Rio Surfaced

While I was in Vegas I had the opportunity to go to the Rio hotel and casino and to the bar with Microsoft Surface tables in it. At first I was really quite amazed at how seamlessly they worked with the decor and surroundings but as I explored them further there were a few usability issues with them.

So start with, nobody was really ‘using them’. I sat down with a few other people at one of the tables, they were trying to communicate with the table next to us. On the screen was a CCTV feed from all the other active tables. It seemed as though you had to drag and drop words from the sides to the screen and the message would send. This didn’t happen, to the point where we were running backwards and forwards between the tables defeating the point of the casual flirty comment between tables.

Another thing was that nobody was putting their drinks on the actual screen, even though cool effects happen when you do, nobody seemed to have noticed this. The problem was that there was a rim round the edge that was a different colour to the screen so people put their glasses on the edge as they didn’t want to break the screen.

I’m sure there were many more features that these tables have (like ordering drinks and playing games etc) but after the initial frustration with the technology nobody seemed interested in exploring further. The average usage time from what I observed was less than 10 minutes.

The more you drink, the more you want it to work but the less it does.

All in all, it was a gimmick for the bar and for Microsoft.

Robot Takes A Beating

Posted in December last year. Possible future stress relief? This shows how developers are tackling the problem of unexpected forces applied to a system. Very useful if a robot happens to be carrying something for you.

Smart Bracelets or Electronic Tags?

Reading an article on Slashgear about a new creation from Continuum Studio I couldn’t help but wonder what similarities their new ‘Smart Bracelet’ has to a criminal electronic tag.

The principle is exactly the same. You put a bracelet on your child and you wear the master which alerts you when they have moved outside a certain radius that you set. It then shows you exactly how far away they are and in which direction. Now I am all for children’s safety and this sounds like a brilliant invention that I’m sure will do well with concerned parents who want to let their children play but also want to know where they are but I just can’t shake this image of a child in a prison outfit running around with a bleeping tag on their leg.

What happens when the child learns that they can just put the bracelet on their dog ’spot’ and let him run around outside the perimeter fence driving their parents mad thinking they’ve lost their child. “They should be right in front of me!” … leading to

“Oh my god the dog has eaten the children!”. It also reminds me of when you lose your phone and have to press the page button on your base station at home so the handset beeps allowing you to find it. Could this work with the prison children? I can just imagine concerned parents pressing a button and a loud noise goes off in the distance with their child trying to cover it up because if anyone hears it they are sure to get teased for being so cool (Sarcasm implied).

The trouble is, where do you draw the line? At what age to you stop wearing it? As everybody knows, parents never stop worrying about where they’re children are and if they’re safe. Should I be wearing one? Should everyone? What about when my parents get too old to look after themselves, does the system come full circle and I start to tag my parents in case they wander off unaccompanied?

Its all very ‘Logan’s Run’…

Microsoft Surface… “Its a Big Ass Table”

I was browsing around YouTube to find some videos about Microsoft surface to post about the actual point of it all as I was discussing today that the only thing you can do with most touch screens is look at photos, resize them and have a really cluttered desktop. Anyway, I came across the promotional video here which I recommend you watch but then I came across the video below which is a parody of the ad.

…and so you don’t think I just hate Macs, I also hate Microsoft… I am doomed.

Scribbles Will Survive The Paperless Revolution

It seems everyone is getting on this paperless band wagon these days. Only yesterday I wrote about the new A4 sized E-paper developed by Epson.

Well today folks its Wacom (made famous by their drawing tablets) in partnership with E Ink announcing they have made a pen input e-paper.

They are describing it as “the ultimate version of an interactive piece of paper” and I agree, its all very well to be able to read books or newspapers on e-paper but its the scribbles that make paper what it is. The ability to take a pen and paper and create anything you like is why we love it so much. Paper is one of the most versatile piece of kit that we have and so can’t be easily replaced.

I can’t help feeling that while we have the illusion of moving forward with this technology we are in fact taking two steps back. Is it not the goal of technology to make improvements on the past, to make more things do… well more things? At the moment it seems that when we finally hit the paperless society, instead of having one piece of e-paper that can do everything actual paper can do, we’ll have a huge range of e-papers for specific tasks.

Future Appliance is Recycling Dishes?

I came across this video that shows what plain old-fashion ingenuity can do. The guy from MIT (surprise) thought of everything that a person might need and tried to make a machine that could do it all. This is obviously a prototype but the concept is sound.

The principle is to ‘make’ the pates on-demand to any shape with a maximum depth of five inches. By using plastics with a memory they can then be returned to they’re original shape and stored easily.

This device is space-saving too as cupboards full of plates are now stored as flat discs within the unit itself.

He also states that there is no reason you couldn’t make any shape with it and it may be possible to download designs from the internet and make a new plate, for a special occasion perhaps.

Geek Porn

Alienware’s overclocked Area 51 ALX to 4Ghz with water-cooling as standard (and as a necessity). Optional extras include 2TB 7200 RaId0 HD!

Mmmm… tastey.

Paperless Paper

I was reading through my RSS feeds as I so often do and I came across this article which made me realise just how far we have come and how little we need to go to become a completely paperless society.

Epson have been developing electronic paper for a while now, previously producing a 7″ display, and have now shown off their A4 size piece of paperless paper at SID 2008. If just oogling the papery goodness of this isn’t enough for you then the specs are as follows: Resolution is 3104 × 4128 and has a contrast ratio of 10:1 which is supposed to replicate the look of actual paper. “The…electronic paper was developed by combining electrophoretic electronic ink of E Ink Corp and a low-temperature polycrystal Si-TFT of Seiko Epson”.

The company say they are in their “final stages” of developing the technology and are getting ready to start user-testing to develop the product for commercial use.

I can’t help wondering how long it will be before we see a Minority Report style newspaper which updates with breaking newsand display animations while still having the consistency of actual paper.

My best guess to make that work in a practicle sense would be to buy only one paper and pay a subscription to update it each day. That way you only buy one paper and people won’t litter they’re cool, new, high-tech e-paper.

It does beg the question though… with paperless paper… who needs an Epson printer anymore?

Hail To Del.icio.us - A Treasure Trove

So I have been using Del.icio.us for a couple of days now since it was mentioned in a PPD session and I am beginning to see the advantages. It uses a tag system similar to blogging so you can see related bookmarks. Why I haven’t used it before I don’t know.

I just found a brilliant piece of interaction called Eye Gaze being used with World of Warcraft. The guy is controlling his movements with his eyes… look ma, no hands!!

Gears of War 2 - Unreal 3 Engine Demo

I was browsing around my RSS feeds tonight after having substantially hacking my wordpress theme (comments welcome) and I game across some Gears of War 2 info. So I started looking at YouTube and found the video below.

Gears of War 2 will be using the updated Unreal 3 engine and the following video shows what that can do when applied to Gears of War 1 levels, characters and objects. It looks INCREDIBLE! I am really looking forward to this release… but I think Call of Duty 4 and Grand Theft Auto IV should tide me over until it comes out.