Category / Fringe scanning / peripheral vision

by Roger Dennis

It’s not just science fiction that inspires people

From the Telegraph in the UK comes this story about Tintin books providing inspiration for the study of sharks. The image on the cover of one of the books provided a gem of a thought.

Tintin

“The grandson of Jacques Cousteau has continued the family tradition of underwater exploring by tracking sharks in a submarine inspired by a Tintin book.

Fabien Cousteau, 38, first saw the cover of Red Rackham’s Treasure, showing Tintin in a shark-shaped submarine searching for ancient treasure on the ocean floor, when he was seven.

The shark-shaped submarine allows Fabien Cousteau to film sharks behaving naturally

Only now has his dream of emulating the boy detective come true, thanks to Troy, named after the Trojan horse.

Shark Sub

The submarine is so close in appearance and movement to the great white sharks that live off Guadeloupe, part of Baja California, that they have accepted the craft as one of their own and given him an unmatched opportunity to observe and film their lives.”

by Roger Dennis

Science Fiction as a predictor – again

You may recall the movie ‘Inner Space’ where a submarine is shrunk down the size of a pill and then inserted in a living body.

While it’s not quite the same thing, similar results will soon be availbe via the SmartPill > – a pill sized monitoring device which – once swallowed – passes through the body gathering information as it goes.

Smartpill

From the website :

The SmartPill pH.p Capsule is a miniaturized disposable telemetry device, about the size of a large vitamin pill and weighing little more than 3 grams, that is encased in inert, bio-compatible, medical-grade polycarbonate that makes it safe for human ingestion. Internal to the device are the data transmitter, three sensing elements (pH, pressure and temperature), and a battery chamber housing the power source.

The SmartPill pH.p Capsule transits the intestines by peristalsis or the normal rhythmic contraction of the intestinal muscles and is capable of transmitting data continuously for greater than 72 hours. The single-use capsule is excreted naturally from the body, usually within a day or two, without pain or discomfort.

There is also a receiver which records the information in real time as it is transmitted from the pill. This data then transferred to a PC for analysis.

Why is this interesting?

Science fiction authors have always been at the bleeding edge of technology product design. Unconstrained by current limitations they are free to imagine without limits. The early Motorola flip phones were inspired by the communicators featured on the Star Trek TV series.

So where are people looking today for inspiration? According to a BBC interview one of the current favourites is Harry Potter.

Nokia CTO

Yrjo Neuvo, Chief Technical Officer of Nokia mobile phones, reads JK Rowling’s Harry Potter to get him thinking.

“I have read all the Harry Potter books, including the last one,” he told BBC News Online.

“And when you read them with my kind of mindset, technology orientated, I always ask myself how we can implement that.”

JK “is very good when it comes to predicting the future”, according to Dr Neuvo, and “many of the things she is painting in her books can be implemented in phones in five to 10 years. It’s really exciting,” he says.

The ghostly moving people in framed pictures which deck Hogwarts’ staircases, and the mysterious pensieve which shows 3D images of memories are just some of the ideas he sees as a reality.

by Roger Dennis

Advertising with Google Maps

Via Boing Boing comes this frankly mind boggling move in the advertising world – make your adverts large enought to be caught by satellite mapping services such as Google Earth.

More about this at the MIT Advertising Lab

I’ve seen farmers plough fields with large messages to be seen by passing aircraft, and some roofs near airports painted, but this is a whole new ball game.

by Roger Dennis

The Conversations Network (podcasting supremo)

One of the first and most useful podcasting sites – IT Conversations – has now morphed The Conversations Network. While it started as a storehouse of IT related conference podcasts, it now carries material from a vast range of different events from pure IT geekfests through to PopTech.

When you cannot get to an event, this is a great way of hearing some of the worlds most interesting speakers on all sorts of topics.

While it was initially donation supported, the concept has grown to the point where the model now require subscriptions to grow the site. It’s a mere US$5 per month – great value.

The network states it’s mission as follows :

Every day scores of educational, inspirational and entertaining conference sessions, lectures and other spoken-word presentations are lost. They simply evaporate because no one records them. Some of these presentations are by the greatest and most inspiring minds of our time, and many would be important to people in the far reaches of the planet, if only they could hear them.

The Conversations Network (a California non-profit corporation) captures presentations, processes the recordings, and publishes them online for free under Creative Commons licenses.

by Roger Dennis

Why monitor customers at the fringes?

Over the break I have been reading a book called Blindsided by Jim Harris. It tackles the issue of how companies can miss crucial changes to their markets. One of the more interesting examples deals with how a chocolate manufacturer started losing revenue for the first time at the end of the nineties, but could not understand why. It turns out that one of their biggest markets – teenagers – now were spending their pocket money not on sweets, but on pre-pay mobile. They were – to use the phrase of the book – blindsided.

However the quote that interested me the most concerned the breadth of scanning that a company needs to undertake these days in order to prevent being caught out by changes :

“Move and explore in a direction you know the least. The principle is critical for businesses today. Send some people out to move in a direction you know the least. In other words allow some individuals to explore new areas that individuals and the organisation don’t currently understand as being related or relevant to your business”

by Roger Dennis

It’s like podcasting. Only live. With video. From your pocket.

Taking content generation to the next level is Comvu, which has developed an application to enable you to send live streaming video from your mobile/PDA.

Once setup, you then send notifications to your prospective audience via SMS, IM or whatever channel they select. Here’s how it works :

PocketCast

Hey presto – it’s a new instant news station. Mobile computing power meets citizen journalism. How long before someone called it “iNews” ? However news won’t be the only application once Generation Mobile get inspired.

by Roger Dennis

Pandoras Juke Box

As a ‘discerning music consumer’ (or should that be music-snob?) I’m always looking for new sources of interesting music. A few years back there was this great site called GigaBeat. It sadly shut but was replaced by was then usurped by other similar services such as MusicPlasma

However the new champion of music referral does not just point out new sources of music/influences, but actually customises a radio station based on these.

Beware, it’s addictive. And inspirational for discovering new sounds.

Pandora
Pandora

UPDATED – 22 Dec 2005
After using Pandora for a while, it strikes me that it’s a shining example of the web-as-a-platform. In the dial-up world this type of application would not be possible. However in the broadband world it’s a virtual jukebox anywhere you can get a fast connection. When mobile devices get fast wireless connections, it’s bye-bye iPod. The idea of carrying your music on one device, and only accessible from one device will seem quaint.

by Roger Dennis

Viral eBay Auctions

It’s interesting to see the effect generated by a cleverly written eBay auction. Recently there was a pair of leather trousers up for auction. These normally would get lost among the other thousands of clothing items for offer. Instead, this auction turned into a bit of meme, which in turn, attracted a lot of attention. So much so that it ended up getting requests from a magazine editor wanting to use it in print.

Why is this interesting? It illustrates the power of breaking out of the norm, and creating a Purple Cow auction on eBay.

You can see the auction here.
Just in case it has been taken down, here’s the first few lines :

You are bidding on a mistake.

We all make mistakes. We date the wrong people for too long. We chew gum with our mouths open. We say inappropriate things in front of grandma.

And we buy leather pants.

I can explain these pants and why they are in my possession. I bought them many, many years ago under the spell of a woman whom I believed to have taste. She suggested I try them on. I did. She said they looked good. I wanted to have a relationship of sorts with her. I’m stupid and prone to impulsive decisions. I bought the pants.

The relationship, probably for better, never materialized. The girl, whose name I can’t even recall, is a distant memory. I think she was short.