Invoked Computing For Ubiquitous AR – Complete Change of Perspective

We currently place a lot of emphasis on the digital gadgets we own.

What if we were looking at the wrong paradigm and it’s not about the form factor or the physical object?

What if instead was all about what we wanted to do and achieve?

Welcome to the world of Invoked Computing from the University of Tokyo.

Think of the consequences…

1. All the stuff we could get rid of.
2. The environmental benefits of doing that
3. The lamented demise of the electronics product designer and product design (via Core 77)

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Amazing “Little Printer” by BergCloud

The guys at BERG are just amazing. No wonder they came up with an amazing product.

Here’s what’s important…

1. Printers are the most boring things around-(we worked on Epson and know the challenges) these guys managed to make one that’s cool

2. It’s cool because it has personality- “little printer” shifts it from a inanimate object to something personal and cute

3. It’s cool because the form factor plays with our conception and expectations of a printer

4. Small is the way to go because it matches and fits with our other devices- it’s a printer that doesn’t look out of place with our mobile devices and it looks like we can take it wherever we go

5. It recognizes and demonstrates to us that we might have things on our mobile devices that warrant printing- smart user understanding

6. HP dominates the business and has spent millions trying to make printers cool and they have failed every single time

7. Anyone can have an idea, but not everyone brings them to life

8. You need to bring it to life in a clever way- Berg’s film is great and agencies should have no problem doing this part

9. If you can dream it up- why not make it real? There’s nothing stopping you from dreaming up a product, bringing it to life and selling it- why not make your own products? (via influxinsights)

First Camera-Phone Image From 1997

First camera-phone image taken by Philippe Kahn at the birth of his daughter Sophie on June 11, 1997 and wirelessly shared with more than 2000 people around the world instantly.

Tangible Computing – Making Mobile Phones Stiff, Scratchy & Stubborn

Fabian is a Berlin-based design researcher, working with Deutsche Telekom Laboratories. He is currently engaged in his PhD thesis about Tangible User Interfaces in mobile phones.

Blog: http://www.fabianhemmert.de Website: http://www.fabianhemmert.com

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera which captures a full spherical panorama when thrown into the air. At the peak of its flight, which is determined using an accelerometer, a full panoramic image is captured by 36 mobile phone camera modules.

Patent pending. More info: http://jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera

A project of the Computer Graphics Group, TU Berlin.

To be presented as an Emerging Technologies demonstration at the SIGGRAPH Asia 2011: Jonas Pfeil, Kristian Hildebrand, Carsten Gremzow, Bernd Bickel, Marc Alexa

Related articles

• Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera (makezine.com)

GIF Shop – Brilliant New iPhone App

Love it! The animated .gif maker for your iPhone. Easily create and edit looping animations, upload to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr all on the go! get it at the app store

Paid Apps vs. Free Apps – Intriguing Insights by Marco Arment (Instapaper)

First of all, kudos to Marco for creating with Instapaper a useful and one of my favorite tools out there. This is a great blog post about an experiment he started last fall.

Last fall, I conducted an experiment: I quietly removed Instapaper Free from the App Store for three days, leaving only the full, $4.99 Instapaper app. Not only did sales increase incrementally, but nobody seemed to notice.

On March 12, knowing I was heading into very strong sales from the iPad 2’s launch, I pulled Free again, this time for a month. Again, nobody noticed, and sales increased (although it’s hard to say which portion of the increase, if any, is attributable to Free’s absence, since most of it is from the iPad 2’s launch).

This break went so well that I pushed the return date back by another month. I may keep it out indefinitely, effectively discontinuing Instapaper Free.

Here’s why: …read full blog post (recommended)

A couple of his insights

Customer reviews: Instapaper Free always had worse reviews in iTunes than the paid app. Part of this is that the paid app was better, of course, but a lot of the Free reviews were completely unreasonable…

Product design: If you have a free version of your app, that will be the only version many people will ever see. So, for the Free users, that app — that extremely limited app that lacks almost all of Instapaper’s best features — is what they think Instapaper is.…

Demand: Maybe you think there aren’t enough people willing to pay $5 for an app with no free version. I used to think that, too. But I was wrong.

Smartphone Shipments Exceeded PC Shipments For The First Time

According to IDC, smartphone manufacturers shipped 100.9 million devices in the fourth quarter of 2010, while PC manufacturers shipped 92.1 million units worldwide. Or, more simply put, smartphones just outsold PCs for the first time ever.

The number of smartphones sold in Q4 2010 was up 87.2% from the 53.9 million sold in Q4 2009. For the year, vendors shipped 302.6 million smartphones – an increase of 74.4% from the 173.5 million in 2009.

PC sales were up in Q4, too, but just barely. From Q4 2009 to Q4 2010, the increase was only 5.5%. When looking at the yearly totals, however, PCs were still king. Manufacturers shipped 346.2 million units during 2010, compared with the 302.6 million mentioned above from smartphone makers. (via readwriteweb)

 

John’s Phone – Meet the World’s Most Basic Glorious Cell Phone

John’s Phone is the world’s most basic cell phone. They have 5 colors to choose from and a limited Gold Edition. John’s Phone allows you to make and receive calls anywhere in the world: no frills and no unnecessary features such as a camera, text messaging and an endless number of ringtones. John’s Phone keeps things simple. Designed by John Doe Amsterdam, making the cell phone a unique piece of Dutch design.

John’s Phone is a large-key phone. It requires no explanation. Perfect as a kids’ cell phone and for older users too.

The back of the phone features a flap containing an address book and a pen.

More about John’s Phone here.

 

Nokia’s ‘Calling All Innovators 2010’ – Winners announced

The winners of the global Calling All Innovators contest were announced on 15 September 2010 at the 2010 Nokia Developer Summit in London. Congrats to

Eco/Being Green category

• Winner: TripSketch Green Traveler by TripSketch Corp. (United States)
• First Runner-up: RecycleME by John Paul Lozano (Singapore)
• Second Runner-up: Green Plaza by Webdunia.com Pvt. Ltd. (India)

Entertainment category

• Winner:Comics Creator by Nextwave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. (India)
• First Runner-up: Morpho QuickPanorama by Morpho, Inc. (Japan/United States)
• Second Runner-up: Tudou Mobile by Tudou.com (China)
• Third Runner-up: Angry Birds by Rovio, Ltd. (Finland)

Productivity category

• Winner: BlogRadio by BlogRadio (United States)
• First Runner-up: Ansel-A by Kristopher Kantor (United States)
• Second Runner-up: PlanEasy2D by InfiMatra Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (India)
• Third Runner-up: WakeUp by Roland Michelberger (Hungary)

Life Improvement category

• Winner: eLiteracy by AppCRAFT (South Africa)
• First Runner-up: Car Black Box by Neusoft Mobile Solutions S.R.L. (Romania)
• Second Runner-up: Mobile Babycare by Shenzhen LEG (China)
• Third Runner-up: Medica by IRWAA, LLC (Egypt)

Related Articles

• Chinese Video Site Tudou Will Be Going Public “Soon” (newteevee.com)
• Tudou.com Plans IPO, Compete With Youku in China (businessweek.com)
• China’s Tudou.com Raises $50 Million (online.wsj.com)
• ‘Singapore can help develop property market in India’ (thehindu.com)
• America Has Lost Its Innovation Mojo? (paul.kedrosky.com)
• More Nokia related articles on my blog