Water is a very common thing, and not surprisingly it is also the subject of many interactive experiments. Here are some of them.
Mike Burton allows you to get creative with water, without getting wet, using this interactive wall.
You can draw obstacles on the wall, to change how the water flows. Or you can simply stand in front of it and use your entire body as an obstacle (which must be ultra-multi-touch).
Another interesting feature is how different types of water reacts. "Dry land" will react to nearby water sources and grow plants. Pools of flowing water will quickly produce different types of life. And stale water will get dirty and unpleasant including the present of flies.
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There are a lot of experiments going on with interactive multi-touch walls, but this is one of the more creative examples.
(via Next Nature and RSA)
Jelmer Moorman has created this water faucet that automatically follows your hands. The interesting bit is that the water turns from cold to hot depending on where your hands are. It is cold on the left side, which gradually turns hotter the more you move to the right.
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It is strikingly simple, but absolutely remarkable.
(via Engadget)
The last interactive concept is from Nicolas Büchi, who has created a display made out of real water tanks instead of a LCD screen, in which you can control the movement and quantity of bubbles by dipping you hand into 3 pools of water.
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It is a nice example of mixing physical objects and digital interaction.
(via The Liquid Display)
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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