Hasta La Ideas

I have yet to come across a person who has not been impacted by the power of music. It can take you up and make you reach for the stars! The Auris skye is WiFi music receiver for your music dock designed to soundtrack your life. It plays your favorite tunes from your iPhone Android, Windows Phone or iTunes via AirPlay and DLNA. Love the sound of it!

The good thing about the skye is that it uses wireless technology that allows you to stream and control your favorite tunes from your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone or iTunes (Mac or PC) in your WiFi network with AirPlay and DLNA support. It intuitively fits onto your 30-pin docking station. What this means is that you can move around your space more easily and groove with your music at the same time. You have the max control to your library in an instant.

I can picture me using this arrangement not only on a daily basis but also on special occasions. Hosting a do on the deck, poolside or even an intimate gathering by the fireplace can be pepped up thanks to this innovative music streamer.

As Auris puts it, setting your music free has never been easier. The setup of the system is pretty straightforward and doesn’t require rocket science. Simply connect skye to the WiFi network and follow the straightforward instructions on the skye control app. Once all is done, you can instantly start listening to your favorite tunes. What’s more, the device uses the power supply of the docking station and is hassle free to maintain.

Multi room streaming is another big advantage and if you have more than one music dock, with Airplay or DLNA support, skye allows you to wirelessly move with your music from room to room, streaming music to multiple docks one at a time. I’d probably end up listening to my favorite channels on Pandora, Spotify or Rdio; what will you listen to?

Designer: Auris [ Buy it Here ]

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(Skye – One Innovation, Endless Possibilities was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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“This One Weird Trick” and “[Number] [Superlative] You Must See!” notwithstanding, “Technology Is Making Us [negative attribute]er” is among those sign-of-the-times headlines that reliably attracts fingertips and the eyeballs connected to them, and it remains an ever-relevant (and at times evergreen) topic du siècle. (Here’s where I recommend Luke O’Neil’s recent polemic on this disturbing trend in clickbaiting before diving right in.) Even as the pendulum—more a katamari than a wrecking ball—continues to swing between the poles of pro- and anti-technology, so too have new developments in mobile, the Internet of Things and overarching privacy concerns added a proverbial Z-axis to the playing field.

Professor Keith Hampton of Rutgers is, by the New York Times’ account, “neither a reactionary about technology, innately skeptical of the new, nor a utopian, eager to trumpet every invention as revolutionary. He is instead a sanguine optimist—a position he says is backed up by his research.” Along with a cadre of grad students, he’s spent the past several years working on what might be described as a shot-for-shot remake of an urban investigation from nearly half a century prior. Hampton is revisiting William Whyte’s seminal Street Life Project, in which he filmed public spaces in a first-of-its-kind study of urban planning by observing user behavior.

Thus, he’s taking up the cause—gathering empirical data in the interest of a more human-centric approach to urbanism—with a specific focus on mobile technology. As its title suggests, the Magazine feature—a worthwhile read for design researchers and city-dwellers alike—presents Hampton’s finding that “Technology Is Not Driving Us Apart After All.”

Fellow armchair sociologists who are pressed for time at the moment—I, too, have feeds to scroll through and e-mails to delete—might be interested in a brief post by Columbia’s Tim Wu, his first contribution to the New Yorker‘s tech blog. He proposes, in so many words, a kind of Turing test for a time traveller as a means of determining whether technology is making us smarter or dumber. He concludes that “how you answer the question of whether we are getting smarter depends on how you classify ‘we'”—whether you regard technology as an extension of the mind or as an external factor of purely incidental import.

Yet the most fascinating thing that Hampton found (spoiler alert, sort of) is the fact that more women are out and about in these spaces in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. “Who would’ve thought that, in America, 30 years ago, women were not in public the same way they are now? We don’t think about that.”

(more…)

Palette buttons can be re-arranged and customized by the user.

As any artist, designer or technologist will tell you, we rely on a wide variety of software in our day to day lives, from the Adobe Creative Suite to some sort of office bundle, as well as music and movie editing software. Each of these programs has custom controls on the software side, but on the hardware side we have the same set of tools: a keyboard and a mouse.

And while the multiple buttons of a keyboard are endlessly adaptable, that same sort of logic doesn’t apply in other interactive environments. Think, for instance, about the vast difference between driving a car and riding a motorcycle, or playing a video game on Playstation vs. operating a remote control for a television. Although the input devices and mechanisms share some obvious, similarities, the hardware experience varies substantially.

Which is why I was excited to learn about Palette, a “freeform controller” made of movable, interchangeable parts. Starting with the building blocks of buttons, dials and sliders, Palette allows users to create custom controllers based on how they want to interact with the computer.

The minimal aesthetic belies the original inspiration behind Palette. “Looking back at old transistor radios and war era type machines,” noted CEO Calvin Chu, who observed that these devices were “really robust.” “Why not make a way that even with all these different use cases, we could abstract these elements and rearrange them in different ways, just like Lego blocks?”

(more…)

News: scientists at the Google[x] research facility in California are working on contact lenses containing tiny electronics that could constantly monitor glucose levels in the tears of people with diabetes.

“We’re now testing a smart contact lens that’s built to measure glucose levels in tears using a tiny wireless chip and miniaturised glucose sensor that are embedded between two layers of soft contact lens material,” said Google in a post published on its official blog.

The contact lenses would be able to generate a reading every second, making it possible to instantly identify potentially dangerous changes in the patient’s blood sugar levels.

“We’re also investigating the potential for this to serve as an early warning for the wearer, so we’re exploring integrating tiny LED lights that could light up to indicate that glucose levels have crossed above or below certain thresholds,” the company explained.

As well as minuscule chips and sensors, the lenses could also incorporate an antenna thinner than a human hair that would communicate with apps so patients or doctors could view the measurements on a smartphone, tablet or computer.

Diabetes patients are currently required to test their blood sugar levels at regular intervals throughout the day by pricking their finger to draw a tiny amount of blood that can be analysed. The process is painful and time-consuming and can discourage people with diabetes from checking their blood glucose as frequently as they should.

“The one thing I’m excited about is that this is a device that people wear daily – the contact lens,” project co-founder Brian Otis told the BBC. “For us to be able to take that platform that exists currently, that people wear, and add intelligence and functionality to it, is really exciting.”

Google stressed that the technology is at a fledgling stage in its development but added that it will be seeking out potential partners who could help it refine the hardware and software required to turn the concept into reality.

“It’s still early days for this technology, but we’ve completed multiple clinical research studies which are helping to refine our prototype,” Google claimed. “We hope this could someday lead to a new way for people with diabetes to manage their disease.”

The post Google’s “smart contact lenses” could help
diabetics monitor blood sugar levels appeared first on Dezeen.

This movie we filmed at Dezeen’s pop-up shop of the future at London department store Selfridges demonstrates how augmented reality technology could transform retail.

Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs introduces the shop we curated for Selfridges‘ Festival of Imagination, which includes a virtual retail experience for Dezeen Watch Store and a life-size walkaround digital model of Zaha Hadid’s superyacht – both created by technology company Inition.

“The Imagine Shop is an attempt to visualise the kind of products, services and shops we might have in the future,” says Fairs.

The space on the ground floor of the department store contains all wall of 3D-printed products and clothing by Janne Kyttanen of 3D Systems, and even features a giant printed ping-pong table.

“The most exciting thing here is that we’ve worked with Inition, which is a 3D visualisation company, to show how augmented reality could be used in stores of the future,” Fairs says.

Inition lead creative Alex Lambert then talks about the augmented-reality projects that his company and Dezeen worked on for this event.

“Inition and Dezeen collaborated on two pieces of augmented reality,” he says, “one for watches available at the Dezeen Watch Store and another for a £300 million superyacht designed by Zaha Hadid.”

Lambert talks through the technology for the yacht models, which works using a tablet camera that picks up the code from patterned markers then displays the 3D model on screen.

“This type of augmented reality relies on a tablet,” he explains. “You’ll see a live video feed coming through the camera and once you point it at the marker the 3D model will appear.”

Two versions of the yacht are included in the shop: a miniature version and a full-size model that glides across the tablet screen.

“We’ve actually created the yacht in full scale,” says Lambert. “It’s a sunny blue ocean with a full-scale yacht sailing past, just to give people an idea of the scale of the superyacht.”

Using the same technology, shoppers can try on designs from Dezeen Watch Store at a virtual watch shop. Shoppers simply attach a band around their wrist and hold it up to a camera, then the chosen watch manifests over the band.

“We take one of these bespoke trackers… turn to the camera, get the marker in view and boom! The watch appears,” Lambert describes.

Inition added texture and shadows to the virtual watches to make them look as realistic as possible. Different models and colourways appear instantaneously around the wrist on screen as they are selected.

“Dezeen are very forward thinking in employing this technology, especially for watches,” says Lambert. “In the future hopefully people will download the app, use a webcam or tablet and try on the watches at home before they purchase online.”

Elsewhere in the department store, Inition also worked with fashion designer Gareth Pugh to install a virtual reality booth on the first floor and an auditorium designed by Dutch architects OMA has been created in the basement.

The Festival of Imagination continues all this month at Selfridges on Oxford Street, central London.

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Dezeen’s Imagine Shop for Selfridges appeared first on Dezeen.