Modern technology is cool, real cool

today at film school a guy called Lucas Young came and talked to us about computers and multimedia. it was amazing. full credit to him, especially for telling me "you could probably use another gig of ram" which i think characterises him quite nicely. thoroughly nice guy, in case the prior sentence sounds dismissive.

here follows some of the wicked stuff he talked about and showed us on the net.

Ted Han has this amazing multitouch screen that requires no manual, keyboard or mouse. in the video Ted talks about how technology has evolved to the extent that it should come to us, not us to it.

sounds like www.joost.com will, as it grows, spell the end for television networks as we know them today. planning to offer 4000 channels within five years, (but presumably not excluding TVNZ's DIY dream shows and Celebrity Treasure Island) you can choose your own content to schedule a personalised evening of viewing. thus the advertising $ -> network -> producers/directors will probably be a-changing, meaning perhaps product placement as a main form of revenue for creators of screen productions? i've always considered it fairly ghastly but may need to re-assess. anyway joost is worth checking out for its choice advertisement alone. and if you were to say their graphics were crap, i would say: incorrect.


rapidshare offers, for about 9 euros a month, online storage of files up to 100MB, available for download. save on postage and time. i'm not sure however what the advantage is over youtube, which has the same max storage size and is free.

speaking of you tube, this one is cool

red.com offers what is apparently an amazing camera for $18,000, Gerban (school director) and Lucas agree that this is a serious plummet in price per degree of excellence. i don't have the expertise to assess the camera but eg can shoot at 4k resolution, while LOTR was shot on 2K and converted to 4K afterwards.

digg gives you news you can use, its user-rated, thus harnessing the democratic nature of the internet for good. go, internet.

fubon is really pretty and has some lovely features (click on the children to stop them playing music, and watch their reaction).

michelin has amazing 3D graphics for folk that sell tyres. do "come explore".

ubuntu has a free open source operating system with the basic software some people might pirate.

discusses twitter, "best blogging tool" according to the 2007 SXSW music festival. it looks kind of average but i'm going to give it a chance. after all Time says everyone is talking about it.

google got its due props, and it turns out that maps and earth are already integrated - i'd never used the hybrid function. its bloody awesome, i've daydreamed about this. Gerban says google earth is intending to increase power by 8 times in the near future. i can already see my parents roof, now i will see the cat as well.

goowy is a "webtop", an operating system within a webpage.

craziest point of all: with redtacton you can store data on your skin. this will eliminate the need for business cards (and other stuff too i guess but thats the example Lucas used) coz you exchange data by shaking hands! wow.

thanks Lucas, coz i was mega-inspired by the end of that lecture. i haven't written a blog in a year or so. if i've left stuff out i'll update soon, now i need to sleep.