Challis Hodge’s UXblog

Just came across this Periodic Table of Videos over at the University of Nottingham. Nothing extraordinary here, just a nice cast of characters using technology to make the world a better place…or is it?

Still a few days lefty to check out Open House at Art Center College in Pasadena, CA. It’s running through July 1.

Open House: Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living envisions the house of the future as a place for new spatial experiences, new systems of sustainability and new sensory enhancements. This open-ended exhibition and multi-faceted research initiative, incorporating Art Center research studios, as well as a series of public programs, encourages creative individuals to make a substantial contribution to the dialogue on how we will live in the future.

The traveling exhibition, organized by the Vitra Design Museum and Art Center College of Design, opened August 2006 in Essen, Germany. The exhibit is anchored by 10 commissioned exploring future dwellings.

So my suspicions are confirmed. The government did create Halo as a pre-draft training tool. ;-)

Darpa, the Pentagon’s wide-eyed research arm, is betting big on “metamaterials” — composites that can seemingly-impossible new properties, thanks to their molecular structure. But even for Darpa, and even for metamaterials, this seems like a long shot: a $15 million program to build shoot-through, one-way-invisible, self-healing shields for soldiers in urban battlefields.

Metamaterials are already showing promise, as the building blocks to real-life invisibility cloaks; that’s because the composites let electromagnetic waves flow around them, instead of reflecting ‘em back. Darpa’s “Asymmetric Materials for the Urban Battlespace” program goes way, way beyond mere invisibility, however.

from wired

Rumor has it Google is planning a branded cell phone that could feature deeply embedded Google applis. The company has refused to confirm or deny that such a venture is in process at all. If the search giant does indeed decide to go ahead with a branded mobile, it could change the cell phone market dramatically.

Thomson Financial has begun replacing humans with computers to write stories in the newsroom. The computers work so fast that an earnings story can be released within 0.3 seconds of the company making results public. You can’t break a story much faster than that!

This is not about cost but about delivering information to our customers at a speed at which they can make an almost immediate trading decision, said Matthew Burkley, senior vice-president of strategy at Thomson Financial.

This means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think.

Think about updating their resumes ;-)

As the mission of IT shops changes from technology mechanic to innovation leader, CIOs must hire a new kind of employee. An excerpt from the book, The New CIO Leader.

I am proud to announce that a new book profiling business success stories features good friend Ajay Goel, founder of JangoMail. The book, Go It Alone!, by Bruce Judson, was released in early November by HarperBusiness and discusses how successful businesses can be started and grown into large businesses by individuals without deep pockets, major industry contacts, or venture capital. Judson is a Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management.

HarperBusiness is very pleased with Go It Alone!, and believes the book has the potential to become a lasting classic for prospective entrepreneurs and business owners.

The book is available now at your local bookstore or online. You can also purchase it from Amazon.com.

When I first read about Electrolux’s Screenfridge in 1999 it made total sense.

“Running low on ice cream? No problem. Just swipe the near-empty bucket across your freezer’s bar-code reader and a fresh supply will be on its way. The ultimate information appliance can be used to order groceries over the Web, read email, play games, or watch TV.”

After all, the family fridge was the epicenter of existence in many homes and we were in the process of connecting everything to everything via the Internet. Internet appliances were the future. I thought the Screenfridge was a winner and fully expected to see it hit the market in early 2000 as promised. It didn’t happen!

Now I must admit there was a period in the late 90s when the world was Internet-wacko and I was right there with the best of them. Forget traditional business models, forget markets and profitability, the world is changing…we couldn’t afford to get left behind. Hopefully we all have our wits about us now. That’s why I have to wonder about Electrolux’s latest prototype, the MMS Fridge.

“You are at Safeway when you realize you forgot your shopping list. No problem. Just snap an image of what’s inside your refrigerator with your cell phone. The MMS Fridge by Electrolux lets users with cell phones that have multimedia messaging service, or MMS, remotely snap a picture of their fridge’s interior. The refrigerator comes installed with Web cameras to capture the image of all the items inside the fridge, said Electrolux spokesman Tony Evans.”

I just don’t see the business case here. First, I don’t believe enough people will pay the premium price. And second, I don’t believe the replacement cycle is frequent enough to introduce this new technology into the market at a reasonable rate. It would take some serious changes in consumer behavior to make the Smart Fridge fly. It may well be that Electrolux knows something about future consumer behavior that I don’t. Time well tell. One thing is for sure, they hit the nail on the head with the Trilobite�.