Project Glasses by Google

Wow, how cool is this!

Google wants to 'enhance' our life by developing some form of real life HUD?? Sign me up. Of course there are implications to this.

As far as life enhancement goes, the features the videos tout seem convenient, but I don't think they are necessary. Human beings haven't reached the point where we need to rely only on speech to do everything, we still have hands and thumbs after all.

The privacy issues with a product like like should immediately come to mind. Will Google be able to trace every step/sound/sight of a person wearing this? Of course they will. Will they do it? Of course they will. Google's real products aren't its free services, its you, the consumer. Google makes a living with data extracted from the users. I wouldn't be surprised if they made this gadget free as well (on the condition that they are allowed to literally track you).

Having said that, this is very interesting  concept technology that I would love to see realized. Partly because I want to live long enough for something 'futuristic' to exist.

Homeless Hotspots

Now heres a real interesting intersection of computers and society. On one hand, we have 4g network devices that are quite useful in today's world where people constantly want to be connected to the web. On the other, we have a group of individuals that live without income on the streets, the homeless. What happens if you put the 4g devices in the hands of these individuals? You get the homeless hotspots experiment.

This 'initiative' (I personally would call it an experiment) is funded by BBH New York, an advertising agency. They are trying to "modernize the street newspapers model employed to support homeless populations".

The idea is to have the homeless provide a service that's always in demand in today's tech savvy world. So instead of begging for change, the ones with these devices can charge (a recommended) $2 / 15 min, although the customers are allowed to pay as much or as little as they want. For those that do not have cash on hand, the website facilitates payment through paypal and all proceeds will go to the respective person providing the 4g hotspot. 

I really like this sort of experiment. We are always constantly checking our tweets, messages, emails as often as we can and this provides a way for those without 3g or 4g a service they want, and can help the homeless at the same time. 

There are thus far, 13 participants that have been enlisted in this experiment (as of this post). The experiment is taking place in Austin near the SXSW convention center.

My thoughts on Don Tapscott's 2nd point

First, the article.

His second point talks about the remodeling of the music recording industry. With the advent of the internet, digital distribution is among us. The music industry, however refuses to change and "Instead of clinging to late-20th-century distribution technologies, like the digital disk and the downloaded file, the music business should move into the 21st century with a revamped business model that converts music from a product to a service."

Don notes certain services like Spotify.

Spotify is a cloud music service that provides unlimited access to any song they provide, legally. Spotify enlists artists and they get paid depending on how many times their songs are streamed. There are currently two models to use Spotify, free-by-ads and pay per month. Rdio provides a similar service for Canadians.

Spotify and Rdio are the perfect examples of how the music industry should embrace digital distribution. Rather than fight the consumers, work with them and give them a medium that is easily accessible and directly contests with piracy, because from my experience many people pirate out of ease of access (of course that may not be the only reason but is a big part of it). Spotify and Rdio provides that ease of access for a very minor fee.

Spotify helped increase digital revenues for the music industry by 36 percent. Learn a lesson from this and they will prosper.

I personally have used the free-by-ads version and cannot recommend the service enough. You have unlimited songs at your fingertip, with the ads being very infrequent. The one downside is you need a constant internet connection, however that downside is removed if you subscribe to pay per month.

Apple being Apple

Patents are important. We need patents to protect our inventions and ideas in order to profit from them. However there are some patents out there that are just silly (in my humble opinion).

A more recent patent issue is between Apple and Motorola over the implementation of 'slide to unlock'. 

Again, I concede that patents are necessary to promote innovation and protect profits, but this sort of patent is what's wrong with the tech industry. Apple has recently filed a patent claim against Motorola and won. Which is fine, since Apple does own a patent for this 'idea'. The question from me is, why can this even be patented? To protect Apple from losing sales? That's absurd. Most people do not make a smartphone/tablet purchase decision based on how the device is unlocked. I can't see how Motorola having this technology would hurt their sales at all. 

Apple being greedy as always.

Crowdsourcing at its "Double Fine"st

Kickstarter is a website that helps fund independent projects by reaching out to those that want to see the final product, be it music, art, games, or any creative content. Talented artists of all kinds, who don't have the means, can really take advantage of Kickstarter to jump start their career. 

Kickstarter basically facilitates crowd funding/crowd sourcing. What Kickstarter does best, however, is the ease of access for 'regular' people that just want to get their ideas out. If anyone believes they have a great idea to offer, there are no difficult hoops to jump through to start receiving funding. If the idea is actually a great idea, then there will definitely be supporters. 

Tim Schafer's studio, Double Fine, developer of cult classic Psychonauts, has been trying to pitch one of his game ideas to publishers but none will take it. He believes that publishers are afraid to take a risk with his game, understandably because games cost quite a bit to make. So what does he do? Tim looks to Kickstarter  to get his fans opinion of weather they want a game from Double Fine or not. 

The fans spoke and and this experiment exploded into two Kickstarter records: most funds raised in 24 hours, and highest number of backers. The project reached its goal of $400,000 in about eight hours, and (as of writing) with 31 days to go, it is currently at $1,489,517 with 41,310 backers.

"We raised HOW MUCH?"          

I'm sure even Schafer was surprised at the results, but what does this mean for the video game industry? I believe that because of this experiment, the crowd funding model can drastically reduce the importance of big name publishers. One of the issues many consumers may have with the publishers is their constant appeal to only the majority, and therefore only producing popular genres, namely first person, third person shooters. The publishers don't believe there is a big enough market for anything else, and don't want to risk making anything else. But after what happened with this Kickstarter project, there is clearly a market for (in this case) adventure games. I truly believe unheard fans of other genres can get games that they want directly from developers they want now, thanks to Tim Schafer stepping up. Although there have been indie games before Double Fine that get funding through Kickstarter, I think it took someone like Schafer to really get this model kickstarted out there.