I was walking down the street and saw this sticker
"love to shop" the sticker said, 'yep' I said to myself. Intrigued, I took a photo with my iPhone. Then went to the website getclip.ca.... it told me to download the app, so I did that...
It is a location based coupon app. Basically this is what many people want from Foursquare, ie deals at shops and restaurants, without the competitive nature of being Mayor or not.
Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital is featured as being a model hospital for clever devices integration, namely for iPhone use.
Using Apple's developer software "iPhone SDK", Mount Sinai developed a iPhone app called VITAL HUB, which basically combines all 66 apps used by doctors.
At the last family bbq I was at, a relative who is Radiologist was telling me how he can clearly view images and from the iPhone and is excited by future uses.
The latest Cisco ad featuring our Ellen Page, shows her visiting her doctor via webcam. Is this the future of doctor's visits? Virtual waiting rooms?
There is a trend towards people trying to self-diagnose via google. Well, self diagnosis isn't a new thing, it was once common to have books that people used in the home. But it is fair to say that some internet sites are not reliable for this, many are also full of ads.
I believe we will see fundamental change regarding health care in the near future. This will have a lot to do with the increasing demand for services with the ageing population.
We typically perceive it as a driving force of change, the harbinger of good, the bright future and the unity of mankind. However, If you Google globalization, a central theme of keywords will begin to crop up: 'Challenges', 'Impact', 'Discontents' to name a few.
What are you talking about? Globalization is an inevitable process, it is where societies grow and evolve to the point of overlapping and consequently connecting. This can be a wonderful thing when not led by powerful self-serving feudalists and imperialists. As technology brings us closer to unity, so too are we united in our struggle under the capitalist doctrine. Countries where people could be free and live off the land are now condemned to a lifetime of work just to stay afloat amidst a sea of debts.
What are some directly affected areas? E-waste, pollution, poverty, biological weaponry, nihilism, commodity fetishism; these are all ideas that flow more and more freely as we continue to bring countries closer and erase unique cultural resonances under a new ultimate world order.
We are blinded to these global happenings just as we are blinded to what really goes on in our society.
Why would this make a good project? The strength of this direction as a project for the Harborfront centre is both in its contrast to the other installations and in the innate human curiosity. The sheer magnitude of this path means that we can make all sorts of awesome projects to illustrate it - we are essentially communicating an emotion through art and design. backed up by huge heapings of evidence at our disposal.
What do you plan to do about it? While i personally enjoy the idea of a doorway as a portal into the blindness, (since the door serves as a portal while also being a metaphor for shutting out undesirable information) I'd love to discuss some ideas with anyone interested.
eWaste, for example, is one of the many directions and it can be tackled in a cool installation by taking old cell phones and building something beautiful out of them, ie. a chandelier. We could use crowdsourcing and invite people to submit their solutions to various world problems, or simply express their reactions in a way more people can see them. Inspired by the tweet mobile:
So what now? I'd really, really like to tackle this idea. I feel like the pure emotion it invokes will show visitors humanity's true oneness and global consciousness. This is local thinking extrapolated globally - it fits in perfectly with the theme of the exhibition and with so much emotional ammunition I feel it has the ability to rise above all the other installations - but I can't do it by myself! I need more creative minds to help me out.
So If you want to be a part of something really big and potentially jaw-dropping, just leave me a note or send me an e-mail at kareemhalfawi@gmail.com
Recently unveiled at the Game Developer's Conference, the new OnLive gaming service is a rather unexpected surprise and if successful, could change the
The OnLive service is basically a "cloud" system, as in all the games are purchased and streamed digitally to your OnLive system. You won't have any physical boxes or discs for games. Although the PC gaming market is already moving in this direction, it still isn't as simple as buying a game for a Playstation 3, inserting the disk, and playing. OnLive aims to fix that by making it simple to start playing any available game immediately.
Although you won't be able to play PS3 of Xbox360 games on the OnLive service, the potential is in the future games. If the service is successful, no longer would developers have to create games for 2 consoles and have any manufacturing costs for disks. It would present a significant change in the direction videogames are headed.
The hindrance now is that the service requires an extremely fast internet connection, which everyone simply does not have. In the future, that will happen, but it just isn't completely feasible for everyone to buy into this service yet. But the potential is certainly there.
Nobody probably wants to wear a camera around their neck 24 hours a day, so the Microsoft SenseCam is likely not mass market consumable. I mean, who would want to wear something that large all the time? However, one thing that can be said about it is that the idea is sound, and if the tech can be minimized and perfected, the SenseCam could be something everyone would want to use.
The SenseCam is basically just a camera you wear around your neck, and it will constantly take photos of your daily life. Around 30,000 photos or "100 hours of your life" can be recorded.
Now, I know it would be pretty boring to watch somebody else's mundane life, but imagine if people used these things 30-40 years ago (hypothetically speaking), I'm sure everyone would want to know what their grandparents, great grandparents were like in their daily lives. I'm sure everyone's future children and grandchildren would be awfully curious to know what you were like in the world we live in now. The SenseCam has the potential to literally be history come to life.
Microsoft has published their first details regarding their new cell phone mobile operating system, and from an initial glance, it has plenty of potential to compete (and even outdo) the iPhone and its App Store.
Microsoft isn't going out to reinvent the wheel, and if anything, it's basically copying what Apple has already created with the iPhone OS and the App Store. Microsoft will offer their own app store and applications. However, Windows Mobile 7 isn't tied to a single phone, unlike the Apple App Store. When you think about the fact that Nokia, Samsung and LG will likely have phones running Windows Mobile 7, all of a sudden Apple has quite a bit of competition for their once unbeatable app store.
One of the most successful aspects of the Apple app store has been games. Microsoft has the potential to really outdo Apple in this regard. Microsoft will tie in their Xbox360 with Windows Mobile 7 and create games that can be played in the home and also on the go. They also have experience in creating games and a platform to make game developing easier. I can forsee the Microsoft app store being a better haven for gaming than the Apple app store.
In the end, Apple's head start in the market might be too much for Microsoft to catch up, but that won't stop it from taking a chunk out of Apple's market. Healthy competition is always beneficial to us, and who knows, maybe it will help Apple realize things like how stupid it is that the iPhone OS doesn't support Flash.
