Category Archives: Innovation

Pen Computing Is Still About the Pen

I’ve always loved the idea of pens that work with your computer, either transcribing our hand-written notes, or faithfully reproducing our drawings on our computer, but the promise has always dwarfed the reality. Is LiveScribe different? LiveScribe, launched at last week’s D conference, differs from previous digital pens in several ways: instead of merely trying… Read More »

Escape to Streetlevel

Next up: cities you can drive through, and not from above, or fake worlds where everyone has big chests. Real cities, from all angles. It’s called EveryScape. The company calls it “the world’s first interactive eye-level search that offers Web users a totally immersive world on the Internet.” A “virtual experience of all metropolitan, suburban… Read More »

CAPTCHA Gets Useful

An excellent example of something that leverages a tool that already exists and makes it useful — CAPTCHA forms. AP writes from Pittsburgh: Researchers estimate that about 60 million of those nonsensical jumbles are solved everyday around the world, taking an average of about 10 seconds each to decipher and type in. Instead of wasting… Read More »

Citizen Monitors

I like the idea of this: Using ordinary folk to monitor elections, via SMS from their cellphone. And it seems to have worked. Nigeria used a system called FrontlineSMS, developed by UK-based kiwanja.net to keep track of all of the texts. Some 54 trained associates recruited volunteers to invite as many people as possible via… Read More »

Directory of Lifestreaming

I probably should lump all these into the Directory of Attention, but I’m not going to. Don’t look for a definition of lifestreams on Wikipedia, because it will take you to a Final Fantasy VII page. The term actually goes back to at least 1997, when Eric Freeman and David Gelernter saw it “as a… Read More »