Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

UPDATE: There’s already a lot of good discussion going on around this post in my public twine.
I’ve been writing about a new trend that I call “interest networking” for a while now. But I wanted to take the opportunity before the public launch of Twine on Tuesday (tomorrow) to reflect on the state of this [...]

Slideshare is a site where people post and share their Powerpoints. You can watch the powerpoints quickly with a little viewer widget that let’s you click through them in your browser. There are some really interesting, creative, and informative presentations there. It’s addictive, I’ve been looking at presentations all morning. Can’t stop. (Thanks to Peter [...]

Last night I saw that the video of my presentation of Twine at the Web 2.0 Summit is online. My session, "The Semantic Edge," featured Danny Hillis of Metaweb demoing Freebase, Barney Pell demoing Powerset, and myself Demoing Twine, followed by a brief panel discussion with Tim O’Reilly (in that order). It’s a good panel [...]

What a week it has been for Radar Networks. We have worked so hard these last few days to get ready to unveil Twine, and it has been a real thrill to show our work and get such positive feedback and support from the industry, bloggers, the media and potential users.
We really didn’t expect so [...]

News Flash!
My company, Radar Networks, is coming out of stealth this Friday, October 19, 2007 at the Web 2.0 Summit, in San Francisco. I’ll be speaking on "The Semantic Edge Panel" at 4:10 PM, and publicly showing our Semantic Web online service for the first time. If you are planning to come to Web 2.0, [...]

Steorn, the Irish company that claims to have invented a mechanical device that generates unlimited free energy with no fuel, is scheduled to demonstrate their device publicly for the first time in London tomorrow. A panel of 22 independent world experts has been recruited to study the device. It should be an interesting demo!

If you are interested on what computer user-interfaces are going to feel like in the future — you must see this video of a demo of a new multi-touch computer monitor. This is amazing technology — and the various demos themselves are interactive artworks in their own right. For more information about the researchers and [...]

Check out this very impressive user-interface prototype for a desktop that works more like a real desk — a messy desk in fact. Very delightful design work that makes want to use it now!

An invetor in Japan has created the world’s first glass CD. Because of glass’s exceptional clarity and durability it not only provides better sound quality than plastic, it lasts "forever." The catch: it costs a hefty amount yen to buy one since they are presently made by hand.

I know, I know. I’m several years late to the party on this one, but I have become quite obsessed with the television show, Lost. It’s possibly the most addictive show on TV. Ever. You have to start from the beginning though. Sign up for Netflix if you haven’t already, and be prepared to not [...]

I got the TiVo Series 3 box today and installed it. It takes 2 cable cards and can record simultaneously on two channels at once, in HDTV. It also connects to my wireless network instead of using regular phone lines. Nice. Unfortunately one of the cable card slots was defective — this apparently is a [...]

I’ve been listening to a lot of music today. Two other albums that I have that I highly recommend are the Magnolia soundtrack by Aimee Mann, and Colour the Small One by Sia. While we’re on the subject, if you like these, you’ll probably also like Dummy by Portishead, even though it’s quite different from [...]

This online video preview of the upcoming Web-based organizer, Scrybe. The app has an unusually elegant and innovative AJAX interface. It’s beautifully designed. Watch the video.

This is a nice, VERY dated commercial for the C-64 computer starring none other than William Shatner!

The online music recommendation service Pandora is really cool in all ways but one. Due to what they report as a requirement of their music license the user is only allowed to skip a small number of songs per hour. This can be a problem since the whole point of Pandora is that you [...]

My Treo 650 has been an endless source of frustration. It’s probably one of the most annoyingly bad devices I’ve ever owned. First of all, the form factor is such that it’s almost impossible to grab it when it rings without dropping it or flinging it across the room. There’s no traction on the surface [...]

This is cool — the next generation of touch screens will touch back —
Immersion’s new TouchSense Technology for Touch Screens combines vibro
feedback with finger-position recognition and interpolation to deliver
tactile feedback on standard touch screens. This feedback can register
as bumps, low vibrations, ticks, clicks, slides, you name it. All of it
is coupled with audible feedback [...]

Japanese cell phone company KDDI is offering a new GPS-enabled 3D navigational tool to their 17 million subscribers (see article and picture). Their system helps consumers navigate city streets and even within buildings, using an innovative 3D map and audio directions. This system is similar to (but possibly more advanced than) the in-car navigation systems [...]

Check out the Scoobadoo — a new underwater scooter that lets anyone scuba dive, without wearing a mask, tank or weights… Cool.

Check out the photo and video of this cool new display right out of Minority Report. It detects multiple fingers at once, enabling a wide range of new gestural interactions.

After 11 years of painstaking research and inventor has finally achieved the "holy grail" — colored soap bubbles that don’t stain anything. But that’s just the beginning — his invention is based on a completely new kind of dye chemistry that could open the door to a wide range of new products. Read this excellent [...]

This article just came in (via Kurzweil)
A little-known start-up has demonstrated wireless broadband 1000
times more efficient than WiMax – and claims the technique could also
make wireless LANs that will run for years on watch batteries.
xG
Technology, based in Sarasota, Florida, used a transmitter not unlike a
cordless phone base station, operating in the unlicensed – and crowded
- [...]

Following in the footsteps of Douglas Engelbart’s pioneering work, SRI has announced the upcoming open-source (LGPL) release of Open IRIS — an experimental Semantic Web personal information manager that runs on the desktop. IRIS was developed for the DARPA CALO project and makes use of code libraries and ontology components developed at SRI, and my [...]

D-Wave, a Canadian startup, claims it will have a working quantum computer within 3 years. Unlike other quantum computer designs which are based on the principle of quantum entanglement, the D-Wave design is based on quantum tunneling. While this makes it less powerful, it is still ideal for complex calculations such as the "traveling salesman [...]

NASA’s research on subvocalization technology is moving forward. Their system intercepts nerve signals to the vocal cords before the speaker makes a sound and then figures out what words they signify. This technology will enable people to speak silently on the phone or to their computers, without moving their lips or making a sound. It’s [...]

Years ago I read about Persinger’s work on the induction of unusual states of consciousness using magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe and always wanted to try it — unfortunately the only way to do that was to go to his lab (assuming you could get invited). The Shakti Helmet brings this technology to the [...]

Sony has released its new Creation Box in Japan — it processes regular TV signals to make images clearer, flicker free, and more vivid — and it enables zoom functions. Pretty interesting idea — but why bother? Aren’t we all going digital anyway? How long a shelf-life will this product have? Still it’s a pretty [...]

My friend, Bari Koral, just released her new album, "Confessions of an Indie Girl." Bari is an incredible talent — and this is her best album yet. She tours most of the year and has a large following, but she is still undiscovered by the mainstream. This review says it all:

"Confessions of an Indiegirl is [...]

Here are some more features that I wish the iPod offered:
Side-Trips From Current Playlist
When I’m playing through one of my playlists and I get to a song I really like, I wish I had the ability to take sidetrips to other related subjects, accessible from the trackwheel or menu button:

After this song, side-trip to more [...]

Think outside your cable box! My long-time friend, the legendary Ken Schaffer, has finally come out of stealth with his new project, TV2ME. In a nutshell, it enables you to watch your own cable subscription channels live from anywhere via broadband over the Net. The system connects your cable box to a video streaming system [...]