.

Kozicki says the technology can be built from materials commonly used in the memory industry, which should help keep manufacturing costs down.

Remarkable.

Connectivity:

The bandwidth available to people is increasing at a rate of 50% per year.  Not quite as fast as Moore's law for silicon, but still extraordinary.

Here is a more up to date estimate that takes into account the number of websites and requests.

Faster and faster it goes.  How long have you been watching videos online?  Two years?  Three?  Not longer surely.

Do you watch any actual TV shows on your internet connection?  You will soon.

Bioengineering:

The human genome is mapped and I have heard some people say, "So what, they haven't done anything with it."  Mapping something and understanding something are two different things.  Give the processor speed increase time to be applied against the genome and there will be plenty that comes from it.

It cost approximately $13 Billion to decode the human genome over the course of 13 years.

...the price of sequencing DNA has fallen rapidly with the advent of these machines. Today, the price tag on a human genome decoded with sequencers of the type used in the Human Genome Project would be $25 million to $50 million. It drops to around $1 million with next-generation machines available today and could be as low as $100,000 by 2008.

Now THAT is an improvement in cost.

"The last year has been the most exciting period in genomics since the days of the Human Genome Project," says Eric Lander, first author on the project's first published draft of the human genome and now head of the Broad Institute for genomic medicine in Cambridge, MA. "Sequencing is becoming cheap enough and powerful enough that it can be applied to about any problem. It's standing the field on its head." Francis Collins,

Remarkable, faster and cheaper by factors of a thousand or more.  And I wouldn't expect it to stop there. 

Someday Kinko's will be able to give you your DNA sequence in 10 minutes for $42.95.

Space Technology:

Lotsa cool stuff going on.  It finally appears that the private sector is getting involved.  We have a variety of Billionaires interested in spending their money here.

• Elon Musk (PayPal): SpaceX
• Paul Allen
• Google guys: XPrize sponsorship for a unmanned moon landing
• Richard Branson: Virgin Galactic

Of these the most interesting to me is Elon Musk's attempt to develop an entire space program on his own.  He is focused on a less expensive, modular rocket system.  He is positioning himself to be the only US based rocket launch provider for the ISS after the space shuttle is decommissioned.

Not a bad place to be.

This is actually the technology that fits the least in the singularity paradigm, but it is finally vibrant and growing after years of stagnation.

Nanotechnology:

One of the holy grails from this technology is fab-labs.  Basically a "replicator" from Star Trek.  Well there's nothing like that on the horizon, but what is being developed is the cross pollination of silicon wafer technologies being leveraged across to make nano-machines.

Still conjecture and wishful thinking.

Virtual Reality:

From online games like World of Warcraft and Elfquest before it we now have the virtual world of Second Life and dotSoul virtual reality is here to stay.  Get you avatar and enter the multiverse.

You can set up your own virtual reality server for free: Worldforge.com

Check out these goggles: [http://www.sensics.com/products/pisight.php]

This video is extraordinary:

This has only just begun and lends itself very well for the tinkerer / inventor.

Computer Power:

We are still increasing at Moore's law.  And Moore's law only applies to the silicon chip, the phenomenon can be traced back further across previous technology and the doubling time holds back to vacuum tubes.

And there is plausibility that as we exhaust the capabilities of silicon that other technologies will enter and the speed increases will continue.

Conclusion:

Now you can see why the singularity is considered the point beyond which we can't predict what will happen.  All of these groups of technologies is increasing in performance and coming down in cost.  Some by extraordinary amounts, some by more modest amounts.

There is feedback loops intertwined amongst some of these technologies.

The only thing we can do is keep our eyes open and watch.  Predicting is likely to be wrong, whatever it happens to be about.

This looks very interesting.  A place for you to control your own medical records.

http://healthvault.com/

When it's your job to protect your family's health, you need every advantage. Imagine if you had a way to collect, store, and share the health information critical to your family's well-being.

HealthVault is the new and FREE way to do just that.

This is an interesting move by Microsoft, I think it is an astute marketing decision.  The concern over controlling your health care and the growing technical competency of the general users...the timing seem fairly on the mark.

1981 1 GB IBM hard drive model 3380. Starting from $81,000 and weighed in at 34 kg.

versus

2007 1 GB smart card.  Starting at $9 and weighing in at a...well a uh...a few grams maybe?

Eh...if this isn't the most striking example of the law of accelerating returns I don't know what is.

More info:

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_3380.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3380#IBM_3380

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:IBM3380DiskDriveModule.agr.jpg

Hat tip: http://sd4.sd-lj.si/diggit/20yago.jpg

Remember "Total Recall", the sci-fi movie from 1990?  Great movie, Arnie was at the peak of his action hero era, Sharon Stone was Hot, Michael Ironside was bad, lot's of gratuitous violence.

yeah...coool.

Well the opening scene had Sharon and Arnie eating breakfast and the entire wall of their dining area was a television.  They turned on and off parts of it.  Now it's a television, now it's a tranquil screensaver (wallsaver?).

Well Sony is just about to come out with an ultra thin TV.

The next generation television has a screen with a thickness of just three millimeters (0.12 inches), which was made possible because the organic display is self-luminescent and does not require a backlighting.

[linky]

So...less than a quarter inch thick.  You could tile your wall with these things and voila', life imitates art.  Of course they're like $2000 per right now, but that price will come down.

Oh...ok, only because you asked.  CHICK FIGHT!

For those of you with a commute, this might allow you to get more done.  Although up here in the Great Northwest you might want to waterproof you desk first.

We here at techRivet pride ourselves in our commitment to bringing our vast reading public only the most innovative achievements and inventions dealing with important technically problems facing us in the world today...

Then we find something like this and just marvel at the innovation, creativity and purity of mind that it took to create it.

300 hp V8 engine...Chainsaw!

Quantum chip rides on superconducting bus

The connection of two Qubits on a chip for the first time.  This is a crucial first step, a proof of concept, that will lead to true quantum computers.

In effect, says Johannes Majer, a member of the Yale team, the researchers have created "a quantum bus". A bus is used in conventional computers as a conduit for information among the various components – but its quantum chip equivalent has never been made before.

With the predictions for the end of Moore's law I refer you back to Ray Kurzweil's great essay on accelerating change that stipulated the doubling of computing power was not bound to the integrated chip.  The phenomena both preceded the integrated chip and will in all likelihood continue after the silicon chip is no longer viable.

The creation of a working quantum computer might be as momentous an event as the creation of the transistor.  History will of course judge.

Just an example of accelerating change.

There were rooms and devices in history that could be categorized as planetariums dating back to the 13th century, but the first true planetarium was created in Munich in 1920.  [ref. linky] [wikipedia]

That planetarium used a metal dome with holes poked in it to project the lights onto a domed ceiling.  This technology remained largely unchanged for 60 years.

Since then we have seen rapid change.  With computer processing  power increasing continuously it is now possible to provide dynamic content up onto the dome.  I went to a local planetarium last year and the experience was more like a trip through space than a lecture from an instructor.  It was remarkable.

But it doesn't stop there.

We now have sophisticated programs available to everyone for free that exceed the capabilities of ANY planetarium that was built before the year 2000.  Stellarium [linky] is only the most sophisticated example.

The power of a full planetarium placed in your hands for free.

Accelerating Change:

This is only one trivial example of accelerating change in our lives.  We have the capabilities at our fingertips that only large institutions have had in the past.  And even those institutions, whether business or government, have only had THOSE capabilities for a hundred years or so, before that essentially nobody could do these things.

And we take it all for granted.

We shouldn't.

We live in an age of miracles.  It is not an age of once in a blue moon someone gets healed by some mysterious means or someone walks on water or something trivial like that.  It is an age where the miracles are so common and ubiquitous that they have become mundane.

Buy a Laptop for a Child, Get Another Laptop Free

This appears to be a worthy endeavor.  Buy a computer for your child and they will donate a second one to a child in the developing world.

If you have a kid that needs a computer, this might be a great idea. 

He said that if, for example, donations reached $40 million, that would mean 100,000 laptops could be distributed free in the developing world. The idea, he said, would be to give perhaps 5,000 machines to 20 countries to try out and get started.

Reference:

[One Laptop Per Child - homepage]
[Hardware Specs]
[Software Specs]

http://www.matthewmassey.com/Testing.htm

This is just plain cool.  I wanna build one.  Not that my wife would enjoy having a military level piece of high voltage death created in my garage...but a man can dream can't he.

The simple high voltage railgun was tested in May 2005. Previous to firing a current limiting resistor was placed on the railgun and the voltage across the barrel was raised to determine at what voltage flash over occurred. The pulse power supply is capable of operation at 10,000 Volts.

er...that's a lot.

Not sure about the net balance of energy in this reaction but he is igniting saltwater with radio waves.

The question is how much energy doe sit take to create the radio waves to begin with?

NASA's Centennial Challenges to Advance Technologies

"The innovations from these competitions will help support advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic concepts," said Ken Davidian, program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges, Headquarters, Washington.

More info here.

http://www.spaceward.org/

At the same height and Length of a Mini Cooper (but classified as a motorcycle), the VentureOne is a fully enclosed vehicle that is surrounded by a steel “safety cell” and other safety features typically found only in cars—things like side impact beams, driver airbag, rear bumper and engine shield.

The passenger compartment and the front wheel tilt when cornering; however, the forces are aligned with the vertical axis of the driver’s body, resulting in the driver being pressed into the seat rather than pushed across it.

Ok so it's only for three people, but Bigelow Aerospace is committed to having their Sundancer module launched before 2010.

This is private enterprise at its best.  Let's review.

Paul Allen is involved with Space Ship One / Scaled composites.
Richard Branson also.
...and Northrop Grumman buys the company.

Elon Musk is working hard with SpaceX on the Falcon project.  Successfully launching a Falcon earlier this year.  Impressive in most accounts.  He has revenue coming in from scheduled launches of satellites (whether that covers his costs is unlikely).

And now we have the ambitious plan of Bigelow Aerospace.  This is an unprecedented influx of private industry into the space exploration realm.

The design of the Bigelow modules are very innovative...they inflate once in space.  As long as the interior is sufficiently safe, this is a very cool evolution.  Space stations cubic interior space would no longer be limited by the carrying volume of the launch spacecraft. 

If it is scalable, it would make vastly bigger constructs possible in space.

More info: [cosmic blog ]

I wonder if this is a modern solution...by that I don't mean modern as in tools but modern as in thought.  This is an ingenious technique but I just wonder how ingenious pre-historic man was.  I mean I think it far more likely that brutish multi-man methods were used rather than this elegant technique.

It's still cool though.

This?  The French record setting TGV

or this...When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts.

techRivet.com has posted several articles on new interfaces focusing on the new multi-touch technologies: [here's the list]

And now the godzilla has entered the market. Microsoft: Surface.

Double Secret Probation

In all the speculation that the computer is leaving the desktop and migrating to the web. And with all the hype around how Google is positioned better for the future with its business based in the web app market. And with how Microsoft has struggled to move in that direction to head off Google. Along comes this

This is right up Microsofts forte'. It exposes the weakness in Googles business plan. If...and it is a big if...the desktop does not move to the web, but instead moves to an integration-within-our-environment application...well who is in the catbird seat now?

But then I guess Google could just buy out Perceptive Pixel and all that would be solved for them. Right?

Surprise turns to outright astonishment

It is also astonishing in two respects.

1. How under wraps Microsoft has kept this
2. How their timing appears to be very good in this space (unlike many others recently)

Technology continues apace. We have NO IDEA what we will be doing with it in 5 years time. This is only a glimpse into the future

...and Ray Kurzweil continues to say I told you so

Basically the cliff notes on his singularity books and accelerating change.  

techRivet has published more than a few articles about new user interfaces [linky], one of them dealing specifically with Brain Computer Interfaces [BCI]. But here is a company that is actually in the process of bringing BCI to market.

NeuroSky has developed a cost effective bio sensor and signal processing system for the consumer market. Our wearable technology unlocks worlds of new applications such as consumer electronics, health, wellness, education and training.

This is still vapor ware but there is some degree of non-hype to it

Yang is secretive about his company's product lineup because of a non-disclosure agreement with the manufacturer. But he said an international toy manufacturer plans to unveil an inexpensive gizmo with an embedded NeuroSky biosensor at the Japan Toy Association's trade show in late June. A U.S. version is scheduled to debut at the American International Fall Toy Show in October. - USA Today

Cool. Not wetware, but still BCI. If they are able to actual deliver this to market...well we'll just have to wait and see.

This is kinda the opposite of the Morse Code beats SMS interface article from a week ago. This might be snappy new technology, but will its performance surpass the current keyboard/mouse/screen UI? Because that is the most successful / fastest / lowest-barrier-to-learn interface so far developed.

Verdict: cool as a margarita on hot summer day...but I'm gonna wait for version 2.0.

hat tip: Sci Fi Tech

As the launch of the iPhone approaches, I've been thinking a lot about the strategy behind the pricing and realizing how absolutely brilliant it is. The vast majority of people believe the device is over-priced at $499 and $599 for 4GB and 8GB models. I think they've hit the real sweet spot.

What if you paired this:

With this:

Do you grok?

So I have a friend, let's call him "M" who on the whole is a pretty technical guy: Mechanical Engineer, worked in the software industry, worked for a couple of startups, etc.  He also generally likes technology and gets the benefit of what it has done and is doing for society.

He has made an interesting argument to me that I find hard to refute.

"M"s argument goes about like this:

There have been only a few true scientific breakthroughs since WWII that truly have been impactful on our lives.  I include true new technology, not improvements on existing technology.

My candidates include:

• Transistor
• Integrated circuit (although this could be argued as an improvement on the transistor)
• Laser
• Some medicines, particularly the pill
• Human (and others) genome work

I can’t think of any others.  There certainly have been improvements on existing technology galore, but little new science that has made a difference.

Pretty good stimulus for thought and discussion, isn’t it?

"M"

Ps.  Things like nuclear energy, rockets, radio, television, telephones, vaccines, antibiotics, surgery, airplanes, cars, central heat, fresh water, sewage treatment, computers, etc. all were invented/developed prior or during WWII.

Now admittedly, he does narrow the playing field with the constraint of "new" and "impactful". The way I would argue against his point of view would be with a two pronged approach

1. Find the precursors to the inventions he already listed.
2. Argue the in the new world, the chief benefit comes from extending technology and not creating new out of whole cloth.

Assignment For the reader

But If we go from his starting point I have a question for the audience, an assignment.

Excluding the list above, what new inventions have had an impact on society? Since WW2? Since 1960? Since 1995?

Make it new and make it impactful. I'll be doing a follow up post or two on this subject because it is fascinating. What if there has been no new invetions? Does it matter? Do we still need them? Does the law of accellerating returns require new inventions? Are new scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs still looking for anything truly "new"?

I figure I should I stop my man-love fest for Mark Cuban on my blog for a moment to take a slightly different view of viral marketing from Greg's utopia below.

Viral marketing isn't free and it sure ain't easy.  Yes it can be cheap but creating viral content takes time and money.  A professionally produced outsourced video with a small production shop would cost anywhere from $5k to $50k.  That's a pretty substantial sum of money in marketing plan for anything but a mega-corporation (and having owned my fair share of marketing budgets I can assure you $50k is a chunk o' change).  Let's say it was $50k for blendtec and as a result of the publicity they sold 5,000 units above trend - then the marketing cost per unit would be $10.  That's not exactly spectacular.  Of course, if they sold 50,000 more units $1/unit isn't look so bad.

The challenge with "viral" content is that it is very difficult to predict and given the upfront costs hard to gauge its appropriateness.  Sure if it's a huge hit on youtube and gets 1 million views - that sounds like a great deal for a few thousand dollars.  But what if it was viewed 100 times?  Yikes.  For that $5k, at $0.50 cpm you could have run a banner campaign that hit 10,000,000 users guaranteed.  Food for thought.

Viral content is great, it's just hard to build a business around.  Use it sparingly and treat it as a total flier - ie. treat the effort (resources, dollars, staffing time, etc.) as if you are playing with house money.  And as hollywood folks will be sure to tell - hits are perhaps the most unpredictable thing you can imagine.  No one gets fired for hits, but hollywood is littered with the carcases from flops.

A typewriter keyboard mod?  How many of you kiddies know what a typewriter is?  I guess with this mod you wouldn't have to worry about the key arms getting tangled.

Some guy named Jake creates really neat things that are inspired by the concept of steampunk. Allright with me, keep at it Jake, this is pretty flippin' cool.

Anyways head over to the steampunk workshop and check it out.  It was certainly a labor of love.

I wonder what it's like to type on it?

Found this link over at: the programmable web. It's a pretty cool demo around using the Wii as a presentation and preso/collaboration tool.

Check it out over here: Wii Goes Enterprise

Being the enterprise geeks that we are, it wasn't too long before we asked ourselves if this same kind of technology would ever be applicable in the business world. After some research and hacking by Mark, he actually found all the necessary components to get the Wiimote to simulate a PC mouse. Yep, that's right, there are the tools available to cheaply turn your Wii remote into an interactive interface for controlling the PC.

This is just a neat user interface thing put together by a couple of geeks...which is awesome. But what I think is very interesting is the off the cuff comment at the end where Edward Herrmann makes the comment about the potential of two or more poeple using two or more Wii remotes to cooperate on the document in real time up on the big screen.

Very intriguing

Jeff Han blew people's minds last year at the TED conference with this presentation on multi-touch computing. He showed us what could be accomplished when interfaces just get out of the way and we get to manipulate our data with our own hands, rather than through crufty intermediary devices.

So, while the Han video is insanely cool, I was trying to come up with an idea of how this technology could help me in my day to day work environment. I don't use maps. I don't need an interactive lava lamp or to manage mountains of photos all day. I sit in a cubicle in front of three separate computer monitors (2 for my laptop - the onboard and a separate one, and one for my desktop development box). My work revolves greatly around email, Microsoft office products (blech), and some organizational webapps that I use to remember and manage what's important. In general, I think I have pretty good systems for what goes where, especially on my computer and network drives.

As I looked at the mess that was my desk, however, an idea finally began to emerge. I could use the new interface to completely replace my entire desk! Now that a sizeable screen has the ability to access any amount of virtual space and I have the ability to navigate that space with simple gestures there is no need to keep mountains of paper (half of them with huge "confidential" reminders printed all over them) stacked out in plain view or in little file folders.

It also opens up the possibility that I can use smaller interfaces to access my virtual workspace remotely. As long as an input device is large enough to gesture and the scaling technologies allow us to navigate at any scale, there's no reason I can't use an iPhone or an ereader during a meeting to access files on the network, distribute them to others in the room, and generally replace all the paper cruft which would normally be going on. No more printing PowerPoint decks, OK?

What I'm really talking about is the merging of multi-touch computing with something like the 3D BumpTop Desktop below:

Maybe the combinations of these new interfaces spell the death of my messy real-world desktop and the birth of my messy virtual desktop? Dare to dream.

This was a very good event.  Dare I say awesome. 

Web 2.0 Bootcamp.

The speaker is Dion P. Hinchcliffe who writes for ZDNet : Enterprise Web 2.0 search

I went with my company's VP of engineering and we came out of this energized to build new things and make changes to process and goals.  We feel vindicated that we are doing some of the things brought up by Dion already, but we also felt a bit nervous that some of the key elements are missing from our company's web presence.

I won't go into details because I believe wholeheartedly that the information imparted to us by Dion holds significant industry advantage and our company paid for it.  I will recomend that you take this course.  It is quite enlightening.

Two things emerged from this speech that I can tell you. 

1. The internet is going through a complete paradigm shift (hackneyed phrase though it is).  If you don't get in front of it now, TODAY, you will be out of the money by the end of 2008 if not sooner.
2. If your product is mediocre, you will be crushed.

Besides that you're gonna have to go listen to Dion Speak.

I hope you have found this stupendous product. It proves two things at once. One, that not everything under the sun has been invented and two that we have a cleanliness obsession in this country.

Clorox came out with a great product: [linky].

But I had one gripe with it...when you pulled out a wipe oftentimes the wipe would tear the way it was supposed to but it would leave the next wipe inside the container. This entailed one of two solutions, you had to reach throught the little tear hole and try and pull out the next wipe or you had to open the whole conainer and restring it through from the bottom.

That sucked. It hurt to stick your finger through the little tear hole. It seemed the easier solution but it wasn't.

Now Clorox being a good company listened to its customers and/or did some extensive product testing realized that this was a "bug" in their product that should be addressed. And they did.

The tear hole now has a little hinge opening. It's the neatest little thing and completely removes the pain-in-the-ass-ness of their previous version of the product.

1. Dangit! The next wipe is inside the container.

2. No problem I'll just reach inside that little hinge thingy and pull it out.

3. Easy as pie.

Great example of a company introducing a product and then improving the design after release to eliminate existing issues.

Huzzah! Clorox. (I just wanted to say Huzzah!)