Interesting story on NPR’s All Things Considered on how parts of Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie, Minority Report, have come to pass, way ahead of time (the movie was set in 2054). The story features personalization of advertisements, the prediction of crime, and the floating screen computer interface all featured in the movie.
(Via The Future According To ‘Minority Report’ May Be Now : NPR.)
“IDEO Labs – Amazing 3D Immersion Technology
Interesting movie of an end-user experiencing a fully immersive 3D environment. A great example of how the body may be “tricked” into believing virtual objects and environments are real.
Discovery News reports that an Israeli company (eXaudios) has released software (Magnify) which detects a user’s emotional state in real time. Its primarily use is in call centers, but might prove an interesting input for a game system. Since it would require the player be involved in a multi-user chat session, the game scenarios would be limited. The game mechanics could tweak game play or narrative branching based upon the player’s stress level to amp up the excitement.
The software is only accurate 76-83% of the time. While investigating the failure cases, they discovered that certain diseases exhibit detectable speech patterns. So you may be diagnosed with Parkinson’s the next time you call your bank!
eXaudios presented at Demo 2010 and won the $1M prize.
From Slashdot, Apple has patented remote keyless entry using an iPhone. Your phone will use Near Field Communications to unlock a car door, office door, house door, etc.
So now your house has to be Mac compatible as well! Can the iDoor be far behind?
This New York Times article hints at the future of powering portable devices using body motion. Watches have mechanical winding mechanisms based upon body movement, but scientist at Princeton can generate electricity from body movement by “printing piezoelectric crystals onto flexible, biocompatible rubberlike material”.
Between this and RCA’s WiFi charger introduced at CES 2010, will charge cables go the way of the buggy whip?
I found this interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about several of the early iPad apps. The article focuses on the unique demands of navigation using using only touch.
NeuroSky has released dry sensor ECG headset geared toward gamers. These have been announced for some time, but it’s the first time I’ve played with them. The idea is to record brain activity when the player is in the “zone” and then use biofeedback to assist the player to get BACK into the “zone”. One group at their GDC booth was collecting data on player concentration/interest via a puzzle game. With a large enough dataset, this will be a breakthrough to measure user interest during game testing. It’s quite a leap to suggest ECG patterns would be similar enough between people to assess interest, boredom, etc. But if they are successful, it would be a boon for game testing and hopefully produce more engaging titles.
The Game Based Learning 2010 Conference was held in London on March 29-30 and have posted some of their videos. The first one is of Mary Matthews, TruSim (aka Blizzard entertainment), on the use of high-fidelity games and simulations for health care education.
Unless you’re in a media blackout, you already know the iPad will arrive this Saturday. Seton Hall announced it’s “giving” an iPad to all of full time students in the fall. Gee, I wonder if their technology fee will magically increase by $599?
The best iPad coverage I’ve found is in PC Magazine (of all places). They provide both video, slides, and text descriptions. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362063,00.asp