Technology

Augmented Reality

House Windows

This is the one of the coolest implementations of tracking technology and video orientation I've ever seen. The project was named Winscape and represents two high definition video monitors configured to look like actual windows in a home, these monitors represent a dynamic scene and change perspective based on a tracking tag that would is worn. The picture on the left shows the actual configuration, between the windows on the bookshelf is the tracking device used to decipher viewer orientation.

The company that built this is Rational Craft and planning to release a hardware/software kit for somewhere between $2,500 and $3,000. I have no idea what that includes because the setup is controlled via an iPhone app and the sensor tag is a Wii remote. I guess the price includes the TVs and the sensing itself, not sure.

Past and Future

Technology

Two videos are included here, the first represents the last hundred years of technology and the second shows the next 100 years. I love these types of videos, always eye opening with lots of surprises. Both videos reflect major advances in electronics and communications with the future 100 years representing advances in nanotechology and genetics. As Kurzweil describes the future and the singularity in the second video, it is clear that he believes humans will ultimately merge with technology and form cyborgs. Ray doesn't actually come out and say cyborgs but that is what he's talking about.

Last 100 Years of Technology

As I was digging through a number of sites I came across this video from PredictionTV. It goes backwards through 100 years of technology predicitions, well done with no voice over just video and music. As I watched this video I realized how silly the questions were during the infancy of various technological advancements, at least in hindsight.

IMAGES of the CLOUD

ENTERPRISE 2.0

Over the past several months I've accumulated some great images and graphics that try to describe the different conditions of the web. The primary focus of these images spans everything from the enterprise to government and healthcare, they include detail diagrams as well as  summaries, in all cases they are aesthetically pleasing. This post focuses exclusively on the Enterprise with followups planned for other areas of Internet consumption.

Most of these are from Dion Hinchcliffe over at ZDnet, I told him what I was planning to do and he was fine as long as I acknowledge it as his work. There are diagrams from other authors as well, many are bloggers but some are from the big corporations like MrSofty and Google.

The images contained here have been used and resued all over the internet in blogs, slideshows and videos. To the extent I could, each image or graphic will link back to the original post where it was presented. In most cases the images are straight forward and easy to understand, typically the content is high-level and doesn't require too much thinking.

The diagram on the right is a simple graphic that ties together the various players in the cloud, each color represents a different group:

MICROSOFT:

Vision of the Future

The following video link represents a video that was released some time ago by MrSofty. The video centers around the future and how it will be dominated by touch screens and augmented reality. It clearly has a big push for their surface computing initiative but also includes many of the benefits of the Internet of things. The original video at this link is very well done by MrSofty and actually paints a reasonable picture of the future, many of the technologies shown are already in production or in prototype stage. The video attached is the parody from Sarcastic Gamer, absolutely hilarious! I dug this up while researching augmented realtiy, which is the next article in the Internet of Things series. Enjoy the video.

Way Cool Maps

Science,  Internet and Complexity 

Maps have a come a long way, in some cases they've become artistic representations of massive amounts of information. There are literally thousands of mind maps strewn all across the Internet, most of them are good but some are flat out nonsensical. There are at least a few really good sites that are exploring how maps can be expanded and extended to handle the volumes of disparate information in the cloud, consider it mashup maps.

Dealing with the volumes of data isn't the only issue, a challenge exists to make it easily understandable in a graphic form. It used to be that you might get a few data points for a given element on a traditional map, today's maps can represent dozens of connections, relationships as well as position. These maps are beautiful, asthetically pleasing and visually exciting items that could arguably be called art, at least in my opinion.

Cool Maps of Science

I've been collecting these over a period of months now, I posted one here a few weeks ago and it remains in the top twenty. The maps that follow are related to science and represent the correlations between the branches from one perspective or another. Clicking on the image will take you to the source, and a larger version.

CIRCLE OF LIFE

The Big Four:

Legal Matters, Financial Metrics and Acquisition Strategy

In this post I'll be summarizing the three areas mentioned above, all of which are critical in the ongoing positioning and growth strategy for each company. The approach to addressing these issues is quite a bit different among them as each one tries to determine what is most important in their overall strategy, their decisions are reflected in this post.

Legal Matters

Remember the good ole days of simple games like Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots? As the picture to the right implies, most of the big technology companies are facing various lawsuits everyday, among them are antitrust, patent infringement and a host of others. Everyone is aware of Microsoft's battles on every continent and Google's recent fight with China where they decided to cease operations. Apple is currently engaged in a lawsuit against HTC (Google really) over patent infringement while IBM is finally going to trial with Novell and SCO six years after the Unix lawsuit.

 The Big Four:

Markets and Positioning

I decided to develop a post that describes what I would call the four monsters of technology: Microsoft, IBM, Apple and Google. This isn't meant to be a detailed review of their financials or products but more of a perspective on how they are impacting our world and what their potential futures might be. Obviously, this is speculation but it is based on almost thirty years of being heavily involved in technology and intimately involved with each of these companies at one time or another during that period.

Overview

As most of us know, the companies described in this post are the behemoths in the world of technology with each playing a pivotal role in its development over the past few decades. They represent an varying mix of cultures, values and history that has driven not just American culture but reshaped the entire world, that's pretty significant stuff.

 Everything Casts an

Information Shadow

I couldn't find an official reference to the term Information Shadow so i'll give credit to Mike Kuniavsky, a founder of both Adaptive Path and ThingM. I first read the term Information Shadow when doing the research for the Internet of Things articles a couple of weeks ago. I am very familiar with Mike's work on the BlinkM MaxM device, a very cool implementation of smart, network (I2C) controlled LEDs. I've purchased several BlinkMs for some of the work I was doing with the iTV and StrataLighting projects, part of that work has morphed into a software development effort I'll be outlining in another post.

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Full Size LeaderBoard Diagram

LeaderBoard Data Relationships

Leaderboard.com

The Idea

Similar to the myGroupWatch idea I posted previously this is a back of the napkin idea that I never pursued. This idea was created to help describe another, more complicated concept that involved centralized and normalized content collection and rendering.

This idea is relatively simple, it is to provide an infrastructure to game developers that can be used for centralized Leaderboard management and control. I originally thought only of video game developers but the concept could easily be extended to include a website which would allow sports leagues and various other competitive organizations to leverage the centralized capability albeit manually.

There would be two primary methods of access: a Web service (API) and a Website. The web service would be targeted for use by game developers while the website would be used by more conventional sports and gaming organizations. Think about the work that a game developer puts into the scoreboard and LeaderBoard functions - designing, testing the software as well as providing a back-end service to manage the scores and players on an ongoing basis. Seems like a waste of time even though I realize these features are important, especially in the context of online gaming.