The Car that Drives Itself, in 2040: http://bit.ly/9fBXSE (by @baekdal ).Driverless cars are nothing new. We have seen them in countless of movies. A lot of people, and companies are trying to make one, including the US military. But so far the technology has not been able to make it possible.
But the driverless car is interesting because of several things.
And that is just some of the things that the car can do. Imagine what you can do as a person, if you don't have to focus on the driving part. It's like taking the train without all the annoying things about public transport.
Mike and Maaike recently introduce their concept for a driverless car called ATNMBL.
"ATNMBL is short for Autonomobile, a title that merges Autonomy with the Automobile. Upon entering ATNMBL, you are presented with a simple question: "Where can I take you?" There is no steering wheel, brake pedal or driver's seat. ATNMBL drives for you. Electric powered plus solar assist, with wrap-around seating for seven, ATNMBL offers living and/or working comfort, views, conversations, entertainment, and social connectedness."
There is a lot of very interesting things about this car. It's fully designed to be driverless. It's not this kind of mixed design we have seen in the past. It's shorter than most cars today, but its interior is fully focus on you and the space within. It has electric motors in each wheel, and the power is stored beneath the floor.
But the most interesting idea is the about speed. Today we want a car that can go fast. But is that really what we need? Maybe it is not about how fast we can go, but about how fast we can get to our destination. Could a car with less power get us there quicker because it is better at anticipating the flow of traffic?
Of course, I do not actually think that we will give up the idea of driving completely. But the ideas and concepts of the driverless car are certainly exciting, and I see a lot of future possibilities as a result.
(Read more about it over at: Mike and Maaike)
Here is a brilliant idea. What if your furniture could react intelligently to your presence and anticipate when you need it. Or what if it could move out of your way out of the way when you are just passing by? What if your furniture could help out in social situation? Wouldn’t that be something?
There are many online image editors. Like Picnik (which was recently bought by Google), Pixlr, Aviary Phoenix, Photoshop online and many others. All them require that you go to their website to edit your images. Wouldn't it be interesting if you could bring the online image editor into your own web apps.?
Back in late October 2009, Adobe Labs showcased an upcoming feature in Photoshop called Content Aware Fill. And it was absolutely amazing. Now they have released another video, showcasing even more impressive image manipulations.
Earlier this week Penguin presented their vision for how they could translate their book into the ebook format. Or rather, how they can really make us of digital publishing to create much better books.
Remember Microsoft Surface? You know, the big multi-touch coffee table? Now Microsoft is working on a much smaller version with Mobile Surface.
Today, Microsoft announced "Windows Phone 7 Series", featuring a completely new edition to the long infamous Windows Mobile operating system. It looks modern, polished, graphically exciting and nothing like the tiny windows 95 that we have been used to seeing.
The newspaper industry is falling over themselves in the fight to come up with a ever more impressive newspaper tablet. The problem is that they miss the point completely (as I wrote about in "The Future of News, Tablets, and Business Models").
As you probably know, both Google and Microsoft have entered into a partnership with Twitter and is now incorporating social search into their regular search engines. This is a big deal because social is a very important element of the future of search... it's not the only part though.
Wouldn't you like to mix wild hand gestures, cute birds flying around your screen, Twitter, tweeting bird sounds, and your web camera? Well, now you can with Flyar.
A number of people have pointed me towards PhotoSketch, a research/student project from Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at National University of Singapore (now there is a mouthful).
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