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Wearable Minority Report Computer!

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We’re getting closer and closer to the futuristic spatial computing seen in the movie Minority Report. Last year, somebody did it with clunky mittens and a roomful of huge monitors. This year, PhD student Pranav Mistry has miniaturized it all into a pendant. Yes, that’s right: it’s wearable spatial computing — or, as Mistry likes to call it, a wearable gestural interface.

Mistry’s technology, which he calls SixthSense, is built on an incredibly simple hardware combination: a projector and a camera. He even plans to open-source the software behind it. The best part: Mistry says the whole system costs only $300.

Originally posted on November 21, 2009 @ 4:04 pm

Bing Bribes Newspapers to Delist Themselves from Google

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For a supposed technology company, Microsoft sure fails to compete technologically when it comes to search. Instead of actually building a better search engine, they’re bribing newspapers in a feeble attempt to hurt a rival search engine. [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 23, 2009 @ 7:23 am

The Genius of Droid’s Geeky Marketing

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For weeks, I’ve been hearing Apple fanboys pan Verizon’s Motorola Droid ads as too geeky and unappealing for the mass market. I’ve been hearing fanboys claim that nongeeks can’t understand “open development”, that they’d be scared off by images of stealth bombers. Then I read an essay by Paul Graham about the abuses of the iPhone app store, and I suddenly realize the genius of Verizon’s nongeek-alienating marketing strategy. [Read more…]

Originally posted on November 20, 2009 @ 10:33 am

AMD Phenom II Overclocked to 7 GHz

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If want to create/consume rich new media at the blazingly fast pace of today’s Internet, you need tools that can keep up. Here’s one of those tools. Breaking world processor speed records, the AMD Phenom II has been successfully overclocked to an astonishing 7.08 gigahertz.

That’s a lot of liquid helium.

Originally posted on November 22, 2009 @ 10:41 pm

Google Chrome OS Demo

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Google’s recent demo of Chrome OS answered several important questions about how a browser-only OS would operate. One of those questions is how it would handle removable storage. As you can see when the demo unit is attached to a digital camera, using a Web browser as a file browser works pretty well. That should come as no surprise, since Windows has integrated Internet Explorer with its own file manager for the last twelve years.

While it’s fun to see a Microsoft Web app opening a file in Chrome OS, it’s rather telling that the demo game is Flash chess. This demo apparently came a bit too early for the launch of hardcore cloud gaming service OnLive. Let’s hope Web apps and games mature into far more impressive fodder for Chrome OS once it’s released next year.

Originally posted on November 20, 2009 @ 9:46 am