kathleen forden

This concept allows to you to experience immersion and effortless navigation in an Augmented Reality environment. New types of interactions involving near-to-eye displays, gaze direction tracking, 3D audio, 3D video, gesture and touch.

Through these new types of social linkages people will be connected in innovative ways between the physical and digital worlds.It’s hands-free and weightless compared to a tablet, no small screen problem as you have on a mobile phone – but is it truly useful?

Unlike most other AR apps we’ve seen lately, where the physical world is referenced by the AR – the two seem unrelated here. It takes all kinds, though, and who’s to say how AR will be used?(Also, isn’t this music a little creepy? It sounds bittersweet about the inevitable and yet slightly frightening future.)None the less, we’d love to get our hands on a prototype of this technology to test it – just as soon as it becomes real.

Check out Peek – a great simple device to get your email anywhere.

Peek was born on a walk in the park when Amol Sarva and his wife, Ursula, were expecting their first child. At six months pregnant, Ursula couldn’t sit still and found comfort in taking long walks. But planning for a new arrival and a busy life besides, Amol saw that Ursula would return feeling behind. Emails were piling up. She had inbox anxiety.

A seasoned wireless industry entrepreneur, Amol had long been using smartphones for mobile email. With smartphone in hand, their long walks were actually a great way for him to stay on top of things at the office. Amol tried to get Ursula to use one, describing the many features: email, texting, voice calling, Internet, etc. But the bells and whistles are exactly what turned her off. She didn’t want a complicated smartphone with extras she didn’t need.

What she really wanted was a simple, nifty device that would let her do email on the go since email was how everyone she knew made plans, caught up, and shared news.

Amol thought a simple, fun, and attractive mobile email device had to exist. He asked his contacts at the cell phone companies, but they were dismissive. Nobody wants “simple”, they want “more”, they said. But Amol saw an opportunity, which he discussed with a few colleagues from earlier ventures. They explored the idea in the “real world”, closely observing real people using email at their desks and on the go.

Amol’s hunch was right; people really want a device that simply does email.

via Peek – About Peek.

Charles de Gaulle – “The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.”

As an idea person, I’m constantly amazed at the speed of which new ones seem to be entering the main stream.  If ideas use to be “a dime a dozen“, they are more like “penny for a pound” today.

From tweeting stuff your older father says to discussing the life of a squirrel, these ideas seem to be finding an audience and gaining sucess in short timeframes.  Today the New York Times released an article that showcased the case of a Twitter account named “shitmydadsays”.  Less than 30 days after launch, this young man has over 200,000 followers, media coverage, market appeal, an agent and multiple book offers.

So here’s to the speed of ideas and to hitting that sweet spot that only the world can tell you about.

According to the New York Times Bits blog, a recent study funded by the US Department of Education (PDF) found that on the whole, online learning environments actually led to higher tested performance than face-to-face learning environments. “On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction,” concluded the report’s authors in their key findings.

The report looked at just under one hundred studies that compared the performance of students in online learning environments (or courses with an online study component) to those who were given strictly face-to-face instruction for the same courses. What they found was that students who completed all or some of their coursework online tested on average in the 59th percentile, compared to the 50th percentile for those who received only classroom instruction, and that the results are statistically significant.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/study-finds-that-online-education-beats-the-classroom/?hp

Police departments are joining citizen vigilantes in turning to social-networking sites such as Twitter to fight crime. Some predict that prosecutors won’t be far behind.

What did Lance Armstrong do when thieves made off with his one-of-a-kind time trial bike? The seven-time Tour de France champ tweeted about it. Four days after posting a TwitPic of the bike, a reward offering, and a plea to his Facebook fans, the treasured set of wheels was escorted back to him by the Sacramento police.

Author and Brooklyn mom, Beth Harpaz, recovered her son’s stolen bike in a similar way. “We tracked the perp down using email and Facebook, turning our big-city neighborhood into a nosy small town with a virtual front porch,” she wrote in the Huffington post.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/lydia-dishman/all-your-business/fighting-crime-20