K for cool.

That’s what I want… one of those… but I want a cylindrical one like a portaloo… or better still a geodesic dome, with 3D and less nerds.

Like the one off Minority Report with the little ferrety chap in it who jumps up and down on the sofa, then hides in the cupboard and talks to imaginary aliens. Thought it was a stupid idea then, think it’s a stupid idea now.

Except

(from)

…except, except…

It does mean that you can effectively shrink interface size to zero. Right now we’re kindof limited by the size of our clumpy washer-woman hands, like bunches of bananas etc. Sure we’ve experimented with styli etc – but they’ve never really worked terribly well because we keep losing the styli – and it still needs to be a styli-writeble sized thing. I had one of the first digital watches with a calculator (that needed stylus) once. In 1979. See

That’s me in 1984, standing “in” the back lawn of a house I actually owned. Everything has gone down-hill like fuck since then. I worked out today that my free-lance-web-development activities are actually earning me less than minimum wage. What did you think Gen-Xers were going to do? Sell out?

You can click on a the picture for a bigger version. I’m so fucked up now I don’t even recognise that as being me. I suppose it must have been. Nice looking young guy. Could be anyone.

Still – that watch is 5 years old at the time of photographing… which is another weird thing. Who the fuck has a digital device that’s 5 years old any more? None of them last that long.

But enough about me, back to the WAAI (ahem) And then there’s RSI of course – and I do suffer from that a bit… so it would be good for that, but I think the killer app with WAAIs might be the ability to shrink the device to the size of a breadcrumb – assuming it can project an image as well. In the future it’s going to be impossible not to cheat in exams.

Eventually Waving Arms Around Interfaces will come of age, and you’ll just kindof swim in this sphere of digitised perception, where the machine can see and interpret everything you do. In the meantime though you’ll need to wear batty gloves.

I still don’t get the point of these though. If it was keyboard design instead of mouse design, it would be similar to having one key over there and another over here, and another one on the other side of the room etc etc. We should be moving less, not more.

Unless you want to wave your arms about of course, in which case knock yourself out. Litterally. Knock yourself out with your own wii wand.

W.A.A.Is are an attempt to turn knowledge work back into manual labour. Mouse-interface is kindof one dimensional, though, granted.

–

This kindof rings bells though:

When I was straight out of Uni and didn’t give a toss about anything except playing guitar… but found myself working in the credit-card department of Lloyds, I used to fantasize about having a guitar interface onto a keyboard. I even made simulated strings with paperclips on the arm of my chair so I could practice archipeligos.

Although I’m theoretically stupider now than I was then, I can now see fairly clearly that the two aren’t going to mix terribly well – because the interface wouldn’t be happening at a physical level – there would have to be a link between the meaning and poetry of musical language, and the… well… RPG2 basically. Not going to happen. It’s like converting your name to a musical scale. It is not (generally speaking) terribly musical.

Still – it does remind me of shred videos, which are so funny I can hardly believe it.

So you see the problem he had now… the bigger your screen… the more interactive… the more you want to just… step into the scene. To actually be there. To be in it.

Innit.

So you see the problem he had – he couldn’t – he was God – separated from his creation by dimensional incompatibility… so he gave birth to himself, and became man. As it were. He became a little baby Jesuslet.

And what a fucking nightmare that turned out to be. It’s like the first (and only) time you go on a hydroslide and you wind up hurting your knee – “absolute fucking catastrophe”, he thought to himself afterwards, vowing never ever ever ever to do it again.

“Those people are a bunch of cunts – and the worst part of it is, a whole load of them started following me around like that Life of Brian – and they’ve been using me as an excuse to get up to all sort of peculiar shenanigans ever since… and they all seem to think I’m going to go back!. Fucking no chance.”

“Watch in on the telly – safety of my own home etc. Those people are a nightmare. Where’s the remote?”

Would be cool with 3D glasses, and projected onto the surface of a sphere that you stand in the centre of.

Hadn’t seen one of those before – although there’s obviously about a million and one videos on youtube. I chose this one

because the voice in the background is… um… Slovenian? Something like that – and hearing languages I don’t understand makes me feel… calm.

Anyway, it’s high time you learned Slovene, admit it. Everyone in Europe is now multi-lingual, except The English, who can barely read or write.

Anyway, the reason I find this thing interesting is because it’s the opposite of a WAAI – a Waving Arms Around Interface – as popularised by various movies with Tom (ferret-face) Cruise in them, and which are a completely stupid idea. If you’re going to be pratting about on the internet all day and all night, you want an interface which requires the absolute minimum of movement. I mean people get RSI from mice FFS – so mice are obviously too much work.

Another attempt at “interface without having to actually move that much” is this blowing one:

Where you can control your cursor (or whatever) by blowing it around the screen. You might be able to suck it as well. I don’t know. This obviously goes off the scale of the daftometer… but for one small detail…

… the guy is using it in a bar. Can you use it as a breathaliser? An anti-social-networking-on-the-web-when-drunk breathaliser? Because if you can, then they should come as standard on all (my) laptops.

–

It’s also occurred to me that the first one could also be done using an iPhone balanced on your knee, or the arm of your chair or whatever. I actually do think this is a problem looking for a solution (unlike WAAI) because at the moment, 3D navigation – particularly for RC planes, sucks. Ideally you need something that’s basically a little model of the plane that you hold onto, and manipulate like some sort of aeronautical voodoo doll… to do whatever it is that you want the real plane to do.

A bit like those iPhone apps where you stick little cardboard wings onto your phone and they make a noise like a Messerschmitt

That someone went “meh” about in the comments – so remember, every “meh” is pregnant with its opposite. It’s like Edward de Bono (who doesn’t know what he’s talking about) puzzles where someone gives you a paper clip and you have to think of as many uses for it as you possibly can.

Nothing is ever 100% stupid. Nothing.

(via)

In which roteno.com creates the idea of Imperceptible Computing, in which all the smarts of a system are hidden within it – including circuits, interface etc etc.

Taking this a step (quite a big step) further… to an inevitable conclusion… an entire environment which is a meshed network of RFIDs (and/or Zigbys etc) and sensors that is aware of your presence and every movement etc, 24/7. A Guardian Angel of sorts – but best make sure it’s YOUR guardian angel.

In the meantime (and straying into areas untroubled by the angelic footfall) is a variant on one of my favourite concepts – iPhone as interface to everything:

In which shouty blowhards pretending (or is it real) to be in a 90s Jackass type tv program for Fire-Nerds, provide simple, straightforward instructions for how to make a remote controlled car-bomb of the kind that would normally have required someone (probably quite young and gullible) with a beard to commit suicide. Think of the lives it would save. Kindof.

Still, what do I know. The video’s been there for 5 days and has been viewed about 170,000 times. It has, as the saying goes, gone viral. They also provide a video for sound-triggered fireworks. What could possibly go wrong?

1) Popup Lego Zen Buddhist Temple

2) Waving-Arms-Around-Interface actually doing something useful:

Cool. Maybe in the future someone will make one of these interfaces that allows you to see in real-time the damage that the interface itself is doing to your spinal column

3) More Winger Insanity

A game for people so disconnected with reality that they can no longer count the fingers they hold up in front of their own faces… fantasizing about defeating Obama in an imaginary coup.

Utterly unbelievable. I mean I know I keep going on about the reality-disconnect that goes hand in hand with weapons, but seriously… courtesy of the massive right-wing-propaganda-machine (this disease inspired by The Powell Memo), it’s looking very much to me like America is becoming too stupid to survive.

It has become impossible for rational public discourse… “Debate” doesn’t happen. What happens is Rationality permanently on the defensive against a well-funded, relentless barrage of well crafted sound-bites… which are more often than not, pathetically flimsy lies – but there’s so many of the fucking things that it seriously interferes with the possibility of a normal conversation happening.

It’s not freedom of speech, it’s conversational jerrymandering.

And it’s not the people – it’s the media (and some of the people)… witness the recent gay-pride rally in Washington, completely ignored by the media while a similar-sized right-wing nutter protest received blanket coverage. The corporate media are in love with this shit… well, I guess they would be. They help fund it.

I saw some video recently where Janeane Garofalo was going on about racism… and how the media are always nudging things towards violence (it was the one where she asked what would have happened if black people had turned up armed to a McCain rally)… tried to find the video again. Couldn’t… but have you seen the comments on Youtube whenever there’s a video of Janeane Garofalo? You people are fucked. Seriously. Get a divorce before you hurt someone.

This is the inevitable byproduct of the emotionally manipulative propaganda techniques that are being employed… using “values” and framing to bypass critical thinking and appeal straight to some sort of xenophobic sub-brain. This really, seriously needs to stop. It’s inciting violence… and over what? For what? Who’s benefiting?

Enough. I’m sick of it. We’re all sick of it.

4) Video of Nanosolar’s new European plant

You’ll need to click the image to go to the site with the video… because it’s indulging in that archetype of web-fuckwittery known as “autoplay” and danged if I can get it to stop

Cool. Mind you, I’ve worked in a lot of factories… and they always had people working in them – allowing said people to buy the things that the factory produced. If they wanted. I guess you could make your manufacturing process soooo efficient that people on unemployment benefit could afford to buy your stuff.

5) Cool DIY LED Fob watch

6) Cool collection of Stirling Engines

Only the owner of the videos appears to have deleted them… and put them back, but not updated his site.

This all came from the rather fab Steampunk collection on Wired

7) Myna – a new online Sound Editor from Aviary

Aviary being a bit of a power-house of creative online applications. One to watch I think… they’ve had some pretty good ideas in the past.

8 ) Treasure-hunting crow-trainer open-sourced

This turned up a while back on TED…and I probably went on about it before… but here it is again

This has got to be useful for something more useful than collecting lost change. How about getting plastic bags out of trees or finding your keys or something. Picking up the million-square miles of rubbish that is now floating in the Pacific Ocean.

9) Misc Robotery:

a) robot that feels
b) silent robot muscles
c) and two more robots that might be useful for “Search and Rescue”, which is what people say when they’ve made a cool toy but can’t think of anything to use it for… or don’t want to admit that the only thing it’s good for is helping the military suck money out of the economy, and taking it out into the desert and burning it by the bale.

Which isn’t to say it’s not a really cool toy, because it is.

But this obsession with search and rescue? What must the Martians think? “Oh yes, a technologically advanced civilisation… except that so much of their technology seems to be for finding themselves when they get lost. Yes they do have GPS. Whatever. Nice place to go on holiday, but I wouldn’t want to live there”.

10) A nice juxtaposition on how far we’ve evolved in terms of transport ideas

I don’t know what it with things where you sit inside the wheel itself. There seems to be a lot of them about, and I can’t think of any reason why they might be a good idea other than they look kindof cool. Kindof.

(from : via)

The interface is neat… but that’s largely a programming problem. The killer-app behind this is the hardware that’s used to control every electrical device in the room