Gadgets for 2008

Here are my predictions of devices and technologies that will become mainstream in 2008 (because I want them).

• A cheaper Optimus Maximus keyboard
• Quality 42" televisions for under $1k
• Cheap High def projectors
• e-Ink eBook Readers (better than Kindle or Sony)
• Mood clothes for women
• Mood response clothes for men (to project complementary emotions to women)

I received a USB-Hub with Notepad & Mood Light from Microsoft last week.  Now, it doesn't actually detect your mood from what I can tell, but it does attract attention.  I'm thinking mood-clothes with texting capabilities are the next big thing.

These technologies are sort of fringe, but are probably going to get developed a bit further to something mainstream and maybe even adopted by the general public next year.

• Mind-reading technology (that at least picks up positive or negative signals)
• Event-driven Cancer detector (that uses wireless nanotechnology combined with microscopic gold flecks to reflect signal)
• Clothes that change colour based on your blood alcohol level (or blood sugar level for diabetics)
• Heart-attack GPS alert that sends alert to paramedics
• Neuroeconomic Marketing tools (that influence your purchases based on an analysis of your brain's decision-making capabilities.)
• The Men in Black Mind Eraser - using Neuroplasticity regenerator
• Wii Mario with wii-brain - Brain-computer interface to play Mario.
• DIY Supercomputer scavenging the cpu cycles of your old PCs and whatever else is connected to the network
• Holographic 3D television
• Simple desalinization of water from the world's oceans will be possible.
• Cheap and safe methods of cooking will become available to the people who need it the most.
• Cheap and easy ways to harness wind power from the blowing trees themselves.
• Cheap and safe personal flight transportation
• Anything with Nano or Neuro in the name will be hot.
• Health Care, Alternative Food Sources, changes to currency, and Alternative Energy will be the hot topics of 2008.

These technologies just scare the heck out of me.

• Ion Colliders that may or may not destroy the universe next year, or at least the Earth in seconds.
• Voting machines, no explanation necessary.
• Seed vaults which will be discovered millions of years from now by intelligent dinosaurs.
• Program Trading that could tank the stock market just from one blue screen of death.

Invent something in 2008 with Phidgets.

Light something with LED Shoppe or  PhotonLights.

Create art with NewMindSpace.

Get started building your own Optimus Maximus keyboard, for the low, low price of $5,500.  (or just buy it above for under $500)

Screenkey Downloads Section - Programmable LCD key switches with multi-colour LED backlighting

Petoria comes true....

 

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

The Raw Story | Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US

Facebook causes a recession

I went to a Facebook Developer Conference a couple months ago and they mentioned their top requested feature.  What was it?  Building new applications easily?  Launching ads & popups?  Buying stuff online?  Sharing my personal information with Google? 

Nope.  Categorization of friends. 

Now you can pile your friends into categories like "distant relatives" and "people who went to high school with people I know but I don't know them but I'll add them anyway" and "my dog's facebook friends".

The scary thing?  People can see when you're "Online Now" too.

The other scary thing?  Context.  Now whomever has access to these lists of friends also has access to any tags you assign to them. 

This is just a start. Expect to see lots of new Friend Lists features in 2008 that will give you more control over the information you share on Facebook and who you share it with.

Source: Facebook | The Facebook Blog

The problem?  Facebook, you just wiped about 2% more worth of productivity hours off the GDP of the US & Canada.  Any company that hasn't banned Facebook outright will inevitably have organization freaks sorting and filing their friends and relatives into various buckets. 

And the "Facebook whales"?  Robert Scoble, Donald Trump, Mark Cuban, Tila Tequila?  Something tells me they should hire somebody to manage their friends lists for them. 

Life's too short for Facebook Friends Lists.

$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

I refuse to buy ink from any retail store.  When I run out, I usually pick up another printer and give away the one I have.  Since I go through ink about once a year, the cost benefits are there, and I get new (albeit cheap) technology. 

Recently I picked up a 6-month supply of ink (or in my case a lifetime supply, if it didn't expire in 6 months).    This was shipped to me in a box as a set of generic ink cartridges and 20 refills.  It included a reset switch to fool the printer into using it.

The price on eBay?  $30 including shipping.  The quality?  Don't really care for that price, but it looks fine to my eyes.  The location?  China.. did you have to ask?  "The Ink Manufactory company, genuine ink.  Keep away from child!"

It would be interesting to find out whether there is a 'conspiracy' to hold back cheap toner out of retail stores from places like China.  Since Epson has a built-in feature that locks it from using 'non-genuine' cartridge refills, I wonder what the magic eight ball would say?

Question:  Is there a worldwide conspiracy to replace oil with price-controlled ink toner as the global force to dominate the world?

Magic 8 Ball:

A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.

Source: $8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

Mark Cuban is still my friend

For now... He's hit the 5k friend limit on Facebook.  Looks like he may have removed my dog though... 

Here's a secret, Mark... you can have more than one account on Facebook.

"i also had to make decisions on the 100 plus new friend requests I get per day. Could this person really be my friend ? Could this person really be someone i do business with ? Did I actually know this person ?

Its kind of a bizarre process of clicking on ignore and deleting friend requests. To any of you who I have deleted or ignored. Its nothing personal."

Source: Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog

I wonder if I'm in "the Power Layer?" :)

"The Power Layer is probably the group of folks that caused you to join Facebook in the first place.  These are the folks that you wanted to have some sort of easy way of tracking them down and talking to them because they are influencers or connectors in an industry or circle that you either are a part of, want to be a part of, or have an occasionally overlap into the world they influence."

Let me ask the magic eight ball...

Question: did i make mark cuban join facebook?

eerie!

 Anyone getting a Fathead for Christmas because of all their Facebook friends?

Resident Evil Redux

This is just plain spooky.  Haven't they seen The Thing?

It has been 50 years since scientists first created DNA in a test tube, stitching ordinary chemical ingredients together to make life's most extraordinary molecule. Until recently, however, even the most sophisticated laboratories could make only small snippets of DNA -- an extra gene or two to be inserted into corn plants, for example, to help the plants ward off insects or tolerate drought.
Now researchers are poised to cross a dramatic barrier: the creation of life forms driven by completely artificial DNA.

Source: Scary sh*t right here... :( - Gold & Silver Forum

Drama at MOMA

 I went to MOMA a couple of weeks ago.  I ran through at record pace, covering all the floors in less than 45 minutes. My plane was taking off in a few hours and I still wanted to see Grand Central & the UN building, so I decided I'd get the most of my CityPass and cover off as many things as possible.  Of course I didn't really get appreciate much of the art, but then again it was packed (on a Monday before US Thanksgiving) and I'm not a big fan of crowds, or modern art for that matter.

I was much more impressed with the Morgan Library than MOMA, but that was probably because I'm more into books than art, and Morgan had a cool hidden staircase put in behind a shelf in his 4-story library of books.  According to the security guard, he used to stand on the 4th floor balcony during parties, as guests below would try to figure out how he got there.

Apparently being a curator of MOMA has its dramas.  When Lincoln Kirstein decided to commission a few "Made in America" murals in 1932, he got some decidedly un-American results.  This caused some big disturbances between the cultural bigwigs of New York.

The “victory,” it soon became apparent, was not yet secured. No sooner had J. P. Morgan sanctioned the show than Conger Goodyear returned from vacation, declared his “furious” opposition to “the Communists,” and threatened to resign as MoMA’s president if the decision wasn’t reversed. The whole day of April 27, 1932, was spent in what Lincoln called “cross machinations.” Lincoln himself manned the barricades, dispatching runners in all directions. He sent Betty Bliss to persuade her father, Cornelius Bliss, guardian of Lizzie Bliss’s collection (which MoMA desperately wanted to secure), to intercede with Goodyear. He got from Gropper an actual count of how many artists were really prepared to secede (probably twenty-five, Gropper reported). He called Wittenberg “to make sure of an attempt to get an injunction to stop the show” should the three artists be excluded. He advised Nelson to try to make Goodyear resign; Nelson “was mad enough,” Lincoln wrote in his diary, “to do anything.” And finally, he tried, with limited success, to ascertain just how many trustees stood behind Goodyear.

Source: ARTnews

And with all of the effort, drama, and legal involvement, how did it pan out in the end?  Apparently scandal didn't sell as well in this case... well it was the Great Depression too.

Lincoln drew a sigh of relief—but then nearly choked on it. The show’s thirty-odd paintings barely got hung (and not very well) in time for the next day’s press opening, and the day after that, as the notices began to appear, it became clear that the show was in for a severe drubbing. Lincoln himself acknowledged that only a few of the panels were of any real distinction, but he also felt that those few, along with the experimental nature of the effort, fully redeemed the enterprise.

The critics disagreed. Every single reviewer lambasted the show.

And what did Lincoln think of how he rubbed everyone that mattered the wrong way?

Lincoln played out the disaster with bravado and humor. As he wrote Agnes Mongan, then the Fogg Museum curator, “The mural show was a shattering failure & ruined my, er, reputation with all those to whom reputation counts. . . . But I was delighted at the universal irritation & the general feeling of betrayal everyone seemed to feel that I provided, I who was so charming & bright, etc. No longer. Now I’m only an, er, Jewish Bolshevik with shocking bad manners.”

I would go back to MOMA again, though I'm still a bigger fan of the Met, and non-American art like the Great Masters, Group of Seven, and works out of Asia. 

I spent a ton of time in the Asian exhibits, and one piece really caught my eye... probably because I was catching it's 8 eyes.

Amero the free

Got my Ameros today.... will make good stocking stuffers. 

A currency union, similar to the European Union "Euro" has been proposed for North America. The name of the new currency is the "Amero". The Wikipedia encyclopedia article has additional details about the "Amero". This has been the source for many conspiracy theories tied in with other proposals such as the "Canamex Corridor".

Source: UNA Amero Pattern Coins

1000 'Ameros' are going for $1,100.00.  Does Lady Liberty have a ray gun in her hand?

Christmas gift idea - $99 Eye-Fi SD Card

When I went to New York a couple of weeks ago, I thought my memory card was corrupted.  I realized the PC I was using was so old it didn't like any flash cards larger than 1GB. 

This might have helped.  Stream your pictures from your digital camera directly to your PC, then the web. 

The Eye-Fi Card is a wireless memory card. It automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to your PC or Mac and to your favorite photo sharing, printing, blogging or social networking site.

No cables, no waiting, no hassles.

Source: Eye-Fi » Home

And it supports facebook, among others...

A significant advance in cancer detection

This 3D X-Ray machine provides stunning High Definition 3D visuals. 

"This scanner allows radiologists to produce high quality images and is also designed to reduce patients' exposure to X-rays," Steve Rusckowski, chief executive of Philips Medical Systems, said.

"It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats."

Source: BBC NEWS | Health | 'Super' scanner shows key detail

Probably costs a bunch too.