by stephanlange on July 24, 2012
NFC is the big buzz word everywhere now and most people don’t even know what it is, what it does or that they already have it in their phone.
Will the new iPhone have it? Nobody knows until it is revealed, but that shouldn’t stop us from exploring it.
And that is exactly what Razorfish in Germany did with this 2 day project, coming up with the best idea on NFC usage I have seen so far.
The idea is simple, just like you used to get your candy from a machine you can now get all kinds of digital goodies: Apps, movies, songs, ebooks, as well as other exclusive and location-based content that can be pushed to a phone. Simply enter a coin and turn the lever – then follow the animation and tap your smartphone next to the release chute.
NFC Gumball Machine from Razorfish – Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.
In terms of hardware, we used a Samsung Galaxy Tab, an NFC shield, a simple reed switch and two Arduino microcontrollers – all nicely fitted into an original Gum Machine metal base.
Super awesome indeed. Nicely done Razorfish. You can read more about it here.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on July 18, 2012
We have been playing around with new ways of interaction for a while and touch and Natural user interfaces always played a big role in it.
Some of the work we can done can be found on our blog here and here, on the razorfish emerging experiences blog here and there is plenty more as well.
So we are always interested when this kind of technology and innovation makes it into the real world. Yesterday the Audi City in London opened up and is showing off how you will buy your next Audi by using touch, Kinect and RDID.
Audi at the moment sells 36 different new cars and with all of the customization you can do there are something like 200 million possible iterations of those and obviously you can’t have that many cars in the show room.
So what if you could customize your new car the way you want and then see if life size drive past you on a 210 inch screen – awesome, yes!
Audi City has multiple levels, with the upstairs level having 4 of those floor to ceiling screens. Check out their vision in the video below:
2 of the screens have kinect sensors connected to them so you can interact with it with gestures, a directional sound system makes sure you are not disturbed by other potential buyers on the other screen (or vice versa) and it lets you experience the engine sound and the sounds of closing doors.
A touch screen then takes over where you can easily customize every single aspect of your new car, down to the colour of your gear stick. Spin it, turn it, zoom it – all of that is possible with high resolution imagery and the touch panel.
Paint, leather and cloth samples on RFID-enabled swatches can be grabbed from the wall and placed next to the 32in touch screen, automatically updating your vehicle with the choice you’ve made.
Once you’re happy with your choices it generates a mood board with hi-res snaps and videos of your chosen car, which can be shared on Facebook and Twitter, emailed to a friend, or stored on a USB key.
Audi plans to roll the 3M multitouch screens out to dealerships all over the world, and to create 20 Audi Cities by 2015. I for one can’t wait for the one in Australia to be opened.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on July 10, 2012
GPS is great and has helped nearly everyone at one stage or another to find their way.
The problem is that it doesn’t work indoors and all the mapping companies are working hard on finding a solution so you can find your way around the shopping mall or the supermarket.
Now there is a new kid on the block called IndoorAtlas.
Developed by a team at Finland’s University of Oulu, their method relies on identifying the unique geomagnetic field of every location on Earth to get positioning through a mobile device.
It is very accurate, to less than 6.6 feet, and it can work without triangulations of wireless signals and at any location. IndoorAtlas has already conducted tests in a mine 4,593 feet deep.
Geomagnetic location-finding is already available through an Android API, so hopefully there will be plenty of apps coming our way soon.
Check out the video below for a brief explanation.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on June 14, 2012
Magazines on your tablet have been around for a while and they always seem like a good addition, but nothing really new or ground breaking.
Hopefully that will change with Condition One – a technology company developing next generation immersive video applications. Their flagship product is an embeddable immersive video player for the iPad / iPhone.
The virtual window provides unlimited viewpoints of a single video. The viewers tend to review a video multiple times to catch things they missed and see the footage from another perspective.
Basically you can move around the video to change what you want to look at.
Check it out in action here:
The technology can is/can be licensed to media companies and brands. It integrates seamlessly into existing applications or can be launched as a standalone product.
If you want to try it out, they have a showcase app here
Pretty cool? That’s what I thought.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on May 23, 2012
That’s what Lithuanian artist Tadao Cern thought when he created blow job, a photography series of peoples portraits in a wind tunnel.
Some pretty awesome results, check them out
you can see all of the here and he is also quite active on facebook.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on May 8, 2012
That is the basic model behind the wearable camera that blinds a user until he is touched by someone else.
The project was created by Artist Eric Siu and is called Touchy.
With Touchy, Siu wants to highlight social anxiety, which he believes is caused by the increased reliance on communication mediums like Facebook and Twitter. He says that the helmet emulates the isolating experience of over-reliance on social networks, and turns the wearer into a social device.
Touchy has two giant shutters that remain closed without human contact. Once the helmet’s sensors detect touch, the shutters open and illuminate the wearers eyes, the blindness is temporarily lifted until the connection is broken. If someone maintains contact for ten seconds, a photo is taken by the camera mounted on the front of Touchy, which is then displayed on a screen round the back.
Check out the heartwarming video below
@maniac13
by stephanlange on April 11, 2012
Remember the days when you were sitting in front of your CRT TV playing with your Atari 2600 playing Asteroids by yourself? I do.
Now that is all in the past as the new version of Asteroids here is a massively multiplayer online (mmo) game and instead of chasing asteroids you shoot other players from all over the world.
It’s a relatively simple arcade-style game in which you attempt to rack up as high a score as possible before running out of lives, and you can sign in with Twitter to put a name to your score.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on March 22, 2012
The smart peeps at MIT have created a camera that can look around the corner.
To do this, the system uses a so-called femtosecond laser to send out extremely short light pulses that are aimed at a nearby wall, then bounce around, hit the object hiding and then bounce back to the camera.
Then smart software figures out what is lurking behind the wall by determining how long it took those pulses to return to the camera.
This happens over and over again at different angles, meaning that the system will ultimately be able to get a general idea of the object hidden.
check out the video below
@maniac13
by stephanlange on March 21, 2012
How do those 2 fit together you ask? Microsoft has teamed up with Lionsgate to show off the latest HTML5 techniques (movie-like effect: stream, lens flare and video projections) and to promote IE9.
Check it out here
I had some issues getting onto the page, but I think it is because it is making the rounds in the internet and everybody is checking it out.
Nevertheless it is a pretty nifty and beautiful site and you have the ability to connect it to your facebook and your friends appear on billboards and screens.
The site also gives you some exclusive movie content and there are 2 easter eggs that reveal 2 never before seen clips.
- 1. In the Control Room you can type in "ivolunteer" on your keyboard after clicking on the map section
- 2. In the Avenue of Tributes you can click on Katniss and then Peeta to reveal a clip from the training center
I can’t wait for the movie to come out as it looks great and it looks like HTML5 is being pushed to its boundaries on this site.
Check out the trailer if you haven’t seen it.
@maniac13
by stephanlange on January 31, 2012
What is WiGig you are asking? WiGig is an alliance that completed a multi-gigabit 60Ghz wireless specification.
It means that WiGig enables wireless transfer rates more than ten times faster than today’s fastest wireless LAN, and it’s completely backward compatible with existing WiFi devices.
Panasonic is now in the process of jamming the functionality into SD cards set to arrive next year and they already have a working prototype that they showed off at DigInfo.
Photos and videos were effortlessly send to secondary displays and played without any glitches. According to them a whole DVD can be transferred in under a minute.
But check it out in action here and be surprised by how much it looks like Amnesia Connect 
@maniac13
