"emerging tech" entries
Botanicalls Twitter DIY
Botanicalls, the project that lets your plants let you know when they need water (Radar post), has expanded beyond their Asterisk-based voice system. Now you can learn how your plants are doing with a DIY kit that lets them Twitter you. The system uses Arduino, the open-source board featured in Making Things Talk. The instructions they've included are very…
DIY Multitouch with the Wiimote
If you will be missing Jeff Hahn's presentation at Etech next week, you can still make your own multitouch display thanks to Johnny Chung Lee and the Wiimote. Johnny has a number of sensor hacks on his blog, and just announced that EA Games has incorporated his Wii head tracking hack into an upcoming release….
Ignite ETech Talks
On the first evening of ETech we are going to have an Ignite immediately following Tim's annual keynote. The five-minute, 20 slide talks will range from personal passions to new APIs to sweet design. The talks will end with a short-story. If you are going to be at ETech you'll be treated to the following talks: Jimmy Guterman -…
Multitouch and Minority Report
I'm amazed at how quickly multitouch has spread into the mainsream. In 2006, Jeff Han demoed multitouch at ETech and we all thought "wow! Minority Report come true!". Just two years later, his company was powering multitouch analysis of Super Tuesday and companies like Microsoft and Apple have consumer multitouch products. PlayMotion and GestureTek have gestural interfaces companies can buy…
Gaming Platforms: Zune, Wii, Nokia, Xbox Live, DS Lite
Yesterday the XNA team announced that anyone — not just large, high-paying game publishers – could produce games for the XBox 360 platform, Windows, and the Zune. Of course you've always been able to produce games for Windows, but this move opens two previously closed platforms: Zune (which didn't have apps before) and the XBox 360. What does this…
The Dangers of Predicting the Future
The instant-analysis business is a tricky one. None of us have working crystal balls; any attempt to predict the future, even the five-minutes-from-now future, is risky. For example, on January 31, mere hours before Microsoft made its unsolicted $44 billion-plus offer for Yahoo, Forrester Research, my alma matter, posted a research note with the following headline and deck: Microsoft Will…
BugLabs: OS Hardware For Location Apps
BugLabs is an NYC startup that will soon be releasing OS hardware modules (or Bugs). These modules can be combined in almost anyway to create a device to fit the user's needs. The Bug's APIs and specifications are all open, allowing anyone to create peripherals or software for them — no licensing necessary. I met with Peter Semmelhack last…
Generate KML With Google Spreadsheets
As people geotag more information they need more advanced ways to share it. The way that offers the most control, flexibility and portability is KML, but KML is not easy to work with. (It should be noted that GeoRSS, the other popular geodata format, is an equally portable format, but it is designed to be simple and does not…
CK-12: Remix and Share Your Own Text Books as FlexBooks
CK-12 wants to bring open data to school textbooks under the name of FlexBooks. Through the tools on their site they'll let schools, teachers, parents and students can pull articles from different sources . The books will be available to others via the site. The demo that they showed this morning at TOC really wowed the publisher-heavy audience. The…
Ignite Seattle 5 Talks: Go, Patents, InfoViz
Ignite Seattle is less than a week away and there are a bunch of great speakers on deck. Each speaker is going to present their talk in 20 slides with each slide getting 15 seconds on the screen before automatically advancing. I have a couple of spots left so if you were thinking of submitting you should by the end…