Thursday, April 24, 2008

Mesh: A little glorious piece of the future, right here in 2008

I just got invited to the Live Mesh beta. And it's incredible. Impressively fast. Super easy. And remarkably, well, wonderful.

This feels like a taste of a future where it doesn't matter what device you're using, where all you need is a user name and password. (Maybe just a fingerprint.)

And, as much as any of Microsoft's "Live" products, this truly embodies "live."

I wish new mail was pushed to Hotmail. I wish new news was pushed to Live Search News. I wish new sites rising through the ranks were pushed to the top of Live Search results as you watched. I wish additions to the GeoWeb were pushed to Live Maps as you explored. I wish Live was more Live.

For one thing, it'd simplify branding. "What does Live mean? Oh, it means you see the news stories come up as they happen."

But anyway, back to Mesh. I'm just in my first hour or so of using it, and so far I've been timid. I really ought to just mesh my whole Documents folder, instead of selected folders here and there. Well, baby steps.

Really, this feel like it's the dawn of a new era. Maybe this--software plus services, as Microsoft might say; connectedness intertwined into the very fabric of even traditionally "offline" computing--will be Web 3.0.

P.S. Lost in half an hour. :)

Villips: Dedicated Tangible/Wireless Communication Links

In Star Wars, there is a species called the Yuuzhan Vong. The Vong abhor traditional technology, opting instead for elaborate bioengineered creations. One such device is the head-shaped, head-sized villip.

The gist of it is that two Vong would have a pair of villips, one each. When stroked, one villip contacts the other telepathically, and thus opens a dedicated communications link. The villips can shape themselves into likenesses of their master's heads. Thus, it's a lot like a one-on-one video chat.

Microsoft has a, um, table called the Surface that you may also have heard of. There is also good intel that a spherical version exists.

Once you read up on the villip and the Surface, you may have an idea where this is going.

I envision a head-sized spherical Surface used as a dedicated communication link between two people. As with a villip, simply stroking the orb would "call" the other person. Alternately, depending on the level of trust, you could leave the link open and step into the field of view when you wanted to make contact.

It'd be reprogrammable, of course, to "bond" to someone else. But I like the idea of it being a dedicated link. As simple as simple can get. Tech so elegant it disappears.

But wait, there's more. This real-world villip could make use of the Surface's object recognition tech, too. So to send a batch of pictures to your pal, just stick your camera next to the villip and it'll dump it all over. (There are details to work out, of course, but I'm just talking about general ideas.)

I'm drawn to the villip example in part due to the Star Wars connection, but you could just as easily have a "magic window" that acted like an always-on portal to another place. (It could have shades for privacy.) OK, to a large extent that's already out there, but I think a lot more could be done with it. I imagine this would be great for collaboration between offices (already happening), or for families spread out across the globe (not so much).

Of course, the same data transfer ideas could still apply. You could send photos "through the window" just by waving your digital camera in front of it or something.

It's about telepresence. And on that note, there are a few final links I'd like to pass on:

TouchLight - Wiki and video

Microsoft Research video: Surface chess (fast forward to 3:44; I know there's a better version out there, but I don't know where)

OK, here's a better one, but I'll leave that one 'cause it's cool in other ways. (fast forward to 1:00)

Sort of overlaps, but lots of in-depth cool stuff in these two:

PlayAnywhere

PlayTogether

...and now I must finish my homework. :)

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Microsoft, Mesh, etc.

Mesh is cool. And it supports my belief that there's no reason the web should be constrained to the browser.

"Asked whether Microsoft could make a bid for Google, Ballmer said in part that he did not think Google would be interested and that such a bid would raise regulatory issues. Yahoo and Microsoft rank second and third in Web search, respectively. Google is No. 1." Forbes

Had anyone ever seriously considered that as a possibility? Hey, while they're at it they could merge with Apple, Facebook, Wal-Mart, General Motors and Exxon-Mobil.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Email

Over the past several years, I think my use of email may actually have declined. At least, email's share of my personal communications pie shrank. This is thanks mainly to Facebook, which serves as a nice middle ground between instant messaging and email.

This year, though, my email use has ballooned. I don't entirely understand why. But it has happened. Maybe I just have more to say, and the growth happens to be happening mainly in the email area of the chatter spectrum.

An extreme case of this: on April 8th, I sent and received more than 520 emails. A year ago, I think I usually topped out around a few per day.

Just something to think about. :)

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Superhero Idea

A superhero who, instead of getting his power from the sun like Superman, got his power from killing people. And with his power he could save people. The ratio would be something like 100 people saved for every 1 person killed. Can you imagine the moral dilemmas?!? (Note: having him kill "bad guys" is a cop-out. There are essentially no villains in this.)