Combine LED Contact Lenses, with a way to power them using only body heat, and we have another way to hack the senses, by enhancing something already there. This dovetails with my earlier thoughts on hacking the senses. I’m still leery of getting Lasik surgery, but I want better living through technology. Better living through chemistry wouldn’t be bad either, but I’m sure it puts me on some government watch list just to use that phrase.
What about a PETA group killing 97% of the animals it took in? I’m not saying it’s good or bad, just ironic.
This article intrigued me. I think displaying pictures linked through a map of where they are taken is a cool presentation idea. It also would allow hacks like clicking a picture to bring up the relevant area in Google Maps. Apparently, a lot of the popular photo sites already have some support for this. I think the bigger use in my case might be to click on someone else’s pictures to see the surrounding location. It could also be used for cheap parlor tricks that are somewhat useful. Consider a hotel chain taking pictures of all it’s properties with geotags on the photos. Clicking on a photo adds the hotel property as the destination on Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, or some other route planner. Clicking on your own avatar that has tags for your home location plugs it in as the starting point of the trip. Perhaps planning a trip could be made by going through a list of interesting photos in a particular area. Clicking on individual photos adds them as waypoints on the trip. Hit print, and your driving directions are ready to go. Aside from “Click to Drive”, I’m not sure what popular uses this will be put to, but if this type of metadata takes hold, I am assuming that people will come up with some really innovative ideas. What would you use geotagging for?
Jawbone had an announcement at CES 2008 telling you to trade in your old bluetooth headset for one of theirs at the booth. This got me to thinking about what the next step is. I think active noise canceling will become more common. What would be even cooler I think is a cochlear implant. This would be functionally equivalent to an audio jack direct to your ear. I think the jawbone name comes partially from the idea of sub-vocalization microphones. Use the mike pickup from the implant, assuming it is still external or could be made so, and you have all the input/output you need for conversation. I could envision hooking this to a bluetooth transceiver for phone calls, but what would be far more interesting is a digital assistant interface. You could have access to a constant stream of information without those around you being aware of it. Consider a small computer hooked up to this as well as an unobtrusive video camera. Add a little face recognition and you could be prompted with the name of the person (or object) you are currently looking at. Perhaps, you could turn up the information level to get additional details. Cochlear implants are relatively new (only about 50 years old), but have advanced rapidly.
I like the idea of “enhancements” to my senses as well. A recent article describes other things that could be added. Most of these would only get more sophisticated and smaller/less noticeable as time goes on. I was very intrigued with having a magnetic sense. I’m curious what other hacks to our senses science can come up with.
It appears that Vista has support for a new filesystem geared for removable media. It appears that you may be able to use this driver on XP as well. Even more fun, ExFAT supports OEM extensions and transactions. My understanding is that transactional support allows for increased assurance of your filesystem not becoming corrupt without the level of extra writing needed by a journaled filesystem. I could be off base, and maybe TFAT doesn’t add journaling. In addition, TFAT is supposed to help protect against corruption when media is unexpectedly removed from the system without “ejecting” it. The latter was a concern relayed to me about not using NTFS on removable media. As with all things Microsoft, I assume that they will present this as an “open” standard, then fight tooth and nail to prevent anybody else from implementing it without their express permission or receiving of royalties. Nonetheless, it sounds like a good improvement, and if it starts with MS, it helps eliminate the issue of getting drivers for this on Windows. An overview of exFAT is here.
I bought one of those clunky IR keyboard + mouse combos almost a decade ago to control my computer from my couch. I have had a PC hooked up to the TV and wanted pretty much full capabilities without being tethered. The keyboard I had burned through AA batteries and still wasn’t quite right. The IR box hooked up as a serial connection, and if I moved around the house, I had to still keep line of sight with it to do anything. The diNovo Mini seems to solve at least the line of sight issue. It also is a much more elegant keyboard. My Mac mini instantly recognizes it as a keyboard and allows me to have it hooked up at the same time as a full-size keyboard at my computer desk. It is still a bit pricey, but in line with fancy Harmony or Pronto remotes, which is what it replaces for me. I run everything through my Mac and the keyboard allows me to type in websites as opposed to using a pickboard. This along with Youtube, Veoh, and Hula makes the difference that sets this peripheral apart for using your computer with a nice sized screen.
I read this article today about having a positive attitude. I have been talking with people a lot lately about good attitudes, and I think many people don’t believe that attitude helps. I’ve also gone through a period of depression and understand that sometimes you don’t want to feel better, but overall a good attitude is a good thing.
The LA Times has an interesting article on car financing. It seems like CDO’s part two, but obviously has been going on long enough that it preceded what we have learned about ARM loans, namely don’t give someone a loan that they can’t afford. What I will be curious to see is if the securities industry and the financial offices tied to the auto makers do the same deny, deny, throw themselves at the mercy of the government dance that went on/is going on in the housing market. In any event, this seems likely that it will suck for all of those in underwater loans, and probably the tax payers. Even if it sucks for the banks, it won’t be in proportion to their share of the responsibility.