Real Virtual Reality! (Demo 2004
Real Virtual Reality! (Demo 2004 Series - 6) I am not clear as to whether Total Immersion is a product, company, research product or what. But they had the most compelling and memorable technology demonstration. It was an amazing virtual reality experience of what they called “augmented reality. "
Basically what we saw was a video and audio display in real time. The camera started on the presenter as he was talking. In his hand was a long stemmed rose. Except in real life, he was holding his left hand in a fist, and the flower was added virtually. Every move, translation, rotation etc of his fist was perfectly matched with the movement of the rose creating a perfect illusion. And there was a lot more. The demo ended with a virtual helicopter flying over the heads of the audience. Very impressive!
Of course one is always more impressed with technologies which appear to be ' magic' to the viewer. In this case, I know very little about VR and I am blown away. I can't say if one ' versed in the art' would have thought the same or been bored.
Amazing little rover “calculates its
Amazing little rover "calculates its own location in the universe…..on Mars": I just can't get enough of this amazing bit of engineering called the Mars Rover. Get this:
Opportunity also updated its "attitude knowledge," which fine-tunes the rover's information about its exact location and position on Mars….To adjust the attitude knowledge, engineers have the rover turn the panoramic camera to the Sun and watch the Sun travel across the sky for 15 minutes. The rover is then smart enough to take the Sun movement data collected from the panoramic camera to calculate its own location in the universe…..on Mars.
This is such an amazing little machine. That's not even getting into the astronomy, orbitall mechanics, geology, physics, and who knows what other basic science that determines the core algorithms. Hats off to the team who built it.
Key Computing’s Xkey: (Demo 2004
Key Computing 's Xkey:(Demo 2004 Series - 3) By my informal survey, this was the favorite at demo. XKey is a tiny USB port device (kind of like one of those little USB flash devices) which, by plugging into a laptop, transforms the host computer into a private, isolated, separate computer, connected by VPN to the corporate network.
It's hard to explain in a few words, but basically you plug it into the USB port while your computer is connected to your corporate LAN. Magically files, folders, exchange and outlook data, are all copied onto the device. When you take it and plug it into another ('host') computer, you get access to all your work, plus your Exchange/Outlook information. All the information is secured inside a 'sandbox' and you are protected from and prohibited from letting any of it leak onto the 'host' computer. As I said, hard to explain. Look at their web site for more details.
The really clever thing here is to take a bit of raw technology (a portable, USB storage device) to something that solves a real, believable, pain point. Their product is clearly targeted at businesses who want to allow employees to securely use their corporate assets away from the office.
Among Demo attendees this one was often cited as the most interesting product demoed. And credit to Chris Shipley, she must have seen that, because it was also the very first product to be demoed.
BlogBridge Installation and Deployment
Working on installation and deployment features. We will be using Java Web Start for this. We have not yet decided how open to make this yet. Most likely initially it will be via 'secret URL'. You have to ask to get it.
Demo 2004 Series – I
Demo 2004 Series - I just returned from the Demo 2004 Conference, and I have some news and ideas that I will be writing about in the coming days. At the highest level, Demo is a conference that I've been going to for years. It is in the same league or family as PC Forum and Agenda. You might call it one of the legacy conferences (… to contrast it with the new cool conferences such as the Emerging Technology Forum and BloggerCon.)
If you are interested in what new products are coming out of the mainstream computer industry, Demo is great. Chris Shipley who is the MC/Executive Producer, selects about 60 products from all corners of the industry representing the latest greatest. The selection criteria, as I understand them, require the products to be new (using a semi-flexible definition of "new") So it could be a brand new product from a brand new company, or a revolutionary new twist or generation of an existing product. But these are all hard-core-we-intend-to-make-a-lot-of-money kinds of deals, vs. the 'other kind' of product.
Products that are especially interesting (to Chris) are put onto a break- neck, 7 minute per demo, one and a half day schedule of stage presentations. They are organized, more or less, by themes with Chris herself providing commentary and context setting as the conference progresses. It's an excellent format and a great way to see a lot and quickly.
In addition to the stage demos, there are 'booths' where you can actually see and touch the product, and importantly, speak to the actual people who invented or built the product, and actually get in depth with them about the products that really intrigue you.
Anyway, I took notes during the meetings and I thought, since I had already done the writing for my own benefit, I'd share them here for yours.
Search Innovations (Demo 2004 Series
Search Innovations (Demo 2004 Series - 2) - Two interesting Seach products were showcased: Grokker 2 from Groxis and p-Zoom from Big On The Net. They were both variations of a similar idea, with very different visual interfaces.
The core idea is to take the results of a search engine of some kind, and cluster and organize them to make them more understandable. Not a new idea, and in fact, there have been several products who have done this, none of which I can remember right off. Both Grokker and p-Zoom seem to work but in my view they don 't do enough in an effective enough way to be worth recommending.
In fact let me again my all-time favorite search utility, X-1 from IdeaLab. Now that's a beautifully executed , and supremely useful search utility. It focuses more on searching of what's in my own world (files, emails, etc.) which Groxis does but p-Zoom does not. I recommend it highly.
Two more editorial comments.
Grokker has a visually very pretty user interface employing a graphical device which we started calling the "circles-inside-other- circles " UI which I believe they invented. The interesting thing is that there were two other totally different products which seemed to have copied the idea and were using a very similar visual device.
Secondly, the notion of searching what 's in my personal space - files, emails, contacts, appointments, etc. (which both X1 and Grokker do) is an amazingly useful capability which certainly belongs in the operating system. And Microsoft has on several occasions incorporated this into Windows. In fact it seems like there's some elaborate technology for search built into Windows XP. But for some reason it's one of those things (like Collaboration) which Microsoft just never gets right. I wonder why.
New BlogBridge Web Site and other changes
Happy Valentines Day. As you can see, there is a new web site design. This one was created by a designer in China. I just thought I wanted something a little more professional. As for the software, there are several new developments. We are diving into the questions of unread handling. This is leading to new designs in several areas: there is now a BlogBridge Preferences dialog. Included here will be settings allowing Articles to be automatically set to unread under certain conditions. Also there will be some changes required in the low level persistence handling to track unread.
What’s funny about Office 2003?
What
's funny about Office 2003? Look at the extremely cool Office 2003 Tool to
the right. Well, no I don't really know all that it does, but note the example
under the "Search For:" Who said Microsoft couldn 't laugh at itself?
Pecking order? Puleeze! Joi Ito
Pecking order? Puleeze!Joi Ito writes with apparent confusion about the a comment from Russel Beattie who commented that: "but boy it seemed like there were some serious pecking orders there." (via Jeremy Zawodny.) While Russel's comment is about ETech, a conference I am really sorry I had to miss, it certainly doesn 't surprise me, as it shouldn't surprise Joi or others.
In fact I am always amused and bemused (what's the difference?) at the highly structured set of social behaviors are exhibited at conferences such as ETech (but equally at Agenda, PC Forum, Demo and I am sure all the others.) I am sure it is in evidence wherever human beings gather: academia, the US congress, high school and on and on and on. It's kind of funny if people didn't take it so seriously.
Without spending too much time on it, see if you recognize any of these dances: the "I pretend not to notice the fact that you are trying to get a word in edgewise and just keep on talking." or the "You turn to face the person you are focusing on (the higher peckee) and actually turn your back to the one you are trying to ignore (the lower peckee - or is it pecker?)" or how about the "Wait here while I go refill my drink, (and never return.)." Some day I should write an article!
Echo Chamber, redux: Are we
Echo Chamber, redux: Are we wasting our valuable brain cells duplicating each other's work? There was an excellent and thought provoking presentation by Dave Sifry of Technorati fame at the ETech Forum. I wish I was there.
Well, here are four (4) different first hand reports of the same talk: David Weinberger, Joi Ito, Doc Searls, Dan Gillmor, and I am sure there were others.
I wonder how many people were in the audience. In fact we can start computing the BQ (Blog Quotient) for meatspace events, the proportion of an audience which is blogging. As it approaches one , you have to wonder.
Yes, I guess we get different perspectives of the same event, but is there enough attention in the universe to pay?