Delites vending machine - could power the Earth?

Digital Examples has brought the Delites vending machine digital experiential idea to my attention (watch the video below):

You'll see that after each progressive interaction, the machine makes people work harder for their free food, by mashing a simple button on the front of the machine. And they do. Some of them 400 or 500 times, to release some free rice (mentalists).

You know what I see? Kinetic Energy! (I think, been a long time since I did physics). And it could solve the world's energy crisis.

Consider our current global economic meltdown, and also our global energy crisis. We should distribute all food this way - a vending machine on every street corner giving out free (branded, of course) food in exchange for people mashing buttons and pulling levers, generating electricity for the masses (by masses, of course, it's likely that would be the elite superclasses, lounging in penthouse suites watching high-def Blu Rays on cinema-size screens powered by the sweat of the poor).

Just imagine it: homeless folk in great shape, all thanks to the WonderVend(TM). Old people able to pay their fuel bills and eat through 1 simple interaction (albeit several thousand times, so cardiac arrest may well rocket). Of course, black market devices would emerge - the Automated Multi-Masher, if you will, promising to do the work for you in exchange for clicking on a web banner (irony? nah).

Children could be manipulated in social experiments akin to Pablo's Dog, where we randomly show the WonderVend(TM) counting down to zero, seemingly without interaction whilst slobbering babes (not that kind) stare in hope, only to have their anticipation cast aside as bugger all comes out of the machine's belly.

Or maybe I've just let my imagination run away in my lunch hour (I'm not eating rice, in case you wondered) and this is just, in fact, another example of an increasing trend in interactive vending machines.

RFID tags track clothes from creation, through supply, to sale

Privacy fearmongers take heed! Your clothes may now be able to tell the missus when your actually in the pub when you've said you're working late.

Or something like that. But Memove's clothing manufacturers are now sewing in RFID tags to their clothing whilst they are being made and using the tech to track them through distribution to store and also for automatic inventory monitoring. They even allow dressing rooms to track the items taken in and out. For consumers, simply putting the items in an RFID-reading basket means instant total price calculation and (presumably) faster checkout.

Read more on PSFK

Buy the album, build your own CD case with LEGO

Cute idea this - ship a CD with instructions and LEGO pieces to build your own case for the album. I like the tactile nature of it - I bet anyone who does it feels 'closer' to the album on their shelf years later; more so than the other CD jewel cases.

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Read about it on PSFK

3D maps of London Underground

Techboy sent me this great link to "Station Viewer" by Andrew Godwin this week. Pretty slick 3D mapping of the tubes and walkways of the stations, it's amazing to see how complex they are.

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View the stations

Valve releases Source Filmmaker

Wow. Mind officially blown. I'm a huge fan of Valve, mainly because I'm a huge video game nerd B-) and love the Half-Life series. I also have huge respect for their business acumen and vision in creating the Steam platform.

Now they've revealed that for 7 years, they've been working with ex-filmmakers to make a tool that enables the creation of 3D animated movies that can be edited, on-the-fly, in ways I have never seen before. And now they're releasing it into the wild. Expect a slew of new-style videos on youtube from this point forth.

The video below demonstrates it way better than I can explain, so sit back and enjoy.

More info at Wired.

Microsoft's MirageTable: share workspaces across space

The video below is quite a mind-job. Using AR, Kinect and projections, you can work physically with digital objects, and more remarkably (in the last 1/4 of the video) work simultaneously with another person, virtually, on a physical desk. That's a bad description, so just go ahead and watch it:

Via BBC News

IPS: Indoor Positioning System knows exactly how long you poop

OK, that's not strictly true (although it could be) but I was just following the Leveson Inquiry and a need to make a vulgar headline came over me for some reason - can't think why.

ANYWAY, IPS (Indoor Positioning System) is a real system that is coming to buildings near you soon(ish). There's a great article about it over at ExtremeTech for in-depth reading, but - in short - GPS (Global Positioning System) is limited in a number of ways. For example, GPS does not work indoors, or penetrate through walls very well (the signal between Earth and satellites is too weak). Neither does it determine altitude particularly well.

However IPS, a system currently being pursued by both Google and Nokia (according to ExtremeTech's article), would enable such capabilities. It's wholly imaginable that someone's personal computing device could switch from GPS to IPS once indoors, and use that data in all manner of new ways (museum guides, floor plans to find offices or shops in multi-level buildings, competing deal hunter apps that know the price of an item over several stores in one building).

It's a crazy thought in many ways - although obvious in so many others. Triangulation via WiFi, personal devices that become connected network repeaters, it's all possible and, I think, likely to be coming soon.

The Oatmeal - 2012: This is the web right now

I'm a long-time fan of The Oatmeal, and his latest work is just brilliant. Snippet below, but head on over to his site so he gets the traffic m'kay?

EA Crysis 3 gameplay trailer launched

Excited? Me? Nah. Although Crysis 2 was a hugely surprising, gorgeous audio & visual feast :)

Getting back into photography - 2 new pics

I love taking photos, but like many people find it easy to let it slip, and am usually fairly lazy at the weekend.

In an effort to kickstart my photographic abilities (I'm still very much an amateur, self-taught solely through photo magazines) I snapped a couple of things at home this weekend. I think I'll focus on creative shots I can do around the home, before heading out on a photo trip (which might just frustrate me if I end up with no decent shots :) )

More (admittedly old) shots at: www.leonmccomish.com