flying car/gyrocopter pal-v

yes please.

the long now

“When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 02000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 02000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium.”

-  Daniel Hillis via The Long Now

stanley from stanford darpa challenge video

i just want to be your friend

“I just want to be your friend.” – Blinky

Blinky™ from Ruairi Robinson on Vimeo.

Soon every home will have a robot helper.

Don’t worry.

It’s perfectly safe.

Written, Directed & Edited by Ruairi Robinson

Starring Max Records from “Where The Wild Things Are”.

Cinematography by Macgregor

Music by Ólafur Arnalds courtesy of Erased Tapes

Funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann / Irish film Board

gorgon – photosynth for video in real time

I read about our new Gorgon all seeing eye drone and wondered if there was a commercially available tool to do the same thing for mobile phones. First a bit more on the Gorgon drone from PopSci:

Two MQ-9 Reapers retrofitted with the new $15 million wide-area aerial surveillance sensors, or WAAS, will fly test missions later this year, and the Air Force plans to have ten such planes in battle by next spring, in rotation on a 24/7 patrol. “It’s an incredible force enhancer,” said Colonel Eric Mathewson, Director of the service’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force at the Pentagon. Sierra Nevada Corporation, makers of the WAAS, chose the name, a spooky reference to the cursed sisters from Greek mythology—Medusa being the Beyoncé of the trio—whose gaze turned men to stone.

Perhaps a better description from this Washington Post Article on the Gorgon drone:

This winter, the Air Force is set to deploy to Afghanistan what it says is a revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.

The system, made up of nine video cameras mounted on a remotely piloted aircraft, can transmit live images to soldiers on the ground or to analysts tracking enemy movements. It can send up to 65 different images to different users; by contrast, Air Force drones today shoot video from a single camera over a “soda straw” area the size of a building or two.

It turns out Microsoft is doing something similar as was seen at TechCrunch TechFest last year. In this video called Qik Meets Photosynth they are combining different low res video streams into a much larger stream that is color corrected and aspect correct. Pretty darn cool. The video is below:

If we all streamed video from dash cams in our cars, we could have a real time traffic map of major roads combined. Things that make me go hmmmmm….

Trends for 2007 and Beyond

The few days I have been asking people "what major trends do you see?" The responses have been some good and some bad. They include the list below. The list is from listening and the links are from after-the-fact googling of the concepts. And this is in no way scientific. Here is the beginning of the list:

1. The importance of self expression. Advertising and technology that encourages self expression will succeed. So it isn’t user-generated-content. Rather it is helping people express themselves. Myspace is a good example of this. (this was from the IABC luncheon today)
2. The decline in classified advertising revenue for newspapers. First craigs list and now khou offering free ads. The tv station won’t matter long term, but craig’s list is the real deal.
3. The spoiled youth will hit reality. When? How? We don’t know.
4. Games and gaming. Kids love video games. Will they ever readjust to earning a living? Unknown.
5. Newspapers standardizing on the new format like the Chronicle did a long time ago. And like the WSJ did in January.
6. Citizen Journalist Corruption. And Citizen Journalist Entrepreneurship.
7. Second life and virtual worlds. This one is saturated, but it must be on the list. Still, I am already getting sick of hearing about it.

And two on politics:

1. Everyone loves Obama. Republicans too. This will be interesting (and volatile).
2. Health care. Hillary Clinton, a democrat, proposed changes and got pilloried. Meanwhile Schwarzenegger, a republican, proposes state funded health care? I’m confused.

There are certainly more. I’ll add those as I recall and review notes.