Also known as Max Choong, director of user experience at Wunderman.
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gregmelander:

FUTURE CITIES

Urbanflow Helsinki is a concept by Nordkapp and Urbanscale to envision and build an operating system for everyday life in cities. They talk about public screens but maybe all you need is a mobile device? via dsauce

bashford:

Ericsson believes that in the Networked Society, more than 50 billion things will be connected, in order to make our lives and our businesses more efficient and more enjoyable.

A beautiful video showing an almost utopian near future scenario - set in a world of networked products with emotive behaviour and conversational interfaces.

Proverbial Wallets: financial sixth sense | MIT Media Lab

This project by the Information Ecology group at the MIT Media Lab tries to make a visceral connection to our virtual money. Financial information is relayed through ambient, tactile feedback given by the wallet.

bashford:

Talking Tree is a project by EOS, a science and nature magazine from Belgium. A hundred year old tree in Brussels has been fitted with a complex system of cameras, sensors and solar panels that are monitoring its activities and translating them into words.

talking-tree.com

bashford:

I can’t believe I’d not heard about this till now. Linking your mobile device to something via QR code (or RFID) and then using its sensors to turn it into a controller has such potential - not just for gaming.

Fantastic work.

Pirata Boat Race

The Copenhagen Wheel - Data Visualization (via senseablecitylab)

MIT’s SENSEable City Lab developed the project for the Kobenhavns Kommune. It is the US National Winner of the 2010 James Dyson Award.

If you fancy building your own, creator Holger Buss has posted the build instructions.

Energy Aware Clock by Loove Broms et al, part of the Visual Voltage exhibition at design Vlaanderen, Brussels

Energy Aware Clock by Loove Broms et al, part of the Visual Voltage exhibition at design Vlaanderen, Brussels

The Scarab Concept: Transport Futurism | StyleCrave Meet the Scarab, the future of personal transport. The aim of the project, according to the designer, David Miguel Moreira Gonçalves, was: to develop guidelines and a holistic solution for a new system of urban transport, composed of vehicle and infrastructure, in a sustainable way and adaptable to various urban environments. The specs include embedded sensors like LIDAR, radar, transponders, and GPS that gives the vehicle awareness of exactly where it is and, more importantly, of what and where the other things around it are. There is a similarity to Toyota’s i-Real, which is however less Minority Report and more mobility scooter meets Segway. It doesn’t have a canopy but like the Scarab reclines in cruising mode and becomes upright in ‘walking mode’. It includes an LED display integrated into the back that allows ‘drivers’ to use it as a direction indicator, a way to ‘talk’ to other road users or a billboard to shout your personality. Additionally, the i-Real is internet enabled, which means having the myriad of communication channels on the move, access to location-based services and ultimately constant contact and interaction with your social network.

The Scarab Concept: Transport Futurism | StyleCrave

Meet the Scarab, the future of personal transport. The aim of the project, according to the designer, David Miguel Moreira Gonçalves, was:

to develop guidelines and a holistic solution for a new system of urban transport, composed of vehicle and infrastructure, in a sustainable way and adaptable to various urban environments.

The specs include embedded sensors like LIDAR, radar, transponders, and GPS that gives the vehicle awareness of exactly where it is and, more importantly, of what and where the other things around it are.

There is a similarity to Toyota’s i-Real, which is however less Minority Report and more mobility scooter meets Segway. It doesn’t have a canopy but like the Scarab reclines in cruising mode and becomes upright in ‘walking mode’. It includes an LED display integrated into the back that allows ‘drivers’ to use it as a direction indicator, a way to ‘talk’ to other road users or a billboard to shout your personality.

Additionally, the i-Real is internet enabled, which means having the myriad of communication channels on the move, access to location-based services and ultimately constant contact and interaction with your social network.

tikitag looks to bring RFID to the masses | ThingsAmongMany

Move over QR Code, here comes tikitag, which is bringing RFID to the masses. According to Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, the incubator, tikitag is “a service that enables anyone to link real world objects with the online world and make applications accessible with a single touch”.

Like the QR Code, tikitag essentially grabs a URL and the magic happens in a web application. So this means that you need a reader that can access the internet, ideally a near field communication (NFC) enabled mobile phone. Analysts see a big future for this breed of handsets with the main driver being contactless payment.

The future looks bright for RFID but there will be undoubtedly a period of uptake leading to the tipping point of mass appeal.

Compared to RFID, QR Code seems unwieldy but many current camera phones have the software to utilise the latter.

Another drawback for tikitag is that it uses a proprietary tag, which makes sense in the short term as a way to protect their business model but in the longer term is yet another of those ‘walled-garden’ problems.

Lastly, tikitags cost 19.95 euros for a pack of 25 tags. QR Code incurs a printing cost but in most cases are literally free. They are also robust and you can print them anywhere, any size.