Tech Stream
Archive for the ‘ Devices’ Category
Tech Stream 019
26 June 2009
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QR coded jewelry – photo from Flickr by Fluid Forms.
We’re blurring the lines between the virtual and the physical this week in the Tech Stream. We’ll be speaking about augmented reality with Christy Dena, a cross-media researcher and Professor Bruce Thomas from the Wearable Computer Lab at the University of South Australia.
This leads us into a discussion on Quick Response or “QR” Codes which are being used in advertising as well as augmented reality games. Antony McGregor Dey from QMCodes and Mobile Mondays Melbourne will get us up to speed with this new way to link a physical-world object with something in an online or virtual environment.
We’ll also have a report from Connect Asia‘s David Wang on how the Chinese Government is cracking down on pornography online and accusing search engines like Google of disseminating pornographic content within China.
And finally Bajo joins us from Good Game to review the latest Ghostbusters video game.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
Augmented Reality
26 June 2009
Listen and download: MP3
We caught a glimpse this week of some mobile applications that allow you to look at the world around you and see an overlay of virtual information. Point the phone’s camera at a building and a dialog box pops up on the screen with what it is, when it was built, how far away it is from you etc. You can still see the physical world but now virtual content has been added on top. This is an example of augmented reality. More after the jump…
Tech Stream 018
19 June 2009
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PNG school children in Gaire, outside Port Moresby, trying out their new OLPC laptops in June last year. Photo from Flickr.
In the Tech Stream this week: Twitter connects the world to the post-election protests in Iran; the latest mobiles on display at CommunicAsia in Singapore; online vigilantes shutdown racism on Facebook; ICANN’s Dr Paul Twomey on the future of internet domain names; the One-Laptop-Per-Child scheme expands in the Pacific; and Bajo from Good Game joins us to chat about Infamous, the latest ‘open-world’ video game. Listen with the MP3 link above, full details after the jump…
Tech Stream 014
22 May 2009
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Photo from Flickr by Jose Roberto.
We’ve got our head in the clouds this week in the Tech Stream. There’s a buzz around the term “cloud computing” and I lost count how many times it was mentioned at CeBIT Australia 2009 last week in Sydney. I spoke with two local businesses on the exhibition floor about how they’re providing solutions for those wishing to work “in the cloud” and luckily they both offered to explain what the term “cloud computing” actually means.
CeBIT: Cool Toys
14 May 2009
Its time to get into the nitty gritty of what attracted me to CeBIT Australia 2009 in the first place: cool toys! Well, thats not exactly true. I’ve enjoyed the ideas, debates and innovation on show as well, but who can resist pocket sized projectors, 3D televisions, headphones that conduct sound through your bones instead of your ears (see photo above) and technology that lets you move a mouse on the screen with your eye! Woah.
The main parts of the conference are winding up, so I’m heading back out into it now, join me again with all these cool gadgets in the Tech Stream radio program, tomorrow afternoon across Asia and the Pacific on Radio Australia.
The Internet of things
1 May 2009
What if the computer in your car could communicate with the computer at your local garage and without any interaction from you book the vehicle in for a service or repairs when required? What if at the same time it could book you a replacement hire car and have it delivered to your house? This kind of interaction between computers, without our intervention, forms part of what is likely to become known as “the internet of things”. Future Tense takes up the story this week and asks whether we about to witness a new phase for the internet? An internet where objects, not people, communicate.
You can download the story as an MP3 with this link or subscribe (as I do) to Future Tense and have all their programs delivered straight to your computer and media player.
Tech Stream 011
1 May 2009
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Voxopop’s audio message boards are popular with people learning English.
In the Tech Stream this week, Firemint’s Robert Murray talks about their mobile game Flight Control which is a #1 worldwide hit; discover a social-networking discussion site Voxopop.com which allows people to start audio-based forums and has been taken up by English language learners across the world; Danny Gorog takes us under the hood of the Kindle 2 eBook reader; we learn how to reduce the impact our PCs have on the environment; and the increasing popularity of shanzhai phones in China.
You can listen to the full Tech Stream program with the MP3 link above or the “Listen Now” link on the right. Feel free to comment on any of these stories or suggest something we can follow up in future programs. You can also subscribe to the podcast too!
A little light reading
23 April 2009
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Photo from Flickr by Phillip Torrone.
It took us a while, but finally we have our filthy mits on Amazon’s new e-Book reader the Kindle 2. The reason for the delay is that it is actually not for sale anywhere but the USA. That’s right, in spite of all the tech-hype around the gadget, Americans are the only people able to buy it and use it to its full potential.
In the loungeroom with Blu Ray
3 April 2009
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Blu Ray drives are starting to appear in more PCs, even some laptops. Photo from Flickr by lingolook [cc license].
Technology Journalist Adam Turner joins us again in the Tech Stream for a closer look at the BLU-RAY high definition optical discs format. You can listen to our chat via the MP3 link at the top of this post.
Cool cassette MP3 player
13 March 2009
In the Tech Stream program this week I spoke about this great little MP3 player concept from NVDRS (pictured above). You charge the kinetic battery by twisting the spool, just like you used to do with old cassettes to tighten the tape or rewind manually. I would often use a pencil too. You can also use the spools to skip songs, as shown above. How neat. Storage is limited to 45, 60 or 90 minutes as well, just the like the real thing too. So cool. There are more images on Yanko Design. Now, if only they made it for real…
