Fingertip magnet implants

"If you were able to make the Technology Horizons conference recently, you may have met Quinn Norton, a blogger and journalist who also happens to be a pioneer of human sense extension by getting a magnet implanted in her finger. She writes about the experience for Wired News, posted by BoingBoing.

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load?

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RFID taken up by artists

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WIRED News has a short roundup of artists that are using RFID in their work. Many of the examples are fairly straightforward: an otherwise dumb object is tagged and it triggers some digital experience, like a movie or a sound. My favorite ideas are those that truly play to the basic size and power benefits of RFID, like this one called Urban Eyes.

RFID-blocking wallet

"More from the frontlines of the RFID backlash: the RFID-blocking wallet. Apparently aluminum foil is all it takes to bring down this promising new technology (going to try myself asap), so a guy known for his duct-tape wallets simply added a few extra layers of Reynolds Wrap to his latest creation.

Who needs flying cars? We have color e-paper!

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Electronic paper is one of those technology developments that you know is inevitable and yet you're still surprised when you poke your head in and see how far they've come. E-Ink, the MIT Media Lab spinoff, has been making steady progress on e-paper for almost a decade and they've just announced a decently sized full-color version set to go into mass production in early 2006.

"Shelves, now with built-in RFID"

This entry is a bit of a preview for memo #4 in the RFID+10 project (links to #1, #2, and #3) in which we explore the role RFID will play in finally bringing about the smart home.

On-the-screen games are still part of the future

Amidst all of the excitement about new forms of gaming that take place off the screen (such as on cell phones or through GPS devices), it can be easy to forget that there are still a lot of developments in the world of on-screen games. One particularly exciting area is online gaming, where tens of thousands of people from all over the world will log onto virtual environments at the same time, playing as unique characters--often times not even human--and take on quests or build their online lives.

A-Rage wearable gaming platform

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A colleague pointed me to this site out of Australia for a project called the A-Rage, a new, still-in-beta wearable hardware & software platform for building augmented-reality games (ARG). These games overlay some type of fictional content onto existing spaces or infrastructures.

Flailing into the future of game input

In the evolution of home videogame consoles, progress on the controller has taken a backseat to graphics, raw processor power, even the industrial design of the case. Nintendo is poised to put the input mechanism front and center with their next-generation console, the Nintendo Revolution. The controller still has a few traditional buttons but the real innovation is the inclusion of sensors to recognize gestures. Slash across the air--controller in hand--and your on-screen sword will take a swipe at your opponent.

Flailing into the future of game input

In the evolution of home videogame consoles, progress on the controller has taken a backseat to graphics, raw processor power, even the industrial design of the case. Nintendo is poised to put the input mechanism front and center with their next-generation console, the Nintendo Revolution. The controller still has a few traditional buttons but the real innovation is the inclusion of sensors to recognize gestures. Slash across the air--controller in hand--and your on-screen sword will take a swipe at your opponent.

History of pervasive games #2: Pac-Manhattan

Let me state my hope that Pac-Man will perpetually be one of the first games to be brought into any new gaming medium, whether it's pervasive or holographic or even implanted into our brains. Pac-Manhattan was a cute experiment done by students of NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program in 2004, and was one of the most direct examples of the pervasive gaming concept of 'city as gameboard'...