Radio ABC International – Today Show

Click below to listen to this weeks live recorded segment where in-studio Zulifikar, Adelaine and Morris Miselowski discuss Google new side wiki, Picasa gets face recognition, 12Seconds launches new iPhone app, my website of the week: www.jingproject.com and fabrics that fight germs and find explosives as well as crosses to Singapore to speak with Jeremy and Hong Kong to catch up with Phil, and listen to hear last weeks studio gremlins make a brief appearance. Recorded live 25 Sept 09

ABC Radio – Alan and Morris discuss togs of the future

Alan Brough and Morris Miselowski catch up again, this time to chat about FINA newly banned new high-tech swimsuits. Morris gave Alan some ideas about how the new suits work and why there might be problems in the future, as well as getting on to self cleaning windows and aeroplanes, nanotechnology, clothes that work your muscles and warm your body and more… listen in to this live recording from 24 May 2009.

6PR’s Tod Johnson and Morris Miselowski discuss Morris’s top 10 predictions for 2009

In his regular segment Tod and Morris discuss Morris’s annual list of top 10 business predictions for 2009. They talk about the naughty hippies, cautious consumers, self made media, playing nicely together on line, in and outsourcing, Gen Y and much more. Recorded live 27th Dec 2008.

New Tech Invites Quick and Easy Shopping on your Mobile Phone

With the advent of online shopping, millions of Americans have forsaken the all-too-real check-out lines and hassles and have opted for the ease of virtual purchasing.

And as more and more Americans are accessing the Internet with cell phones, some retailers are adjusting.

“Currently only about 3 percent of Americans have made a purchase on [a cell phone],” Worley told “GMA.” “But clothing outfitter Ralph Lauren is taking a big step to make your phone a shopping centre on the go.”

Ralph Lauren, known for its preppy clothing lines, will feature ads in its catalogues this month that can be scanned by many cell phones’ cameras, allowing the items to be purchased on the spot.

“Shopping is about instant gratification, whether you’re flipping through a magazine or newspaper, watching something on TV or going to a store window,” David Lauren, son of Ralph Lauren, told “GMA.” “Now if you can get something that’s a luxury and get it right away, that’s the ultimate combination.”

According to Worley, in Japan the practice is already wildly popular and has expanded so that the bar codelike symbols are featured on billboards and cars, even temporary tattoos and gravestones.

Full article by BECKY WORLEY and LEE FERRAN

Mirror mirror on the wall, does my bum look big in this?

Another brand-new technology application, introduced by the Manhattan interactive design firm Icon Nicholson, is the Magic Mirror, a device that can turn any solo shopping trip into “social retailing.”

In Icon Nicholson’s future, after a shopper has picked out some clothing, they hop into a dressing room equipped with the Magic Mirror and begin live streaming to the Internet as they try on each outfit.

Next, friends and family can check out the shopper’s selections and comment, without ever being in the store. The mirror may be able to bridge the gap between fashion and the popular realm of social networking.

“Someone walks in the store and they interact with the mirror. That’s part of our social retailing system,” said Joseph Olewitz of Icon Nicholson. “They tell it to ‘Invite my friends.’ The system invites their friends, and their friends participate remotely via live real-time video.”

Full article by BECKY WORLEY and LEE FERRAN

Experimental phone network uses virtual sticky notes

The rapid convergence of social networks, mobile phones and global positioning technology has given Duke University engineers the ability to create something they call “virtual sticky notes,” site-specific messages that people can leave for others to pick up on their mobile phones.

A team led by Roy Choudhury has developed a new software system that enables users to obtain location-specific, real-time information – either passively or directly – from other mobile phone users across the world. It will be as if every participating mobile phone works together, allowing each individual to access information throughout that virtual network.

Interested in trying that new Mexican restaurant? Tap into the virtual sticky notes floating in the ether within the restaurant and find what other network users thought of it.

Heading to the airport and need to know where the traffic jams are? Sensors in the phones detect movement and can relay back to the network where traffic is the heaviest.

The potential of this new application, which has been dubbed micro-blog, is practically limitless said Roy Choudhury.

“We can now think of mobile phones as a ‘virtual lens’ capable of focusing on the context surrounding it,” Roy Choudhury said. “By combining the lenses from all the active phones in the world today, it may be feasible to build an internet-based ‘virtual information telescope’ that enables a high-resolution view of the world in real time.”
The application combines the capabilities of distributed networks (like Wikipedia), social networks (Facebook), mobile phones, computer networks and geographic positioning capabilities, such as GPS or WiFi.

“Micro-blogs will provide unprecedented levels and amounts of information literally at your fingertips no matter where you are, through your mobile phone,” Roy Choudhury said. “We have already deployed a prototype, and while some challenges remain to be addressed, the feedback we’ve received so far indicates that micro-blog represents a promising new model for mobile social communication.”

Mobile phones are already more than just communications devices, Roy Choudhury points out. Increasingly they are coming equipped with cameras, GPS service, health monitors, and even accelerometers, devices which measure speed.

In simple terms, people who use the micro-blog application will enter information – photos, comments, videos – into their mobile phone, where it will be “tagged” by the user’s location. Passive information, such as location or speed, can also be recorded. All this information is then sent to a central server, where it is available to all participants.

“So if you’re planning a trip to the beach or a restaurant, you can query the micro-blog and get information or see images from people who have been or are currently there,” Roy Choudhury said. Another application consists of individual, localized pockets of information.
“Say you are in a museum,” Roy Choudhury said. “As you pass a particular painting, your phone could download comments from art experts providing relevant information about that painting.”

The current prototype works with the Nokia N95 mobile phone, but Roy Choudhury said the application will eventually be written for any kind of programmable mobile phone. He also believes that these, and other as-yet-to-be imagined applications, will be commonplace within five years.

However, Roy Choudhury said there are three solvable issues that still need some work. The first is the trade-off between precise geographic location and battery power.
“GPS, while it can be accurate down to several meters, can also drain a mobile phone battery in seven hours,” Roy Choudhury said. “On the other hand, WiFi and GSM technologies are widely available and don’t use as much energy, but they aren’t nearly as accurate. We believe that an approach blending these technologies will probably solve that problem.” (GSM is an international cell phone standard that enables global roaming.)

Another issue is more societal than technological: What kinds of incentives would inspire users to enter information when queried by strangers, since that would involve their time and battery power.

Finally, location privacy needs to be addressed. Since mobile phones are transmitting data – including location – back to a central server, users must trust the administrator to keep this information private. Roy Choudhury believes that these issues can be addressed by assigning different modes – private, social or public – much like social networks already do.

read full article

A baseball cap that reads your mind

It looks like an ordinary baseball cap. But when you put it on, the cap detects and analyses the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from your brain. It can even tell you if you’re getting too sleepy when driving based on your brain wave patterns.

Similar technology could also allow you to control home electronics such as TVs, computers, and air conditioners, all by just thinking about them.

Click here for full article

Morris Miselowski’s thoughts:

We’ve seen this stuff before, but there seems to be more of it bubbling up to the surface lately.

The underlying notion is great and certainly one of the holy technology grails is to find a way to effortlessly control our surroundings, but the real innovation is still a couple of innovations down the track from this one, when we can take off the cap and control our immediate world through something less obtrusive and less fashion oriented.

Wearing a cap is not the end of the world, but is this technology going to make it into mainstream usage if we all have to don a cap to make our computers work, check our blood pressure or boil the kettle?

My guess is that RFID, devices we carry in our pockets or sewn into our intelligent clothing, or simply our voice coupled to ubiquitous computing devices will play more of a role in providing the future drivers of this.

A whole new meaning to "power dressing"

Nanotechnology researchers are developing the perfect complement to the power tie: a “power shirt” able to generate electricity to power small electronic devices for soldiers in the field, hikers and others whose physical motion could be harnessed and converted to electrical energy.

full story @ http://www.physorg.com/news122129780.html”

 

Morris’s thoughts:

This technology may be the DNA of future small personal appliance power supplies and its not so much whether this will ever work and become mainstream it’s the notion that we are looking for alternate ways to fuel our carry around devices.

There’s been a lot of buzz around utilitarian uses for clothing.

Power generation is one, but there’s also clothing that monitors your vital health signs, clothing with built in GPS and clothing that cools or heats your body based on constant biometric readings.

Many clothing designers are already experimenting with form and function, working with new age clothing materials to construct functional and fashionable clothing.