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Jawbone announces Up, a wearable wristband to track health, fight obesity. A combination of a sensor-infused wristband and a smartphone app will provide nudges for healthier living, based on your behavior.
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It’s not too often that I experience something that makes me want to tell everyone I know.
While at Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons event a few weeks ago, five panelist presented their health-based digital solutions during a section of the event called “Signs of the Future Today.� Among these innovators was Richard Price, Fire Chief of the San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District. He told a story of how he was sitting in a restaurant with some friends when he heard sirens. Being the Fire Chief, he was instantly curious about where the engines were going. When the sounds got louder, he realized the emergency incident was next door to the restaurant where he was dining. This got him thinking, “I’m close by. I know CPR. I could have helped!� That thought led him to create this app:
Price rattled off the facts about response times having a huge impact on rates of survival – especially for cardiac arrest incidents. The statistics are astounding. Within weeks of the app’s debut, Price noticed a tremendous increase in the number of people signing up for CPR courses. And this is exactly the app’s power – not only does it enable people to help others by giving the people the tools they need at their fingertips, but it motivates people to engage, inspiring us to do our part to keep our communities healthy.
If you’re in the Bay Area, you can sign up for a CPR course here.
Today was the launch of Visual.ly, the most daring start-up in visualization after the previous demise of Swivel and other "social visualization" ventures.
Once their web servers can handle the load, the new and the already much hyped website allows access to over 2,000 different infographic illustrations, uploaded by designers like JESS3 and David McCandless, and including a large collection of own infographics. Visual.ly has already attracted key partners in publishing, design and distribution, including The Atlantic, CNNMoney.com, eBay, GOOD Magazine, OMD, National Geographic, The Next Web, and Smirnoff. Each of these publications is allowed to upload its own graphics, which can then be embedded and shared via a Visual.ly-created embed code.
Visual.ly is also launching a so-called "Twitter Visualizer" application to exemplify the kind of automated tools it is creating to turn data into illustrative images. The visualization compares one's Twitter activity and personality to that of others, including celebrities or Web gurus: "Twitter Visualizer is a great example of how Visual.ly can be creative with numbers. With 34 celebrities, five mouths, seven hair colors, 12 hair styles, two genders, 11 outfits, 2 positions, and 28 accessories, the program can put each Tweeter in 17,592,960 different scenarios." (example image below)
The Twitter Visualizer is the first of a series of self-service tools that will allow any person to turn huge amounts of data into infographics "automatically". This main infographic creation engine will be launched later this year, marking the end of Visual.ly's beta period.
See also Techcrunch.
Now we have to wait until visualize.me launches...
Geek di tutto il mondo, drizzate le orecchie. Bjork sta realizzando un capolavoro di arte musicale geek. Il Guardian ha scritto che il suo nuovo album non sarà solo pubblicato come album, ma anche come un �app album�. In pratica, “Biophilia� per iPad includerà 10 app, tutte racchiuse da una “mother app�. Ogni app singola rappresenterà uno dei brani dell’album, e ne sarà la rappresentazione geek.
Copio e incollo di seguito la descrizione di Wikipedia:
<<It will also be an evolving entity that will grow as and when the album’s release schedule dictates, with new elements added. Scott Snibbe, an interactive artist who was commissioned by Björk back in the summer of 2010 to produce the app, as well as the images for the live shows (which will combine his visuals with National Geographic imagery, mixed live from iPads on the stage), describes how Björk saw the possibilities of using apps, not as separate to the music, but as a vital component of the whole project.
For one song, “Virus�, the app will feature a close-up study of cells being attacked by a virus to represent what Snibbe calls: “A kind of a love story between a virus and a cell. And of course the virus loves the cell so much that it destroys it.� The interactive game challenges the user to halt the attack of the virus, although the result is that the song will stop if the player succeeds. In order to hear the rest of the song, the players will have to let the virus take its course. Using some artistic license, the cells will also mouth along to the chorus. It’s this determination to fuse different elements together, be it juxtaposing a female choir from Greenland with the bleeps and glitches of electronic music pioneers Matmos during the Vespertine tour, or meshing soaring strings and jagged beats on Homogenic, that “helps explain the power and success of Björk’s collaborations�.>>
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For a really long time, Google has been treating the social world the same way as Microsoft treated the internet. We all remember how Bill Gates back in 1994 said "I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years." and for many years (and still to this day), Microsoft suffers from their lack of internet mindset.
Google has been the same way. Social to them was an algorithm - something to add to search. But in recent years, things have started to change. First with Google Wave (brilliant idea, but the world wasn't ready for it - and it was too hard to replace email). Then Google Buzz, which flopped catastrophically. Then with several minor projects that didn't really catch on. To the recent Plus one button, which wasn't really social.
But now, it seems like Google is actually on to something. The new Google+ is all about you as a person, the connections you have, and how Google can help you to have a more meaningful "social circle." It is not about algorithms. It is about people.
I haven't tried it yet. I do not have access (for several reasons). But I can give you all the things I have seen.
There are good articles about it over at Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb and GigaOm. You can also go to Google's blog and hear what Google says about it. You can see the Google+ information pages via this URL (Google Apps users can't enter via the front page - but this URL gets you in) ...or you can take the interactive tour here.
Or you can look at all the videos below.
Not all relationships are created equal. So in life we share one thing with college buddies, another with parents, and almost nothing with our boss. The problem is that today's online services turn friendship into fast food-wrapping everyone in "friend-paper"and sharing really suffers.
In light of these shortcomings we asked ourselves, "What do people actually do?" And we didn't have to search far for the answer. People in fact share selectively all the time - with their circles.
Sparks delivers a feed of highly contagious content from across the Internet. On any topic you want, in over 40 languages. Simply add your interests, and you'll always have something to watch, read and share - with just the right circle of friends.
With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you're free, and spend time with your Circles.
...and many other things.
It is really very very exciting.
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Imagine when a journey from A to B is no longer routine, as your car in the near-future encourages a sense of play, exploration and learning.
This is the image engineers and designers from Toyota Motor Europe (TME) and the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) had for Toyota’s “Window to the World� vehicle concept, which was recently exhibited at the ACEA exhibition: “Our Future Mobility Now�. The concept re-defines the relationship between passengers in a vehicle and the world around it, by transforming the vehicle’s windows into an interactive interface. Using augmented reality, what used to be a pane of glass, begins to provide passengers with information about landmarks and other objects as they go past. The window can also be used as a canvas for drawings, which then interacts with the passing environment. Engineers and designers from TME’s Kansei Design Division teamed up with CIID to develop this concept in the context of near-future mobility. Instead of creating a concept simply with strong visual aesthetics, they aimed to create beautiful and intangible experiences to address specific needs and desires, to bring genuine value to the vehicle’s passengers. Through the latest advances in augmented technology, TME Kansei Division and CIID developed five concepts for Toyota’s “Window to the World�. |
In the same vein as the Tron special effects guys, Tatiana Plakhova has created some rather stunning works of art centered around data visualization. Plakhova, a graduate of Moscow State University, owns the design studio Colour Atelier in Russia.
Combining social games with a cause has become a popular way to engage game players on Facebook with raising money for various philanthropic causes. For example, Zynga has raised funds via its games for the earthquake relief efforts in both Japan and Haiti over the past few years. Startup Good World Games is developing Facebook games devoted purely to marrying the power of causes with the viral explosion of social gaming. The startup’s first Facebook game, MyConservationPark, allows you to protect an endangered animal from environmental and human threats while enriching the park with fauna and flora to create a sustainable habitat.
There are 2 modes of Play in the game: Play and Decorate. In Play mode, new challenges constantly appear that you must overcome in order to save and protect your endangered species (i.e. there’s a fire in your park, hire a firefighter to put it out) In this mode, your eco-system and hero levels are affected by your success in conquering these challenges.
In Decorate mode, you can create a haven for your species and add people and creatures, trees, food and water, watchtowers and sheds, and arrange your park as you see fit. You can purchase virtual good such as park rangers, native species such as antelopes, structures such as watchtowers and camps, flora (indigenous trees and bushes), water and insects.
All purchases of virtual goods directly benefit Good World Games’ non-profit partners with 15% of in-game purchase revenue donated to select causes. Each park benefits a different partner, which include Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, Sea Shepherd, Wildaid and Orangutan Outreach. You can see what percent of revenue from your game interactions have been donated as well.
Each park contains species native to its location, with different art and challenges. And top scorers in game will, on a periodic basis, receive real world rewards such as an all-expenses paid trip to help (as a volunteer) one of the non-profit partners in the field.
Eventually Good World Games plans to roll out similar games that allow Facebook users to play games towards social good.
