Jason Rosado

Round 2 of Exciting vs. Frightening covers the inevitable blending of technology and organisms. Yeah, we all know where this will eventually go but in the meantime, we can watch it all evolve slowly and inevitably.

In this corner: The Skinput project coming from Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft promises to turn your body into a touchscreen. Who needs an iPod Touch when you have your own forearm as an input device?

Skinput makes use of a microchip-sized pico projector embedded in an armband to beam an image onto a user’s forearm or hand. When the user taps a menu item or other control icon on the skin, an acoustic detector also in the armband analyzes the ultralow-frequency sound to determine which region of the display has been activated.

I’ve long wondered why at the very least no one’s come up with a simple device holder that fits around the forearm. Actually, Ameya Mhatre did this at ITP last year. Not sure where he’s at with that… but this concept goes one step beyond and throws out the device entirely. You make the call: Exciting or Frightening?

In the other corner, coming from Japan. World renowned home of weird organic integration with technology, comes the “Hana Sukkiri Melody” ringtone which promises to clear your sinuses just by placing the phone near your nose when your phone rings. Now, as a sufferer of sinus allergies and the like, this seems interesting and would certainly diminish my need for Sinex, but then again, this begs the question: how the hell did they think of this? And more, how did they test this ringtone? More from the article here

The Japan Ring Tone Laboratory has some much more sensible-sounding ringtones in the pipeline, including “sleep-promoting ringtone,” “ringtone makes your date,” “crow scarer ringtone,” “ringtone makes your skin beautiful,” and more.

So, whaddya think… which one’s exciting and which one’s frightening. Let me know!

Here’s a new kind of post on recent technological innovations in our wonderfully delightful future-as-present reality. To reflect upon this current day, wherein we finally live most of the future that our ancestors warned us of (1984, for example) I’ll post one thing that’s innovative (and frightening) versus another that’s innovative (and exciting).

Readers can opine on which is better, interesting, etc. I should give credit in advance to my peers at ITP, who often introduce these new finds on our wonderful student email list. These two items come from Ms. Emily Ryan of NoTrustFund fame and Mr. Ari Joseph, of NotTwoMuch.

First up, coming in the Frightening Category. A major reason to find a significant other who simply doesn’t suck, steal your money, or curse at your family members and marry him/her NOW, so as not to engage in what might be the Dating Scene of the near-term future. Because, if you are “single and ready to mingle,” think again, especially if your date has the DateCheck app for your mobile device.

Not only does this harken me back to my days as an undergrad at Wesleyan University, where the DateCheck of choice at the time (rumor had it) were the stalls in the Women’s Bathrooms in the Student Center. It was here that women posted handwritten lists of men to stay away from. Names were added on occasion, some were scratched out. Others were defended or substantiated. Now, a young woman need look no further than their own iPhone to get the “goods” on their potential Mr. Right. Is this exciting or frightening?

And now for our feature in the Exciting category, we have an innovation by those crazy kids (what’ll they think of next) at MIT. The Flyfire is the next generation of multidimensional graphical presentation and they utilize (wait for it…) flying LED helicopters (three words I never even thought of to put together in one sentence).

That’s right, coordinated arrays of little LED lights flying in mid-air to illustrate oh, maybe the Mona Lisa or your next Pepsi ad… Hmm… The possibilities are endless. This is where Lightbrite meets Zero Gravity. Right now, the flying LED helicopters are about the size of a golf-ball. Will they get smaller? The answer, undoubtedly is, yes, of course they will.

But could they get so small that they become the re-animation of a normal display upon which one would watch their video (or video game) entertainment?  Will this technology let me decide where I want my screen to be at any given time?  Like on the ceiling when I’m lying flat on my back or against the walls when I’m walking around the house?  Will it introduce the z-axis in a new as yet physically unaccomplished way for what we know to be 3D imagery today? Is this exciting or frightening?

I would love to hear someone (anyone’s!) thoughts on these matters. Please feel free to post a comment!

The internets bring us yet another fascinating yet completely useless gadget that I wish I could have.. The Euricase Ring Box. Essentially, take your average Engagement Ring Box and merge it with a digital picture frame and voila – the product you thought you never needed.

If only I had heard of this in September when I proposed to my beloved – I would have been the talk of the restaurant Stanton Social where it all went down! Instead of some measly Tiffany’s Box like the one below I could have had a “2-inch LCD display with a clock, alarm, calendar and photo album. The box also has LED perimeter lighting to make the ring stand out. There is enough onboard memory for storing up to 500 pictures or up to 60 minutes of video.”

Oh well, maybe when we renew our vows?  What Anniversary Year do you give LED screens?

This iSlate hysteria is ridiculous… The Execs at Apple must be laughing at all the free press and marketing they’re getting. They haven’t said one word about a tablet computer… not even an official hint that it’s possible and yet the internets, not just blogs but major financial reporting media are treating it as a fait accompli…

For their sake, I sure hope it’s coming because if not Apple stock takes a deeeeep nose dive (good time to buy). Actually, I take that back – $10 says that Apple stock ends low on the day of the announcement since there’s no way Apple will satisfy everyone with the first version of the iSlate.

So a good question may be what will it lack that it should already have?

New phone concept that moves beyond the popular touch screen interface onto other locations such as the back and sides of the phone.  Brilliant!

Synaptics 3D Smartphone Can Be Squeezed, Tilted – PC World.

This link is interesting because:

1) It’s a drinking game for the iPhone
2) It uses jquery’s jswipe library that mimics the swipe navigation, etc. of an actual iPhone app, yet it’s a mobile web site…

It’s better viewed on your iPhone (in Safari) than on your normal PC.