Category: tech

In a prototype home in Utah, windows are woven of microfibre LCD screens. One of these special windows can be turned opaque white with the flick of a switch, or, even more impressively, double as a television projector screen or a speaker set. The window is can also be used as a touch-sensitive computer display.

These multimedia windows are only one of two other specialty windows in this so-called Project Odyssey.

When I first read about the Vos Pad, an apartment lit completely with LEDs, I envisioned some garish Christmas lighted monstrosity created by playful college students or kooky crackpots. But it really looks like a work of art. Maybe too much like art; it would look nice in a swank restaurant or nightclub, but something tells me that you won’t be reading too many novels in lighting like that.

Of course, if you combine it with this apartment that was completely covered in aluminum foil, and you’ll get a real bumpin’ pad.

SlashNOT’s Top Ten 2004 Predictions:

4. “Microsoft will cut the price of Office in half as it

It’s the two year anniversary of the Apple iPod, which remains the smallest, trendiest portable MP3 player on the market. The iPod is quite the phenomenon, with its unique, white headphones (with high fidelity neodymium drivers) becoming a status symbol of its own.

It has spawned its own communal rituals, such as jack-sharing with complete strangers, and amateur mp3jing or “iPoding” in nightclubs.

Even its detractions, such as a sensationalistic claim that iPods have defective batteries, and its obviously whopping pricetag (which Penny Arcade mocks) only helps culture its elitist, music-lover image.

The New York Times Magazine wrote a lengthy article on the iPod phenomenon, called The Guts of a New Machine. Free subscription is required, but it nicely highlights what good industrial design can do for a product. The iPod has an aura of cool that makes people have to have one, regardless of cost.

Like the Sony Walkman, the iPod went from concept to production in under nine months. Apple made it possible by leveraging existing innovations, all outstanding on their own: Toshiba’s diminutive 1.8″ hard drive, Sony’s lightweight lithium ion battery, Apple’s own fast FireWire networking specification, and a controller system from PortalPlayer.

Apple had designers and artists work closely with engineers and manufacturers on the iPod design. The final product is a seamless shell comprised of a clean white plastic front, stainless steel back, and an obscenely easy-to-use interface. There are four white buttons – Rewind, Menu, Play/Pause, and Forward – and a navigational touch sensitive wheel. Scroll the wheel to view the playlist. Press Play to play your song. Scroll the wheel again to adjust volume. That’s it.

Apple has an interesting business strategy. iTunes is a loss leader to make customers buy more iPods. At 99 cents a song, virtually all the money goes to the RIAA. And you never know, an iPod could make the odd iPod for Windows user switch to a new white and stainless steel Mac, just to get the full seamless user experience.

But Apple now has serious competition, such as the copycat Dell DJ. Unfortunately, even though it has a longer battery life and lower cost – it’s just not as small, lightweight or sexy. It doesn’t have the iPod aura. Michael Dell doesn’t have fanatical groupies.

Then again, there are more The Kegs than Ruth Chris Steakhouses. Good industrial design doesn’t just make a product “cool”, it also makes the product easier to use and cheaper to produce.

RFIDs aren’t evil. At least one sushi restaurant, Pintokona, in Tokyo knows this. Every plate is embedded with an RFID tag, allowing managers to see who made it, what it is, how much it costs, and how long has it been sitting on the conveyor belt. Customers are billed quickly and they always know that what they’re eating is fresh.

To be honest, I don’t get the whole scare over RFID tags. They track what you purchase? So do barcodes and receipts. They can build a personal profile of what you buy? They already do that with debit cards, credit cards and frequent shopper programs like AirMiles. Afraid of getting more junkmail? Stop signing up to in-store contests and sweepstakes.

Other people can find out what and where you buy? Only if they’re within a five metre radius. And if you don’t think retailers aren’t going to encrypt their tags…well, let’s just saying making sure their competitors don’t steal their precious marketing data is about as important as maintaining your privacy to keep your business.

Perhaps the best compromise would be to have RFID tags removed upon item purchase, like anti-theft tags on clothing. This might be ideal, since RFID tags cost a lot more than a printed UPC code.

Besides, if Walmart knows you like Shampoo Brand X, maybe they’ll buy more of it. Having a greater idea of what is and what is not in stock reduces the need for stockpiling, which can translate to lower prices. RFID tags on perishables makes sure you don’t go home with a mislabelled, rotten goods. Isn’t that a good thing?

The County of Los Angeles has recently decreed that the ubiquitous tech term “master/slave” was a “discriminatory influence”, which I guess is the politically-correct way of saying “we think it’s offensive”. Any computer manufacturer, supplier or contractor wanting to do business with the county now must have this term stricken from any equipment documentation.

Hope no one tells them about “dip switches”. Or male/female connectors. Or the killing of child processes. Or the juicier UNIX commands like “touch”, “finger” and “kill”.

Boeing is already sketching details for their next jumbo jet, the unofficially-called Boeing 7E7 Dreamliner. The 7E7 concept offers some radical new design ideas, such as the sharkfin-like vertical stabilizer and slender nose cone. The interior has high, arched ceilings, big clamshell-esque overhead bins and oversized electro-transparent windows. Even the washroom gets a window.

The main program team has recently been relocated to Boeing’s massive Everett, Washington plant. Everett currently assembles the 747, 767 and 777 in the largest building by volume on earth, although Boeing has not decided on whether final 7E7 assembly will be there as well.

There is some speculation that the final product will be called the 787 or even the 808, to appease the Asian market. While Boeing marketing has always used the 7×7 nomenclature for their jumbo jets, calling the Dreamliner the 808 could give it a boost in Asia sales. To Chinese, the number 8 signifies prosperity and is considered the luckiest number you can possibly get.

When I was at the Everett plant in September, someone asked why all the planes were called 7-something-7. Apparently, it’s simply because the marketers thought it sounded nice. The numbers don’t really mean anything; the 747 carries the most passengers of any of the other jets, although the 777 is longer.

An editor of the Harvard Business Review has earned him the ire of the IT industry for basically stating that a business’s amount of IT investments are no longer proportional to a business’s rate of profitability. His recommendations for companies to spend less on the latest newfangled thing is obviously advice the IT industry cannot stand.

He does have a point – for example, Excel 97 has virtually all the features you’ll ever use in a spreadsheet, so there is little incentive to upgrade to something sexier like Excel 2003. In the same vein, you don’t need to go out and grab 3GHz powered PCs to run your office software. IT spending is way down compared to two years before. In the meantime, it’s become more expensive to maintain one’s current IT infrastructure, with all those pesky viruses, hack attacks and junk email everywhere.

But perhaps that is being to short-sighted. Admittedly, standard office software and hardware have matured to points of diminishing return. However, I see it as a next stage in the IT evolution – a shift to exciting new technologies, such as VoIP, wireless, web services, and e-conferencing. Beige boxes are becoming commoditized, but the PDA and WAP cellphone markets are booming.

So perhaps IT isn’t dying, but merely taking a new shape. At least we know that the IT industry won’t go down without a fight.

The latest sign that computers and technology have truly gone mainstream: a growing number of maids (or ahmahs) are putting a little IT value-add into their work. Along with cleaning house, they’ll clean the family PC too, performing regular maintenance tasks such as scanning for viruses and managing the family website.

Need a forward-thinking, paradigm-shifting, wacky-sounding company name? You can grab a snazzy brand name from Whatbrandareyou.com. Just remember it’s a joke – even if 20 of these absurd names, such as “Phellatio”, “Winwin” and “Ovisovis” – have already been snatched up and copyrighted.

Next, you need a fear-and-awe inducing title for yourself to stick on your business card. Look no further than the Amazing IT Title Generator. And if you need some inspiration for your core mission statement, refer to the Posted on Tuesday, November 18, 2003Categories tech

Jim Stewart attended the NGN2003 conference last week, and saw an incredible demonstration by Harvard Medical.

All lectures are video recorded, and then automatically encoded to streaming multimedia, and automatically indexed via a voice recognition system. Within hours any given lecture is online, and most importantly, searchable. Now that’s a nifty automated publishing system.