Coming soon, super-vision
News From the Future “Before he became an inventor and businessman, Ron Blum was a practicing opthalmologist. About twice a year, he would encounter a patient whose eyesight was better than 20/20. Such cases of super vision were a phenomenon that Blum and the science of opthalmology couldn’t explain. “I would just say to the person: Consider yourself blessed,” says Blum. “I never would have believed that I would be running a company 20 years later that was developing a product that could give supervision to anyone.” [via] Link.
Amazing video of a touch screen interface – “While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.” [
Wired article about earning a living by selling the things you make, in the virtual word – “Jennifer Grinnell, Michigan furniture delivery dispatcher turned fashion designer in cyber space, never imagined that she could make a living in a video game. Grinnell’s shop, Mischief, is in Second Life, a virtual world whose users are responsible for creating all content. Grinnell’s digital clothing and “skins” allow users to change the appearance of their avatars — their online representations — beyond their wildest Barbie dress-up dreams.” 
GoRobotics confirms our suspicions. “It seems to be pretty self-evident that pets are good for their owners. But, what about robot pets? Some scientists at the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue’s Veterinary school say yes, robot pets do benefit humans. Petting an Aibo caused the human stress hormone cortisol to decrese in patients, much like a real dog, although the effects weren’t as pronounced.” [
Here comes an interesting trend – buying real world goods with virtual money – “The first real product, an XFX GeForce graphics card, is selling for L$20,000 or about US$80 (approx. $L250 = US$1). Makes sense, upgrade your system from work within the virtual world you’re running. What next?…How about something simple that generates from the SL itself, like user-created t-shirts a la something like Threadless? What do you think would work? Gosh, virtual currency for virtual things is going to be sooooo passe soon.” 
Wow, it’s like a backup for organics: “Norway is planning to build a “doomsday vault” inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world’s crops. The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank. It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet’s sources of food.” [
I wonder if parks will start installing meters now…“San Francisco based art collective Rebar decided to take the concept of a parking spot to the next level. On November 16th they installed an actual park in a parking space in downtown San Francisco for their project PARK(ing), “a temporary urban park”. People enjoying the park had to feed the parking meter (ie. pay the rent) in order to keep the park open.” Thanks Scott! 
