There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.
Please share in the comments any other real-time trends that you think will be big.
Read more at: Mashable
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{Photography by nDevilTV}
Deep fried chocolate cake, tacos wrapped in pepperoni pizza, the “fat bastard burger” … these are all reasons that America has an obesity problem, and the basis for a recent Internet phenomenon – the blog called “This Is Why You’re Fat” (TIWYF) that showcases excessive junk food items.
The blog recently joined a host of other Internet memes by scoring a book deal, and is celebrating its release by holding a very cool (and fattening) promotion in New York City today where fans of the site can enjoy the type of food items that make up TIWYF’s content.
TIWYF has teamed up with six New York City food trucks (all of whom have their own Twitter accounts) to offer a TIWYF-inspired item today. Through its own Twitter account, TIWYF will be periodically announcing the location of each truck. The first fan to post pics of themselves eating all 6 items wins the prize: a private food cart party for them and 25 of their friends.
Read more at: Mashable
Related Link: ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com
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{Photography by Alex Ik}
Ray Kurzweil was speaking at MIT today: WOW! and double WOW! One of the absolute best talk that I have attended in quite a while, he was humbly engaging a large audience talking about his approach to forecasting when technology will enable innovative idea to be both practical and marketable.
His talk seemed very linear and analytical, while Ray was indeed going from left brain to right brain, from the heart to the brain; his genius might be this uncanny ability to be a whole brain thinker, drizzle with a double helping of humbleness.
He showed very simple yet illustrative charts that would make Edward Tufte both proud and jealous, Ray almost made it seem easy, almost trivial. But the amount of research behind the data is indeed challenging. Imaging putting yourself in Ray’s shoes – and any Entrepreneur and marketer should put themselves into the shoes of a Futurist – there are 3 major decisions to be made:
- What data to track (and how);
- How long to track the data;
- The algorithm to extrapolate the trends.
If you have ever tried to build a case about developments in the making and trends, something that was above and beyond a mere opinion and had some factual basis, you know how hard it is to both conceptualizing it and to communicate it. Ray presents a compelling model to emulate.
At the end of the evening, I walked away from the Strata Center feeling smarter than when I walked in: what a feeling!
Was it osmosis? Did I inhale some of the wisdom of the crowd?
Pimpy3wash just finished doing a round of laundry. Hacklab.toilet just flushed and mattsoffice tweeted that the temperature is 83.3° F.
It might seem like just another day in the Twitterverse, where prosaic, personal updates stream throughout the day. Except @Pimpy3wash, @hacklab.toilet and @mattsoffice are not real people: They are a washing machine, a toilet and an array of home light and temperature sensors. Each of them, with help from some microcontrollers, wires and Arduino boards, have been rigged to answer Twitter’s basic question: “What are you doing?”
“It started as a joke,” says Seth Hardy, a researcher for an anti-virus company who modified his toilet to tweet. “I don’t like Twitter much and think everyone puts up very mundane stuff on Twitter. I thought, ‘Why not have my toilet in there, too?’ Now it’s turned into a fun way to test out the Arduino boards.” His twittering toilet, @hacklab.toilet, now has more than 580 followers.
As Twitter’s use has exploded, the service has seen a twittering cat (the British kitty, Sockington, is fast approaching a million followers), a duck, an R2D2 and even a kegerator that tweets from Wired.com’s office. But unlike these profiles, where humans are merely pretending to be the cat or robot on whose behalf they post, tweets from appliances are the real thing.
Read more at: WIRED
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{Photography by Image Sniper}
A camera that takes photos with an invisible flash of infrared and ultraviolet light points to a smarter way to take photos in the dark.
Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus at New York University created the camera in an attempt to do away with intrusive regular flashes.
To make their “dark flash” camera, they modified a flashbulb to emit light over a wider range of frequencies and filter out visible light. The pair also had to remove the filters that usually prevent a camera’s silicon image sensor detecting IR and UV rays. (Read more at: NewScientist)
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{Photography by Addhass}
