All posts in Innovation

Came across this lovely idea by Cameron Adams (who has some amazing stuff on his blog) where he used a iPad and web technologies to create fantastic visualisations of peoples drawings.

The iPad site prompted users to ‘Draw or write what inspires you’ then their scribbles were recreated as a 3D time-lapse visualisation on a big screen. The time and position of each stoke made by the users finger was recorded and used to make the 3D visuals.

Very cool!

According to this article on the Huffington Post researchers at South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University have developed the technology to covert soundwaves into electrical energy.

The technology has the potential to charge your phone as you talk into it. Even background noise could turn into power for your phone.

Here’s how it works:

“Currently, the researchers have created a prototype that converts sounds around 100 decibels (think: noisy traffic) to 50 millivolts of electricity. Here’s how it works: a pad absorbs sound waves and causes zinc oxide wires mounted between electrodes to compress and release, creating an electrical current that can be used to charge a battery.”

Whilst the energy produced isn’t enough to charge a phone (yet), it is still usable in small, implantanable devices. The aim is to alter the materials to generate more electricity at lower sound levels.

This follows on from the story that scientists are developing nanotechnology that uses body movement to generate power that could potentially be used in iPods and the like.

I love everything about this proof of concept, so genius that I don’t even know where to start.

Go and try it yourself! http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter

Remember the augmented reality cereal boxes? Well things are about to get heavy, eCoupled want to turn the cereal isle into Las Vegas:

“eCoupled intelligent wireless power is so flexible it can actually be printed directly onto packaging. A low-cost enhancement to product packaging, printed coils allow real-time communication from the package to the store shelf, and then to the store’s inventory management system. Product quantities can be identified and tracked, expiration dates monitored, and new stock automatically ordered when supplies are low to help reduce lost sales.”

[Via Advertising Lab]

Last year I posted about a cool bit of facial recognition technology demoed at CeBit, which had the ability to detect gender, age and mood.

I wondered what type of things the technology could be used for and now I know – introducing the Kraft Face Scanning Kiosk.

Using Anonymous Video Analytics the kiosk zooms in on a customers face to determine age, gender etc and then guess what type of stuff you might like. How gutted would you be if it served up Slim Fast meals?

The kiosk can sync up with mobile phones too, allowing customers to add recipes and shopping lists via a QR code scanner.

[Via Fast Company]

I watched far too many movies as a kid not to be massively excited by the new service called Qwiki. I’d even go as far to say we’re getting a glimpse of what information consumption will be like in the next couple of centuries, we’re talking true Minority Report/Total Recall style stuff.

Watch the video, co-founder Doug Imbruce describes the service perfectly “Information becomes a experience that I can watch”

Now go Qwiki and try the samples for yourself and sign-up for a invite.

As you can see from the video, this will also work on your mobile. Qwiki + NFC + Location + Advertising = Mind boggling possibilities.

This has seriously got my creative juices flowing.

Design studio IDEO love to experiment, they do some very inspiring work and this is no exception. Here’s the low down:

The idea here was to find a physical representation of the elements of modern musical life that we’ve come to love (such as playlists and shuffle), but not give up on that retro mixtape, twelve inch vinyl physicality

They’ve created a turntable which reads music tracks off RFID cards (the same technology that’s in London Transport Oyster cards).

Think about the future when mobile phones have NFC, how will we interact with everyday items? Will you be able to walk into a bar and tap your phone onto a jukebox to hear your playlist? Will you be able to download live mixes at clubs by touching your phone on the DJ booth? Will touching be the new Shazam? We are going to start seeing some brilliant stuff when the technology goes mainstream.

[Via PSFK]