MIT developed a new encoding solution which is called “Bokode” to provide visual information. 

Bokode is a 3mm-diameter tag and encodes data in the angular dimension. Currently Bokodes consist of an LED, covered with a tiny mask and a lens. Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask, which varies in brightness depending on which angle it is seen from.

Comparing to barcode or QR code, Bokode are smaller, can be read from different angles and can be interrogated from far away by a standard mobile phone camera. In addition, this code system is readable from a large distance. So far, barcode can be read from a distance of up to 4m.

The prototype devices produced at the Media Lab currently cost about $5 each. In the future, the cost could easily drop to 5 cents once they are produced even in volumes of a few hundred units.

I think Bokode has several advantages.

For company, they can save cost on printing DM, sending catalog to their customers. Just give them a Bokode as a simple website link. Or maybe the Bokode can be an identify tool. Such as a copyright laser sticker on Disney goods.

For users, they don’t have to carry hot copies. I can image, when I go traveling, I just keep my e-flight ticket , train time table, hotel booking information in several Bokodes on a small post-it and use camera(with wifi will be perfect) to read information. In stead of bringing guide book, a lot of A4 papers. 

Source: MIT

At the Future Centre we are very excited to open this area of study and discussion, even more since we are going to work together with Ars Electronica, http://www.aec.at/index_en.php, and Fabrica, http://www.fabrica.it/, the Benetton Group Communications Research Centre.

The future of retail is also, by mirroring it, the future of shopping and a lot of us love shopping, don’t you?!

This is an area where the pressure of Internet is already felt, as more and more goods and services can be perused and acquired through the web from your armchair. At the same time goods are becoming more flexible, they can interact, reshape themselves as you approach them. Innovation that in these years has taken place under the skin of products, and massively in their production, is now starting to surface to change our view of products and the way we shop for them.

This discussion area will be providing stimula to all of you and we do expect to receive even more from your comments.

Stay posted for the start up of the project. It will take place on September 5th on the exciting stage of the Electronic Ars Festival: http://www.aec.at/humannature/en//?s=future+retail .

This news is not about Social Networks but about the approval given in July by the FDA (Federal Drug Administration in the USA) to a WiFi pacemaker developed by t. Jude Medical Inc, http://www.sjmprofessional.com/ . A first patient has already received the new pacemaker at the St. Francis hospital in Roslyn, NY.

The pacemaker embeds a computer that monitors heat beats and the proper working of the device. It uses WiFi to update the clinical file of the patient via Internet and in case of problems it sends an alarm.

According to dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of the St. Francis Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Centre:

““It is a tremendous convenience for the patient from even interacting with a telephone to call the doctor. On a larger scale it enhances our ability to pick up and evaluate any problems with their pacemaker and certain other rhythm disorders that could be potentially dangerous or life threatening in ways we really could not do before.

In the future, these pacemakers may be placed not just for people with slow heartbeats. We may be monitoring high blood pressure, we may be measuring glucose, we may be monitoring heart failure.

There are literally dozens of physiological parameters that now, with this wireless technology, we can leverage for the future of monitoring. So it is not just a rhythm monitor but a disease monitor.”

We are going to see many more devices monitoring our health in the future and this will go along with a shift in the next decade from curative to preventive medicine, easier on us and on the health care bill.

Of course this shift requires ubiquitous availability of access to Internet and all the security and privacy needed. The challenge will be to be able to provide this high level of control together with an openness that would stimulate the market to create new services. There is a lot that needs to be done, research, regulation, infrastructure investment. But the pay-off will be huge.

This is a strategic area for any Country. Is it going to be shaped as value chains (as health care is basically today) or as ecosystems? It is clearly so much easier to control the former but the latter have the potential to deliver better services at much lower cost.

The pervasiveness of communications infrastructure and the evolution of terminals (cell phone are on the fore front) make me bet on the latter, although I still see a major presence of value chains in this sector in the next decade.

I have just finished reading an impressive article published on Popular Photography and based on the ideas of some of the most influent visionaries in the digital photography research. Professor Raskar, who I had the honor to meet in his laboratory at MIT, is probably the best known (and most mentioned) scientist when it comes to digital photography disruptive innovation.

According to the article (and to Professor Raskar’s ideas), in the next years an increasing significant role will be played by the computational photography and by the miniaturization of image recording devices, since the sensors will be probably embedded not only in mobile phones but in clothes and fabrics in general, making it possible to take a photo just moving a finger. The camera will disappear: it will be a part of our everyday objects.

3D pictures will become popular and easy to create. Actually, they are already available today: YouTube has recently start providing a 3D visualization option. The following video is a demonstration of this feature.

We will be available to change the light direction after (and not during) taking a photo in order to express our mood and obtain different result. We are going to completely change the way we take pictures and record videos.

Even if some of the predictions can sound little realistic, most of the work and the research of Camera Culture at MIT  will probably become true in the next 20 or 30 years. I do encourage you all to read this short story and to take a look at Computational Photography research here.

GPS enabled Smart phones and iPhone in particular features power capabilities like location based services, large display, wireless broadband connection to drive a new set of augmented reality applications which can be used to retrieve information and content relevant to the context near the user.

Additionally, these application can help content owners, merchants, insitutions and stores to add dynamic, real time points of interest to a digital map displayed on a smart phone.

For instance, it is now available a new iPhone app dedicated to London public transportation. London Bus is a complete city guide which enable users to locate the closer bus station and to explore the context by displaying P.O.I. in teh nearby. The app includes updated maps of the city and of the transportation system.

Iphone 3Gs embedded compass enable users to find the right direction in the application’s maps.

The following demonstration video is quite impressive.

On the website many capture screens of the application are shown.

Free Connectivity gives way to another important fact, the pervasive communication paradox: it states that “the more the communication is available and cheap, the more it is pervasive”. This is another way for saying that communication is becoming a commodity. Many users will take the availability of a cheap network for granted. The rich availability of connectivity, the cheapness of networking devices for home networks and the always decreasing price of public network connectivity will allow a great availability of cheap and ubiquitous bandwidth that will be used by pervasive applications that will be “always best connected” both in term of maximum bandwidth and of price.

This is why I don’t think the M2M paradigm pushed by Operators (privileging the SIM based connectivity) will have an easy way. Probably a trade off will be the result: many end points with short range connectivity will send info and data to a few public network connected nodes.

Btw, it will be quite interesting to know what is the possible traffic generated by sensor, actuators and “things” over the public network. Is it something Operators should be ready for or is it negligible? Just think to billions of sensors exchanging data …

Fuji Film is really putting a focus on 3D image consumer market. After launched 3D camera” FinePix REAL 3D W1”, they released 3D photo frame called” FinePix REAL 3D V1.”It allows people to view 3D images without wearing glasses.

Users can view both 2D and 3D image with 800×600 dot (3D: 400 × 600 × 2channel) on an 8-inch touch screen. Also, FinePix REAL 3D V1 can show 72 images (maxim) as an index.

USB cable, Media slots (xD / SD / SDHC memory card) and IR communication are available to connect with other device such as camera or PC.

In Japan, the frame price is around €350.

see more demo photos on Youtube.

I think it’s just a beginning of 3D consumer market. Technology will provide a sustainable market demand for 3D service and device.

source: Fuji Film

At the Future Centre we study the economics of Ecosystems and how Ecosystems can be fostered. Part of this involves the setting up of a methodology. What I want is to share some parts of it with you to get feedbacks and generate a discussion.

The first step to model a business ecosystem is to identify the perimeter and constituent parts of the ecosystem that is being studied.

The content of this step can be divided into two different logical phases:

1. Identification of the “seed” on which the ecosystem is based. Business ecosystems grow around a seed, around something which in itself has the potential to attract the interest of different players who can leverage it for doing business. Considering that, it is necessary, first, to identify and define the seed. 

The seed is important because it empowers a new market space, where actors, which may even be working in another markets or in a niche, begin to become interested in connecting to other players and to establish relationships that change the ecosystem and enable new business.

Following there are some questions whose answers can help identify the seed:

a)       Which element feeds the interest from the players to enter and / or  build an ecosystem? It is clear that the ultimate goal is always to “make money”. The seed is the enabling factor.

b)       What factors users / customers recognize as having an economic value and how can they be combined to create a service or goods that the market is willing to pay for?

c)       What elements’ absence would hamper the ecosystem growth?

1. Once identified the objects to observe and the ecosystem boundary, it is essential to identify the constituent elements of the ecosystem and then create a list of relationship existing among them.

For the ecosystems focussed by the Future Center, we deem advisable to pursue the following approach:

Ø       Players: must map all categories of actors and their role in the ecosystem including those not directly related but having an interest to join. The actors identification has two levels: the first level is to identify the categories (e.g. telecom operators, vendors, etc.) and the second level for those who are already inside the ecosystem, is to identify the players separately (e.g. .Hp , Telecom Italia, etc.) on the specific ecosystem we wish to target or aggregate.

Ø       Enabling technologies;

Ø       Products and services: list of the key products and services that already exists and are part of  the ecosystem in its current configuration.

Ø       Legislative and regulatory assets of reference.

At the end of this first step we should be able to build up a connections matrix: it’s a matrix to map the relationship among the constitutive elements:

In this matrix the vertical and the horizontal axes show the list of the constitutive elements and for each couple of constitutive elements is indicated if there is or not a link.

It is also possible to qualify the links in order to have more information on the relationship.

Of course there could be several possible links classification depending the purposes of the matrix.  One could be the following:

·         “0” – No relation.

·         “1” – Intangible Relation

o       All activities that are contracted, mandated or expected that directly generates revenue. E.g.: Goods, Services and Revenues. (Source: Allee, 2008)

·         “2” – Tangible Relation.                                

o       Def: Intangible knowledge and information exchanges flow around and support the core product and service valeu chain, but are not contractual and unpaid. E.g.: knowledge, benefits. (Source: Allee, 2008)

·         “3” – Possible Future Relation.          

o       Def: A possible relation can be formed in a near future (5 years)

Let me have your feedback.

Chirs Harrison, a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon University has developed a system that turns any surface into an interface by analysing the unique sound produced when a fingernail scratches the surface.

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/scratchinput/index.html

Take a look at the movie:

http://www.youtube.com/v/2E8vsQB4pug&color1=0xb1b1b1&cor2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1“> The sensor to detect the scratching sound can be fitted into a cell phone, so expect a complete new way of interacting with objects in the near future!

It is not a new idea: cramming more information in a bit. Well, of course the definition of “bit” as a basic unit of information that can assume either 0 or 1 as value does not lent itself to variations. But if you are looking at the physical structure used to store a “bit” then it makes sense to wonder if one could use that same structure to store more than the 0 or 1 information.

Memories are physical structure that store 0 or 1 in terms of levels of energy or polarization (or any other quantity that can be exploited for such a purpose). Well, if one is able to create more levels that can be set and read (distinguishing on efrom the other) it becomes possible to use that same elemental storage cell to store more than 0 or 1, de facto multiplying the storage capacity.

This is what this press release is about:

IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture between Intel and Micron, has announced that they have developed a 3-bit-per-cell NAND device that Micron will begin producing for commercial consumption this fall. The technology, dubbed 3bpc (tricky acronym for 3-bits-per-cell), stores more bits per cell than current technology and allows the development of higher density flash memory so it can store more data in less space.

The 3bpc technology will allow chip manufacturers to create USB thumb drives and solid state drives with a greater storage capacity. 3 bits per cell is a 50% increase from the standard 2 bits per cell, meaning that an 8Gb USB thumb drive could be built to store 12Gb of data without increasing the size of the device. The process of manufacturing storage with more bits per cell also decreases the cost per flash bit so that the 12Gb USB drive would be roughly equivalent in cost to the 2 bits per cell 8Gb flash drive.

The higher bits per cell technology can also be implemented in solid state drives (SSD) to achieve the same sort of increase in storage capacity and manufacturing cost savings. SSD’s are common in smaller netbooks and offer speed and reliability benefits over traditional hard drive storage. Intel has the X18-M and X25-M SSD’s which are both available in 80Gb and 160Gb capacities. The 3 bit per cell manufacturing process will theoretically enable them to boost those capacities to 120Gb and 240Gb respectively without increasing the size of the drives or the cost to manufacture them.

The 3bpc technology is not all sunshine and roses though. Aside from adding capacity to store more data, the additional bit also increases the potential for error. Intel and Micron need to continue working to ensure that the 3bpc devices are reliable enough for customers to trust them with critical or sensitive data.

Packing more data into smaller devices also brings attention to information leakage and security concerns that organizations face. It wasn’t an urgent priority to address the data compromise concerns when USB thumb drives only held 16Mb. When a user can walk out with 32Gb of data on a drive the size of their thumb attached to their key ring though it is a whole different story. Security administrators need to have policies established regarding the use of removable media and data confidentiality, and controls in place to protect sensitive information.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170012/intel_and_micron_team_up_to_squeeze_more_data_into_flash_drives.html

It is yet another step in the continuous progress of storage capacity that in many area is already exceeding demands (like compact flash and SD cards over the 8 GB are exceeding storage capacity demand for many amateur photographers…). And we have discussed previously how this continuous increase of storage capacity is changing the rules of the game in telecommunications.