SmartFish: innovative aviation

Smartfish is a project carried out by various lab and industrials such as EPFL, RUAG, German Aerospace…

The objective of team SmartFish is to develop and commercialise a revolutionary general aviation aircraft technology that is highly innovative in terms of safety, economy and emotion. This technology can be used for a wide range of applications, from UAV to high performance sports planes to business jets that can accommodate up to 20 passengers.

SmartFish differs from conventional aircraft by its innovative aerodynamic design, while relying on standard technologies for building materials and propulsion.

There is also HyFish, a SmartFish powered by a fuel cell.

Notes after the 3gsm gathering of mobilists

Yesterday at the 3gsm gathering of mobilists organized by Rudy De Waele and Gotomedia, Fabien and I met various practionners in the field of mobile applications/location-based services. Interesting people and various projects like minifizz or my favorite: a Ghost Detector that works on cell-phone (made by Future Platforms who also worked on Twitchr that Matt Jones presented at Lift):

Many paranormal investigators believe that fluctuations in Electro-Magnetic Frequences (or EMF) might indicate paranormal activity. Our application, built for mobile TV specialists WireTown, looks for these fluctuations and interprets them on a mobile phone screen as ghostly presences. It factors in regional issues and variations and compares the reception of users on the same network, flagging up expected peaks and troughs and linking them to a needle-and-gauge readout on the handset. But it’s more than just an on-phone novelty: building on the huge success of shows like Most Haunted and Derek Acorah’s Ghost Towns on LivingTV, the application lets its users interact with a TV broadcast, producing an always-on link between viewers and a live show for the very first time.

Apart from that Markus Angermeier proposed the idea of mobile hotspots like taxis wandering around in cities offering a free wifi access. Just like mobile phone booth that would offer a seamless and wireless connection (!?). Markus is an accessibility expert, creative director design for Aperto’s, consultant for Plazes (mobile phone demo and brainstorming on proximity-based scenarios).

Alex Kummerman presented us his ideas about location-based/mobile social software that we tried lately and pointed us on Michel Simatic for discussing ideas about games, mobile platforms and multi-user issues.

We continue our discussion with Russell about the issues related to techno-push in the context of location-based services. According to him, phone carriers and vcs are very reluctant to invest in that domain because they saw that it did not work (!) with the project they saw (pure techno-push lbs like restaurant-rating system or virtual post-its or “where is my buddy in the vicinity?”). The reason for that was very often bad scenarios/use cases (not user-centered).

Jaakko Villa, CEO of idean research in Finland quickly described us his user experience company.

Finally, one of the attendant described us the atrocious journey he had from the US to bcn. He had to be rerouted to Milano because his luggage was sent there. This seems to be avery curious moment in which what we discussed at the blogject workshop: object may become first-class citizen in the sense that a human being has change his behavior accordingly with his/her own artifact.

Tech concepts of 2006

Popular Mechanics lists the scientific and technological breakthroughs that may spread quickly in 2006. These advances relates to various domains, I found the following interesting:

• Body Area Network (BAN): Like everything else, implantable medical devices are going wireless. A new in-body antenna chip from Zarlink Semiconductor is in preproduction, and should appear in pacemakers and hearing implants this year. By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from
  nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor’s office or make a diagnosis from a bedside wireless monitor at home.
• Internet Protocol Television (IPTV): Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) already lets us make phone calls over the Internet. Now, IPTV is doing something similar for video. The advantage? Convergence. If your TV is tapped into the Internet, you can program your DVR to record over the Web from your office. Future applications may add interactivity to standard TV broadcasts.
• SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony)
• Pedestrian Protection System (PPS): Radar sensors and computer-controlled braking will keep drivers safer than ever, but what about pedestrians?

Some – of course – are more obvious: mobile VoIP, Ajax, metadata.

Mash-up of IM/RSS and publishing services

I am happy to see that I am not the only one thinking about how IM could be a good interface for information management (search, database query), as I described last year.
John Battelle wrote a clever post about it, connecting this to mobile interfaces:

first of all, a mashup of RSS and IM is just a very cool idea. The medium of IM has been underappreciated by nearly everyone in the “media” business for one reason – the leaders of the business didn’t use IM. But lord knows the rest of the world sure does.

there are other types of branded content that makes total sense in IM: publications and personal web services. A great publication has an intimate relationship with its audience, it’s a trusted source of information, a pal, a buddy. And blogs, as I’ve argued again and again, can be great publications. And great web services like local search have earned our trust, know who we are, and we know that when we ask them questions, useful answers will come back. No one wants a stupid chat bot that tries to be, say, Santa Claus, that gets old fast. But a chat bot that is useful? That can instantly deliver your favorite content to your mobile phone without forcing it through the crappy sphincter of your mobile operators crippled web interface? Or can answer questions like, say, “pharmacy 91106″ with the speed and intimacy of an IM chat session?

Why do i blog this? I like this idea and I am used to ask question to AIM bots about weather forecast, movie schedule… would it work on a mobile phone? I don’t really know but I’d love to have this on my Nintendo DS for sure… There is an interesting debate in the comment part of this post. For instance usabiltiy-guru Jakob Nielsen complains that it’s just re-inventing the command line. Some others expects “that the rich client UI applications of tomorrow will be delivered when the “browser” is merged with an “IM client“…

Phone masts disguised as trees

Preserved TreeScapes InternationalTM (PTI), a company specialised in replica trees. They now expanded their products to phone mast disguised as trees:

Most recently, PTI has turned its experience and talents toward concealment solutions for the wireless communications provider. The tremendous increase in demand for wireless towers has generated great opposition to the use of conventional, unconcealed structures. Both community and zoning requirements for high quality concealment are on the rise. Today, concealment issues may be the greatest obstacles to obtaining zoning approval. PTI’s botanically correct tree tower products will help speed the approval process. PTI has an ongoing commitment to develop future products and concealment opportunities through design, research and testing.

Why do I blog this? this kind of today’s artefacts would definitely appear to be weird for time-travellers coming from the past.

‘Beta’ as a long-term label…

The WSJ last week had a good column about an interesting fact: for some technology companies, ‘Beta’ becomes a long-term label (by DAVID KESMODEL)

For years, the term “beta” referred to a relatively short period of testing by a select group of outsiders. These days, beta editions are not only released to the public, but also stay in that mode for months, or even years. Google News, Google’s news aggregator, has been in beta for three years. Microsoft’s antispyware application has been in beta for nearly a year.
(…)
The companies say consumers benefit from the practice because the widespread testing helps them make critical improvements and determine which extra features users want.(…) Many consumers will tolerate problems encountered with beta services
because many are offered free of charge

Maybe it’s connected to the ‘kidult’ phenomenon (Kidult = A middle-aged person who continues to participate in and enjoy youth culture)?

Mosquito sounds to avoid teenagers loitering

The IHT has a strange story about a device, called the Mosquito (“It’s small and annoying,”), that emits a high-frequency pulsing sound which can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30.

So far, the Mosquito has been road-tested in only one place, at the entrance to the Spar convenience store in this town in south Wales. Like birds perched on telephone wires, surly teenagers used to plant themselves on the railings just outside the door, smoking, drinking, shouting rude words at customers and making regular disruptive forays inside.
“On the low end of the scale, it would be intimidating for customers,” said Robert Gough, who, with his parents, owns the store. “On the high end, they’d be in the shop fighting, stealing and assaulting the staff.” (…) The results were almost instantaneous. Where disaffected youths used to congregate, now there is no one.
(…)
Stapleton is considering introducing a much louder unit that can be switched on in emergencies with a panic button.
It would be most useful when youths swarm into stores and begin stealing en masse, a phenomenon known in Britain as “steaming.”

Kind of scary, will we see that in France to avoid car fires?

A Mobile Laser for Tracking Pollution or Warding off Lightning

Teramobile is a project that aims at studying the nonlinear propagation of femtosecond-terawatt laser pulses over long distances in the atmosphere, and their applications to atmospheric research. This includes Lidar remote sensing of atmospheric pollutants as well as lightning protection and triggering by a mobile Terawatt laser system. It’s eveloped jointly by two French laboratories – the Laboratory for Ionic and Molecular Spectrometry (LASIM, CNRS/University of Lyon I) and the Applied Optics Laboratory near Paris in Palaiseau (CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/ENSTA) – and two German laboratories (The Free University of Berlin and the F. Schiller University in Jena).

The dark side of Pervasive Computing: environmental issues

It’s refreshing to see that some scholars are working on the dark side of technology, especially when it’s related to pervasive computing which is one of the ‘research object’ we adress here:
Expected Environmental Impacts of Pervasive Computing by Andreas Köhler, Lorenz Erdmann:

Pervasive Computing will bring about both additional loads on and benefits to the environment. The prevailing assessment of positive and negative effects will depend on how effectively energy and waste policy governs the development of ICT infrastructures and applications in the coming years. Although Pervasive Computing is not expected to change the impact of the technosphere on the environment radically, it may cause additional material and energy consumption due to the production and use of ICT as well as severe pollution risks which may come about as a result of the disposal of electronic waste. These first order environmental impacts are to be set off against the second order effects, such as higher eco-efficiency due to the possibility to optimise material and energy intensive processes or to replace them by pure signal processing (dematerialisation). The potential environmental benefits from such second order effects are considerable and can outweigh the first order effects. But changes in demand for more efficient services (third order effects) can counterbalance these savings. The experience gained thus far with ICT impacts has shown that such a rebound effect occurs in most cases of technological innovations.

There is also a relevant document about it by the same auhor: Effects of Pervasive Computing on Sustainable Development.

Why do I blog this? … well… there are some fundemantal drawbacks we have to consider (read worldchanging!)

High-Altitude Platforms to deliver WiFi

Laurent sent me this intriguing news: High-altitude platforms for wireless communications by T. C. Tozer and D. Grace:

The demand for high-capacity wireless services is bringing increasing challenges, especially for delivery of the ‘last mile’. Terrestrially, the need for line-of-sight propagation paths represents a constraint unless very large numbers of base-station masts are deployed, while satellite systems have capacity limitations. An emerging solution is offered by high-altitude platforms (HAPs) operating in the stratosphere at altitudes of up to 22 km to provide communication facilities that can exploit the best features of both terrestrial and satellite schemes.