a blog by Ian Kennedy
Julia has said that she wants to learn to play violin ( which is especially funny when you see the photo of her playing a ukulele like a fiddle). We’re looking for a place that will teach a four year-old but she may change her mind after seeing this:
We are sad to hear news that Sony, in a cost-cutting measure, is shuttering the robotics division famous for the production of the Aibo robotic dog. They were a little pricey at $2,000 a pop but they were really sophisticated and quite ahead of their time. Sony provided a SDK which could be used to program emotions and face recognition software allowed the dog to respond to it’s owners.
We also will never get the chance to see 60 Aibo dogs dancing in unison to the Bee Gees. (6.6MB wmv file)
One of the great things about podcasting is that it’s bringing back the art of story-telling. I drive about and hour each way to and from work and this time in the car is my time when I can either get ready for the day or decompress on the way home so sometimes the stories I listen to can set the tone for the day.
This morning I heard the tale of Luisa Tetrazzini, the turn of the century Italian soprano, and how she brought hope to the city of San Francisco as it was finding its way out of the rubble of the 1906 earthquake. I’ll admit I’m a bit sentimental – the way the tale unfolds is quite moving and it’s told masterfully.
If you get a chance to listen, do! It’s great stuff.
Izumi gave Julia an apple for a snack and a couple minutes later this was all that was left! She sure doesn’t leave anything to waste.
Gizmodo has coverage of a new reader from Sony based on technology licensed from eInk Corporation based up in Boston. Sony had launched an earlier version of this product, the Libre, in the Japanese market but it apparently never took off because of it’s restrictive DRM technology. Since I have to drive to work I’m no longer in the market for such a device but anyone that takes public transportation and finds themselves reading lots of printouts, a device like this could be a godsend.
While the device supports RSS, PDFs, JPEGs, and MP3 files (which, on the Sony site, they take pains to point out are unencrypted), it does not support WiFi and requires the separate purchase of a cradle which you hook up to your PC to transfer files.
I’ve always been a big fan of ambient displays of information as a non-intrusive way of keeping up with the river of information that flows through our lives. Screensavers and scrolling images are one method which shows promise and in our new broadband, always-on world. PointCast was popular because people liked the concept but it was killed by IT departments because it was a bandwidth hog when bandwidth was still scarce.
eStarling makes an LCD screen that, once programmed via its USB port, can update itself via Wi-Fi. It accepts images from email or a Flickr RSS feed. The memory holds up to 30 pictures that are cycled through until new photos replace the older ones.
Some uses:
Available on ThinkGeek. Thanks to Niall for the pointer.
UPDATE: Niall points to a similar device that boasts a larger screen and can connect to other PCs on a home network.
Rocketboom, the daily video newscast is now available for download to your broadband connected Tivo.
We differ from a regular TV program in many important ways. Instead of costing millions of dollars to produce, Rocketboom is created with a consumer-level video camera, a laptop, two lights and a map with no additional overhead or costs.
Podcasting News
It’s also distributed via RSS and does a complete end run around traditional network and cable distribution channels. Subscribe today for your first taste of citizen media in the living room.
commercial model allows advertisers to place customized messages targeted to a specific audience through Yi Tien Electronics’ online subscription service.
Spyhunter
The winning answer was we were naming the next TV. I thought it should be as close as possible to what people would find familiar so it must contain T and V. I started looking at letter combinations and pretty quickly settled on TiVo. I also liked that “i” and “o” were a part of the name from the “in and out” engineering acronym. Additionally I thought “vo” had a nice connection to “vox” and “voce” from the latin for vocal sound and Italian for voice, vote and vow are part of the same root words. In a way, every selection one makes with TiVo is a kind of vote. It was all beginning to make some sense. We created a beginning lexicon of TiVo expressions to help create what we anticipated would be a TiVo culture. One of the expressions was “TiVolution”. I liked the similarity of sound to the rock band DEVO and their devolution stance.
Seven Questions with Michael Cronan, designer and creator of the name “Tivo” and the mascot