Nordic Exceptional Trendshop 2006

Instant ASCII Camera

Vuk Cosic from croatia will both be presention at the conferencen and exhibiting the Instant ASCII Camera during the event.

The Instant ASCII Camera is working in the same way that the instant cameras located in the railway stations. The difference is though, that this particular camera produces portraits in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) and that it is free of charge. This means that the pictures consist of different letters; numbers and symbols that put together in a specific matrix form a portrait. The consumer approaches the camera, presses the green button and instantly receives his/her portrait on a supermarket type of receipt. Even though that you cannot use these pictures for your passport it still provides great opportunities for future application.

Using the Instant ASCII Camera it is possible to get free portraits of yourself. However you cannot use the portraits for your passport due to the fact that your portrait will only consist of letters, numbers and symbols put together to form a picture!

Link: Instant ASCII Camera

Innovation Lab: Demo Lab goodies

Innovation Lab: Demo Lab

To everyone that is not familiar with Innovation Lab, we have two Demo Labs at each office (Århus & Copenhagen) - permanently showcasing prototypes and eye-opening artifacts. These Demo Labs will also be present at the event (farthest right corner) and I will reveal some of the goodies you can see, touch, and have our Lab Agents present at NEXT2006. 

Programmable Beverage Container

You know the feeling of shopping for the big dinner where you have invited all of your friends and suddenly you can’t remember what flavour they usually like to drink? With IPIFINI’s new beverage container you just buy the amount of bottles needed and have them decide which flavour they like.

The mini capsules at the top of the beverage container releases up to six different flavours when pressed; you can choose between vanilla, lemon, lime, cherry, and two doses of caffeine.

Sensitive Floor

Have you ever felt like the earth moved beneath you? Have you ever dreamed of experiencing the feeling of walking on water? Now you can get an idea of the feeling when walking on the solid floor. The Sensitive floor by Italian iO Agency is an interactive video floor projection, which reacts to people walking through the area of interactivity. The depth perception of this projection technology is amazing in creating the illusion of the third dimension and stepping into a level below up.

   

Cutting Scale

You want to improve you cooking skills in the future then I suggest you fellow the development of the concept model from designer Giffin'Termeer (projected development is 1-5 years). This new spectacular kitchen aid equipment is a cutting board that has an integrated scale within a defined area on its surface. Ingredients can be cut and measured on the same surface with very little extra effort thus in precise manner aim for more spectacular cooking experiences.

I recently talked with the creator of the Cutting Scale Jim TerMeer about the forecast for this technology and how the recent media hype have had many people contact him about possible solutions for making this work both digital high tech and analogous solutions!   

The Hug Shirt

The Hug Shirt by Cutecircuit enables you to share the sensation of a hug with your loved ones whenever and wherever you feel like it. Sensors embedded in the shirt of the sender feels the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and then send this information to the actuators in shirt of the recipient. This is done by use of Bluetooth applications and your mobile phones. The shirt comes in many different colors so that you can match the style of your shirt to the rest of your outfit.

Link: Hug Shirt

Floc Board

Kasper Kofod Head of the Mobil Indholds Lab (Mobile Content Lab) at the IT-Univerty, Copenhagen, Denmark have lots of projects going on. His latest is the Floc Board system which is is a dynamic digital board, which let you post text and images to a large screen by sending an SMS or MMS.

It can be used for social purposes, sharing ideas, images, for receptions, high schools, universities, cafées and clubs, as a shared interface between offices in different locations, for posting questions to speakers at conferences etc. All you need is a projector or a big screen, a browser and some thoughts and images you want to share with people around you.

Post your text and images to the board by sending an SMS or MMS to 1231 with the text: board next [and then your text and images].

As it is now, only phones registered in Denmark can post to FLOC Board. So if you are not Dane, this is your chance to pass up a Dane and have her/him post your text and images to FLOC Board for you. This is social media, the local way.

Link: Floc Board

 

Mixed Reality Interface

Thomas Kienzl (Architect MAA) of the Austrian KOMMERZ design company where  they have a design philosophy that: Architecture gives form to spaces - to real spaces as well as to virtual spaces. And from that frame work, KOMMERZ develops and realises high-quality products in the areas of visual media and in the fields of space-, object- and communication design.

With Mixed Reality Interface physical and digital realities are connected in a seamless web. This approach is a way of creating new platforms for learning, experiencing and sharing information. MRI is an input device that makes it possible for the user to intuitive navigating in different computer applications. This way the potential client can get hands on experience of a new design in the early stages of the design process long before the prototype is developed. Digital content is linked to physical objects so that the very rough physical models you can grab on the navigation surface appear very nice and smooth on the screen. In this way the potential client can physically move the model of a camera around to see the new architecture project at the precise angle that he/she wants instead of watching a predefined guided tour through the new building.

Other applications can be found in the fields of infotainment and multimedia and e-learning. Here, the targeted user groups are minors and elderly people that have special needs.

Link:MRI

HiTV

Jackie Lee the creator of Lovers Cups will also be amazing the exhibition audience with the HiTV a Context Aware Computing project out of MIT Media Lab.

When you are watching television and gets angry with the speaker because he is boring or says something wrong your only way to give affective feedback is to either switch channels or simply turn off your television. The concept of HiTV enables you to interact affectively and hence receive feedback from your television. This can be done by throwing a soft rubber ball at the television screen, which makes the boring television speaker visually distorted and screaming out loud.

The soft ball is like a graspable interface with build in sensors that can detect people interacting with it – for example whether they are throwing the ball at the screen or patting it. A signal is sent from the ball to a signal box in the television by RF. Given these interactions with the ball the user gets both visual and audio feedback. The signal box can also be connected to a network system so that you can share your emotions with other people.

Link: HiTV