Despite what you see in movies, the reality is that computer voice recognition still sucks. There’s a great illustration of this in the following video…designer Michael Silber had Siri speak some text, and that was then sent to Google Voice, which transcribed it into text. That text was fed back into Siri..and the process repeated. It’s much like the ‘telephone’ game that kids play, and the results are similar…the message quickly degrades into gibberish.
Berlin Airport Fiasco
Building a new airport isn’t easy…but in Berlin, they’re facing a real mess. Rather than opening in 2011 as scheduled, their new airport STILL isn’t ready. What I found most interesting though, and what prompted me to share it here, was the fact that their fancy computer-controlled lighting system is so ineptly created that they don’t know how to turn the lights off. Yeah. Way to go. The list of problems just goes on from there. Escalators that are too short. Having to chop down hundreds of freshly planted trees. Fire and venting systems that may or may not work (they don’t know…). Just amazing…read more about it here.
Thermoelectric Fabric
Researchers have managed to make a flexible, inexpensive energy-producing fabric that can be used in clothing or covering any surface (like inside the walls of your house, as an outer layer to use heat escaping your house). Traditional thermoelectric devices have been too rigid (and expensive) for this, so this is a pretty big deal. It’s not that efficient, but it doesn’t need to be when it’s cheap and can cover large areas. Power production is around one milliwatt per square centimeter, so you might get a watt or two from clothing made with this – but that would go a long ways towards charging your iPhone, for example. As a bonus feature, it’s piezoactive, meaning that energy is created when the material is flexed. The first products made from this material might hit the market as soon as next year.
(read more at Business Insider)
Pebble Smartwatch – first impressions
Well it ended up being about six months late, but…my Pebble Smartwatch finally arrived! I backed this on Kickstarter knowing it might be a bit delayed (most projects there are), but wow, sure took ’em a while. So, was it worth the wait? To be honest, I’m still undecided. The build quality is very nice and the product is exactly as it’s been portrayed…except for one glaring omission. This is, at its most basic level, just a remote display for your iPhone…what makes it special are the apps it runs to help extend functionality of your phone. I figured that with such a long delay on the manufacturing side, the software would be further along and would blow me away, but that’s not the case. There are no apps. It’ll control the music playing on your phone, and display text messages and some other phone notifications…but its functionality doesn’t go much beyond that. I think this is a problem easily solved and I do expect that situation to improve…but this company can’t afford delays, there are very large competitors eying this market and contemplating a move into it. Pebble needs to move fast, extend their reach and dominate this market or else they’ll quickly be pushed aside by the 800-pound gorillas in the room. Their hardware is good…they need to quickly build their app ecosystem now.
Flying sailboats
The AC72 class boats being prepped for this year’s America’s Cup are truly impressive. Due to foils under the water, both hulls lift at speed and make it look like the boats are flying over the waves at incredible speeds…this is going to be quite a spectacle to watch! Check out this video from Oracle Team USA: