This is brilliant, wonderful, beautiful news for everyone in London, Transport for London has announced that it’s finally lifting all restrictions on the commercial use of its data.

What this means is that all that information swishing around the TFL servers about tube delays, bus stops,  even riverboat timetables, will be available for others to extract and use how they wish.

The move is great because it harnesses the developer community, several thousand heads are better than one and will encourage innovation and the creation of new applications and services. I’ve got the feeling that some time soon we’re going to see an app that will become a must-have for a Londoner.

So what have TFL opened up? Well they’ve actually gone a lot further than I expected. The datasets include: (you can click the links to find more info on the APIs)

Live traffic cameras (How cool is this?)
Oyster card top-up locations (very very useful)
Live Tube Travel info and departure boards (absolutely vital)

There are plans to include bus stops and schedules too. Check all the info out here.

What are you waiting for? Travel to work in London? Think it’s shit and want to kill everyone in the mornings? How would you make it better with an app? Get cracking, i’ll post my idea on here tomorrow.

[Via Wired]

Fed up of the crappy view from your bedroom? Want to suddenly live opposite a hot girl that undresses several times a day? Then you’re in luck, for under $3000 you can have your very own set of virtual windows which display amazing scenery at 1080p quality. Aaaand it comes with a iPhone app!

This is so so good.

Oh and impressed by the first video? Now watch the time lapse build:

A couple of weeks ago I posted the concept of the Twettle, a Wi-Fi enabled kettle which automatically updates Twitter once it’s boiled. One of the things that influenced that idea was my believe that we are are fast approaching automation of our status updates on Twitter and Facebook.

You can’t deny that there are millions of people who love telling friends and followers every single detail of their life no matter how personal. Services like Blippy which show online purchases in your news feed or gadgets like the IBM TV remote that tells your Twitter followers what you’re watching, are going to pop up more and more.

Now what if that automation could get as personal as your emotions? And what would that mean for mobile advertising?

Sola is a project by Nobu Nakaguchi, an interaction designer ITP Grad Student based in New York. It explores how communication is impacted when contextual emotions are available for everyone to see.

The device that does the work is wearable sensor which captures heart rate, temperature and skin response. This data is then matched to one of eight primary emotions – joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger and anticipation. The emotion is then broadcast through a mobile to social networks like Twitter, Facebook and even blogs. Nobu has also set his Twitter profile picture to change based on his current emotion.

It’s a great idea, similar to the to the ‘Sixth Sense‘ concept showcased at TED.

How long before the capabilities of Sola are in our mobile phones? This offers a whole new way of thinking around marketing. The industry is always claiming that mobile offers the best channel for advertising because of its targeting possibilities, knowing where you are,  what you want (or need!) and when you want it are the key factors.

If sensors are measuring your body’s responses, then it doesn’t seem too far fetched that they could easily find out whether you’re thirsty and send you an offer for a bottle of Sprite as you walk past Tescos. Tired? Here, have some Red Bull. Enjoying a movie at the cinema? Recommendations for similar films get sent to your phone.

[Via Mobile Behavior]

This is surely the future of everyday mobile phone charging.

I’ve previously written about the amazingly pointless Powermat which was a good idea that was badly implemented and reeeeally expensive. Wireless power is here to stay and the technology is just beginning to reach mass market consumer products, the trouble is that in the rush to get it out, many companies aren’t thinking practically. However here’s one that is.

In that post I spoke about the emergence of mini-usb as a universal charger for mobiles in the future and that is exactly what this great piece of furniture uses.

Finnish company Powerkiss (great name) has developed the technology which enables charging transmitters placed into furniture to send power to mobile with a micro-usb plugged in. You simply plug in the receiver and you’re good to go.

Powerkiss technology has already been integrated into office furniture by Materla and can be seen and used at the Via Lounge in Helsinki Airport.

Eventually those little receivers will be built into mobiles so you won’t need additional equipment; giving the potential for any object to charge your phone without wires.

[Via Springwise]

Caught this in The Sydney Morning Herald today, no information on who makes it, I’ve tried Google without any joy.

Luckily the picture speaks a thousand words, the technology “allows visitors to look at a display, connected with a computer and a camera which detects their gender, age group and mood”

This is pretty amazing, I wonder if it will make it’s way onto mobile via Augmented Reality apps or picture recognition solutions?

We really are moving closer to those Augmented Hyper Reality Terminator/Robocop style concepts that I wrote about here and here.

Imagine life online without clicking, how would you navigate? Would you miss it? Or would you love it?

Check out dontclick.it, the site that gives you a taste of a world where clicks are banished. It raises some interesting questions and is actually more related to mobile than you’d think.

As contactless technology like NFC develops, we’ll be able to wave our phones around to interact with on-screen menus and digital screens – without clicking.

It feels weird at first, but after a while it’s kinda refreshing. The results from the on-site survey show that most people don’t miss the clicks.

Head on over:

http://www.dontclick.it/

[Via @lbearpark]

Check out the end of the video when the guys starts wobbling as the camera goes higher.

Technology by Eon Reality.

[Via Ideo Labs] – one of the best websites I’ve come across, ever.

Check this video out by Keiichi Matsuda and Gen Otsubo as part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.

What I like about it is how gritty it is compared to that super glossy Microsoft ‘Vision of 2019‘ – not everyone is going to be living and working in minimalist glass buildings 9 years from now.

I’ve been waiting for someone to make a video like this for ages. Especially with all that talk of augmented reality-enabled contact lenses that display your vital signs. Fits with the video perfectly.

Congrats to the guys who made the video, hope it did well (could be in touch in the future..)

If you want to see more check out their website Keiichi Matsuda.

There is no doubt that the success of the iPhone has played a massive part in the development of touch interfaces. One of its greatest innovations is multi-touch, which is starting to appear everywhere, including the trackpads on new Mac laptops .

What’s going to be interesting is seeing how people utilise it in completely unique and exciting ways. This is one example which has impressed me recently.

The guys at Moto Labs have  developed a full-scale version of a Blackjack table with resistive multi-touch. The logic behind it goes like this:

Gaming is an ideal application for multi-touch screen technology. Replacing physical tokens, chips, cards, or game pieces with virtual items eliminates tedious setup, distribution, and cleanup tasks while increasing the efficiency and accuracy of gameplay.

So a touch screen gaming table might not sound bleeding edge, but check out the natural gestures for hiding your cards and dealing:

And what about the other opportunities for casinos?

It’s easy to go one simple step further and envision casinos adding RFID readers to these tables, enabling loyalty card usage and a bevy of targeted marketing opportunities.  Users could place drink orders, pay for food, buy tickets to the show their neighbor just talked up.

Remember that RFID (or NFC) is eventually going to feature on phones at some point in the future so waving your phone across the table could personalise your gaming experience. It could even bring online and offline worlds together.

Great stuff.

Strolled past this interactive art installation at Lexington and 33rd St in New York. It uses capacitive sensors and multi-touch just like the iPhone.

The piece is called Semi Boneless and is by Robert Stratton with the technology coming from Sensacell.  Check out the rubbish quality videos my Blackberry took: