MOBILE APP: Waze

Robert Scoble spends some time with the WAZE team. The following video is an overview of a crowdsourced traffic mapping / info app for mobile devices that uses drivers to report on various driving conditions. One aspect that caught my attention was the simple feature that turns your car into packman. Nothing like an old school game of GPS packman.

Here’s how the WAZE site describes the offering: “Real-time maps and traffic information based on the wisdom of the crowd. Waze is a FREE social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. 100% powered by users, the more you drive, the better it gets.”

MakerBot prints Thom Yorke’s head

I’m a fan of MakerBot “robots that make things.” I got to spend some time with the MakerBot team a few months back. We shot an episode of RADAR with them which will be airing later this year and I wrote about them in the current issue of Filmmaker Mag. The following is a cool bts look at the transformation from 3D render to physical object.

(hat tip: bre from MakerBot)

A new infrastructure

I recently contributed a post to Thompson on Hollywood. There’s been quite a bit of talk about the woes of the industry and I thought I’d contribute something to the discussion that focused on some simple steps towards the future.

Where the industry goes from here is going to require a rethinking of the infrastructure that supports it. To realistically move forward, innovation, experimentation and R&D is needed to help create an OPEN framework that will improve the funding, creation, distribution and discovery of truly independent work.

Here are some thoughts:

1. Keep it Open. As the industry shifts, it is key to build the next generation of discovery, creation, and distribution upon systems that embrace the following:
– Open software/hardware that encourages innovation and rewards improvements on functionality.
– Open business models that enable filmmakers, distributors, exhibitors, and audiences to sell, trade, and share films in ways that directly reward performance and encourage a healthy sense of competition.
– Transparency: In the age of connected devices and the real-time web, there is NO reason why tracking, performance and reporting can’t be accessible in real-time.

:: Read More

Projection in your palm

As chips get smaller and resolution increases we’re not far off from mobile phones that will shoot HD or small hand held projectors that will enable screenings virtually anywhere. The following is a concept design by Miika Mahonen for a Nokia device called the Pulse. Even though it doesn’t exist it’s not hard to imagine that it soon will. But it does tease an interesting range of possibilities.


Jumping into Streamy

I’m always on the hunt for ways to aggregate the data that surrounds my life. A way to combine my online activities while streamlining the discovery of things that I find interesting. Then there’s the desire to share those items with others and in the process see what interests them.

I’ve tried various start pages and feed aggregators. Some have been browser based others desktop apps. I’ve signed up, logged on and tested mores services and solutions then I care to recall. Which brings me to my current obsession.

Streamy is a hybrid – part feed reader, part start page, part social aggregator. This incarnation is relatively new and currently in beta. It’s an impressive service with a nice degree of customization. Where Streamy shines is in the way that it integrates IM (aim, live, gtalk, yahoo), facebook, twitter, digg, flickr, and friendfeed in addition to normal feed reader functionality. The interface is smooth and intuitive making it easy to get up and running. The final ingredient that makes Streamy standout is the ease of sharing stories with others on the platform. There are friend sharing and follow features, ways to create groups along with IM and Chat functionality that is dedicated to the Streamy platform. The following is a screen cast that provides an overview of the service.