Hot… or not?
OnePage wants to make business cards a thing of the past. Hmmm… heard that one before! Looks OK but not sure it’ll make everyone throw their business cards away. Prove me wrong, but it’s a ‘not’ from me.
Software might know if you’re depressed – researchers used Bing to analyse word patterns to identify depression. Think it’s a good idea but wouldn’t want to be in the 22% that were wrongly diagnosed, particularly by my boss. Another ‘not’ I’m afraid…
Microsoft’s Home of the Future: A Visual Tour – technology that gives me recipes on my kitchen work surface depending on ingredients, charges my phone automatically and gives me interactive walls in my bedroom? Hmmmmn let me see… hot! No brainer.
Working Toward a Smarter, Faster Cloud – different types of cloud applications have different needs, so computer science researcher Vytautas Valancius has developed Transit Protocol, a system that lets cloud users choose that path their data takes through cloud computing platforms. Definitely ‘hot’ I reckon.
Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr Robot Would you be happy with a robot teaching your child? Depends on how good/bad the human teacher is, but regardless, I don’t think this one will catch on – not.
England Wins World Cup! (well, the Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup actually)
Want to join in the World Cup action but can’t afford the ticket (or time) to get to South Africa? Why not host your own Mobile Keepy Uppy World Cup!
You play exactly like ‘real life’ keepy uppy, using the phone’s accelerometer to work out the trajectory of the ball. Once you’ve downloaded the game, just click ‘start’ and keep the ball in the air for as long as you can!
Requirements are:
- Windows Mobile 6.x Professional (Touch screen)
- G-sensor (Accelerometer)
- Display VGA (480×640), WVGA (480×800
Download here and start playing. But remember – don’t drop the ball phone!
Big Brother Deep Zoom Commemorates Final Series
Love it or hate it, you’ve had to have lived abroad or in a cave for the past 10 years to have missed Channel 4’s reality TV programme Big Brother. To help give the final series the send off it deserves, Shoothill have created a Silverlight Deep Zoom of past Big Brother housemates – zoom into the logo and find your favourite (or most hated!) character. Go on, you might not like Big Brother but if nothing else it’s a bit of mid-week fun to momentarily distract you from client demands 
Hot… or not?
Is This the Cheapest, Most Wacky-Looking Gestural Interface in the World? Borrow your Mum’s rubber gloves, customise them a bit and switch on your web cam. All set! Definitely hot.
You snore. So what – doesn’t bother you, right? But if your significant other is on your case, you could call their bluff and use the app that proves your partner snores to prove it was their issue all long. Or not. Not so sure this is good for anyone other than the non-snorer… so a ‘not’ from me.
New iConji language for the symbol-minded. OK, so maybe texting has a language of its own (LOL), but can I be bothered to learn a brand new text specific language that’s like Egyptian hieroglyphics – just to ask if someone fancies a pint watching the footie? Frickin’ noooooo.
On the internet in a trice – Mark Shuttleworth, the first African in space and the entrepreneurial force behind Ubuntu, has a new mission in life: to give Windows users a chance to be surfing the web within ten seconds of turning on their computers – using Ubuntu of course, for the lightweight stuff and Windows for the heavy duty tasks. However it’s for OEM’s only, so gets thumbs down from me.
Brazilian Rainforest Study Could Yield New Model for Environmental Research – data collected from deploying sensor networks into the rainforest will help researchers visualize how the rainforest connects with the earth’s atmosphere, which is important for our understanding of climate change. Big ol’ ‘hot’ for this one, methinks… bit like today’s weather, yeehah!
Hot… or not?
Don’t speak the lingo? Never mind – Microsoft’s Communicator will translate for you. It might make for some amusing misunderstandings until it improves but it’s a leap in the right direction. Editors verdict: Hot
Microsoft makes cool stills from lousy video – as someone who has spent hours trying to get a decent shot from video (lousy or not), this could be interesting. Editor’s verdict: Hot
The (En)tangled Word Bank tracks the development and changes made to Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species and makes it visual. Editors verdict: Hot
Video: Microsoft Attempts to Predict the Future – data has a life of its own, predicting behaviour from purchases to how often you get up from your desk at work. Spooky… Editors verdict: Not (shades of Big Brother)
Light without logic – will all optical computers ever become a reality? Editor’s verdict: Not
Who needs real politicians when you can have finger puppets…?
Want a cute reminder of the 2010 election? Or quite like the idea of degrading key political figures? Either way, you’ll like these limited edition UK politician finger puppets. If you want to be in with the chance of winning one, Wired holds the key. Personally, if I don’t see another politician for the rest of the year I’ll be happy. And I’m not telling you which is my favourite puppet…
HTML5 New Tags, Old Tags, Shake it all about Tags
Interesting post on the Template Monster blog about the proposed new HTML5 tags, even reminiscing about some of the tags we have to say goodbye to.
The closing paragraph sums up neatly;
“Again – what we’re trying to say is that, as cool as HTML5 looks and feels, it takes a lot of efforts and a little bit of witchcraft to forecast what the web is going to be all about within the next 5 years or so. Today these new tags and semantics approach really do look awesome and we totally love it, let’s just not forget that things have changed in order for us to be able to take advantage of them, the new features have to be used by us, the huge web community – that’s the only way for something that’s simply new to become new and useful.”
So true of many things beyond HTML5. It’s tough to see the future but at least participating gives you an element of control.
[Image courtesy of tantek]
An “AppStore” for All Platforms? “Yes Please” says Government
A lot of buzz has been generated by Google’s annoucement of a Google Apps Marketplace. Like app-stores before it, third-party developers can use it to sell and distribute value-added software that enhances existing platform functionality, in this case to Google Apps. Although it may seem like Google is taking a play from Apple’s book, their model more closely represent another major cloud vendor which many of you may have heard of, Saleforce.
Salesforce has used their “AppExchange” since 2005 to provide unique customer solutions via their platform. This trend is here to stay with most major players, Apple, Microsoft, Google designing or implementing their own models.
If you go down one level away from the tier-1 platform vendors, companies like Intuit are extending popular applications like QuickBooks to a potential army of developers who would love to monetize on the financial platform. Intuit actually leverages Windows Azure to expose their cloud store.
The point being is that if you hate the cloud, too bad. It is easy to infer that any major application with a large enough user base can benefit from the ingenuity of third-party developers. Even before the cloud, Microsoft Office has proven itself as a magnet for great plug-ins and enhancements via OBA. It is only a matter of time until these experiences are delivered seamlessly online with zero-installation requirements in the traditional sense. If you still don’t believe me, here’s a shocker, the US Government has an app store, they even want to start regulating it! It is a true test of success for any idea that the government wants to regulate.
Components of the real-time web
The always thought-provoking Dare Obasanjo explains the components behind the “real-time web” or specifically, how do you move from traditional polling to near real-time notifications with techniques like hidden iframes and long polling? Or how can syndication technologies like RSS be enhanced to incorporate near real-time capabilities? And if you want to drink from the Twitter firehose, what does it look like? All is explained in Dare’s excellent post:
Understanding the Real-Time Web for Web Developers
Dare will also be tackling the topic at MIX10 with a little help from industry experts from Facebook, Google, Echo, Microsoft and Twitter. Session abstract below:
MIX 10: Building Platforms and Applications for the Real-Time Web
“From news feeds to search, the Web has become all about real-time access to news and other information as it happens. This panel will discuss what it takes to build the platforms and user experiences that power some of the most notable services on the real-time web. Come hear a lively discussion about the real-time web with moderator Dare Obasanjo (Microsoft) and panelists Ari Steinberg (Facebook), Brett Slatkin (Google), Chris Saad (JS-Kit Echo), Lili Cheng (Microsoft) and Ryan Sarver (Twitter).”
Hot… or not?
Posted by sara on August 24, 2010 · View Comments
3D might be the next big thing in film, but is gaming a step too far? Gaming giants bet on 3D for next big boost – my bet is on 3D gaming reaching its peak in 5 years when we may have got around the need for glasses… ‘not’ (yet)
New Standard Hopes to Unify Your Address Book – in a post by Steve Plank we describe being able to manage all your social media accounts in one place – Messenger. The WC3 has recently published a draft of the contacts API to provide a unified address book of contacts, offering a way of standardising the way contacts are managed so individuals have more control over what applications use your data. Hmmm…. I’m too old not to care about privacy, so it’s definitely ‘hot’ IMHO!
Got a brilliant start-up idea but don’t know what to call it? .Dot.Com.Roulette does. Is this the start of a new naming convention? Might rely on roulette to name my pets! ‘Hot’.
Filed under Comment · Tagged with 3d, gaming, standards, star wars, usb, wc3