BusinessWeek: A wireless phone’s main function is converting human speech into digital signals and back again. So why not harness handsets’ speech-processing ability to solve a problem nearly everyone encounters when using cell phones for e-mail or other data applications? I’m referring to the difficulty of entering text on a dial pad, which speech recognition can remedy. Manufacturers are finally […]
This Phone Recognises My Speech
Space Tourism Franchise
New Scientist: Space pioneer Burt Rutan foresees space tourism companies running like a fast-food franchises, with his company licensing spacecraft to tour operators. But he says he may have trouble cutting through federal regulations to get there. His company, Scaled Composites, built SpaceShipOne, the rocket plane that won the Ansari X Prize for private space flight in 2004. Scaled Composites […]
Learning Ecosystem Through Tech
We Make Money Not Art: Erez Kikin-Gil ‘s Eco Pod is a TUI-controlled system that mimics the growth of a plant and allows children to keep track of their class garden and learn how the different natural elements influence it, and each other, over time. One pod represents the wind, another the sun’s heat, a third one the light and […]
Party On The Go
Iconoculture: Airstream’s convertible RV, the SkyDeck, features a rooftop lounge with an entertainment center, wet bar, and beach umbrellas. It’s an ultimate party pad on wheels. For ultraluxe road warriors, every day has the potential to be a day in the sun. So why not live it up? The latest status symbol in the RV park? Cocktail parties up top, […]
Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens
Brand Republic: Oral-B is pushing its new Brush Aways product with a sampling campaign at Ha! Ha! Bar & Canteens that is an unusual twist on the post-meal mint. From April 18, at the end of every meal customers will be offered a complimentary Brush Away in place of the normal mint that accompanies the bill. The idea behind the […]
Wearing the Game
Iconoculture: Baseball caps are de rigueur for Sunday afternoon games. Now the entrepreneurs behind GameWear have stitched together a baseball necklace they hope becomes standard attire. A fan can send GameWear a commemorative baseball for fashioning into a “wearable trophy” necklace made from the ball’s leather and 108 stitches. While diehards aren’t likely to part with an autographed Cal Ripken, […]
Marketing With Aroma
Trendwatching.com: Who likes to wait? Help consumers overcome boredom and throw in some empathy as well! Last year, Senseo Coffee Machines installed coffee machines at a number of Dutch bus and tram stops, offering waiting passengers a cup of fresh brewed coffee. Perhaps not the most spectacular TRYVERTISING stunt ever, but ten times more relevant to consumers than a billboard […]
Biographies Online For Future Historians?
Global:Ideas:Bank: In an age when e-mail and text messaging are making letter writing obsolete one program is fighting to create an online permanent record for future historians and biographers. The website www.libraryoflife.org is the brainchild of Stephen Forsyth who wanted a way to preserve the memory of his late brother, James. The project aims to record the names and biographies […]
Mobile TV
The Mobile Technology Weblog: Mobile TV is going to be a gold mine and errr…bigger than a big thing on Planet Big, if we’re to believe a new report by ABI Research. This will surely have mobile operators celebrating in the streets and and writing out Purchase Orders to buy copies of the report telling them how clever and successful […]
TV Advertising Trends
The New York Times: One of the great contradictions of modern American life is that almost everyone watches television while almost no one agrees anymore about what it really means to watch television. True, we know that as spring gets under way, new episodes of ”Desperate Housewives” and ”C.S.I.” and ”American Idol” will battle for prime-time supremacy in the overnight […]