Our close proximity to NYC definitely has its benefits such as having easy access to pop-up galleries and events such as this past weekend's Gizmodo Gallery. If you're not familiar with Gizmodo, it's pretty much THE blog to go to for entertaining and informative insights on tech and gadgets.

The guys over at Giz decided to display the best of Gizmodo for the general techy public. They gathered up "the biggest and best from this year, strange tech from the far reaches of the world and prototypes from the dawn of the electronic age" and set up shop at the Reed Annex in the Lower East Side. They then looped the gallery idea in with a Toys for Tots fundraiser and let the fun begin!

Head to their site for a full list of items displayed and check out N-GEN's highlights below:

The biggest attention grabber was most definitely the 103-in plasma screen, but then again, it was hard to miss. The giant plasma displayed Mars in 3D, an ultra-high def virtual reality panorama from photographer Joergen Geerds, and video games galore. Other notables included the Back to the Future-modded DeLorean, which one homeless passerby touted as "the original bat mobile" that "could smoke any *expletive* cop car in this city, yo!," a live "Will it Blend?" demo of a charged iPhone (which resulted in a minor explosion), and the amazingly clear-pictured, yet equally expensive 11-in OLED TV from Sony.

AppVee has video reviews of two new apps for Google's Android phone platform - bar code scanners that use your phone's camera for image capture. (see YouTube links at bottom).
From MIT's Ad Lab article:

These applications seem to be among the few with one or two natural business models built into them from the start. Placing contextual recommendations next to price look-up results is one; powering branded wishlists and registries is another.

MIT Ad Lab article about the apps

Previous MIT Ad Lab article about Instant price Checking at retail

YouTube videos:

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2zMPbVFIYE

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZkxkvWq9zE

Thanks to Rob Webber for this one.


Shinoda announced a new flexible display technology that's light and thin, presumable making it easier to fit into dramatic and well-placed signage locations. Posts have focused on using these in home, but I see this as a digital signage play.

Gizmodo post

via Pink Tentacle

Shinoda's website (in Japanese)

uiGarden.net has this interesting Usability Report on the iPhone.

Apparently texting on your Blackberry (or other device with physical keys for the letters) is more accurate.

Favorite quote:

On feature of the popup keyboard on the iPhone is the drag and lift feature which is said to reduce errors. Unfortunately not one user discovered this feature.

uiGarden.net post

Related evaluation of the iPhone against two other devices

UserCentric, the folks who did the usability testing

I've posted about Steampunk elsewhere, and there a good collection of notes about it on BoingBoing.

This project begs for special mention, though - not only because of its general excellence, but also because of the in-progress pics available here:

Datamancer

Brass Goggles

WIRED has a timely article on this:

Basically these things have been in continuous demand for the whole year - even in the usually-slack summer season. Because it takes so long to ramp up production, Nintendo was unable to catch up as they expected to.

Quote:

"Typically, we'd have begun stockpiling console hardware back in August" for the holiday season... "But this year, we were selling all the Wii we could get, and we got all the way through the summer with basically no inventory in our warehouse."

Here's a product that has vastly expanded the market in its category - despite not being the top choice for gaming cognoscenti. Now we've got people in retirement homes staging tournaments on Wii - people who wouldn't have looked at any other gaming system. A classic market-maker.

Wired story

Erickson Tribune

Thanks to Dave Winer and Marc Andreesen for the latter

Thanks to Mark Van Duinen for this one!

Samsung have developed a small (1/4 inch square) RFID reader chip; looks like they'll be trying to embed these in phones, etc.

This could allow consumer devices - especially mobile ones - to pick up data from RFID chips on products, signage, transit, etc.

From InfoWorld's notice on the same subject:

Some RFID tags on food or medicine products might give information on ingredients or dosages, while RFID tags at bus stops can offer schedules or tell when the next bus will arrive.

According to Cellular News,

the global demand for mobile RFID is expected to grow from $26.9 billion in 2007 to $701 billion by 2010, for a compound annual growth of 196 percent.

Here's hoping they don't repeat the mistakes of the CueCat - sending data about what you're scanning back to the mothership. The furor over that, especially among early adopters, pretty much sank the product.
PocketLint article