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Showing posts from June, 2013

About smudges, ink, Altoids box and love.

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This is not an attempt to win over the pollution. Just a minor itch that led me to build something cool from observations arising from Nostalgia of the days back in India :) Nostalgia 0 - Just after you're born. ( Suggested by Kunal) If you're born in India chances are that your grandma will take some steps to protect you from wicked spirits by smudging kajal onto your eyes. The technique to make kajal is old. Its carbon deposited from burning a low fidelity oil.(mustard etc.) Nostalgia 1- Getting around I was once day dreaming about the awesome days we spent back in Bikaner, a small city in the west of Rajasthan. It reminded me of the heat, travelling in sweat inducing autorickshaws while we used to do our experiments with building our Multi-touch table with low tech techniques(ref. Rahul, Sudhanshu and Vivek). The month of June there was full of sweat, with unburnt smoke rising from unending tur-tur-ing of autorickshaws blackening our skin. Kote gate Nostalg

Augmented Reality. Really?

       'Our goal here is to complement rather than replace.' Recently I came across an article on augmented reality. The term these days is used like a fad. Like in 1970s cell-phone was the hot term, those what it represents today is more than just a cellular phone, its a hell lot of technology in packed in a soapbar. 20 years from now, there would be no difference in real and virtual. We could live what we hallucinate today.  Those who fantasize climbing Himalayas, or walking through streets of Varanasi would just be able to 'buy' the experience, and feel it on their cornea embedded Augmented Reality/AR system. So the meaning of hallucination will evolve as well, which I think I can't imagine right now (book 'hallucinations of the next decade'?). I was thinking how these terms affect our thinking process. As the term says, why do you want to augment the reality? The reality itself is so complete, beautiful and strong, that its aug

Ideas

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Multiple ideas I was thinking about that could be used to improve people's lives- make new experiences happen, and tap into the unknown -- Sound Glasses. The user wears the glass and looks at a painting. A large painting. And the system gives audio feedback on the parts highlighted based on an audio command 'Tell me more'. Technology: Pre-calibrated system. Easy Or multiple paintings and it starts speaking about what you're looking at. Audio annotations. Leave specific audio snippets at places. ' User looks at certain objects 'drops' audio snippets' Later. Someone else could visit and listen to them. e.g. 'please clean this wall' 'this is Fluid interfaces demo area, find a student to help you out' 'This is where Media Lab started its first group' Audio post-its Inkharvester- presented as a hack(goes to indie inventors)- discussed with Harshit. http://penn.m