Episode 189 – Year End Tech Blues

Did you know if you play In the Air Tonight from the Secret Policeman’s Ball starting at any time before midnight on the 31st of December, you won’t hear the drum solo at all?  Well, we did. As we wrap up the last episode of 2017, we have several examples of tech you may find as intriguing as we did. First, non-powered, non-battery operated devices that can communicate with WiFi, simply explained by sound waves.   Michael R highlights the DTNS show where the concept of transmission over a wet string is explained.  Michael M remembers the Monty Python String … Continue reading

Episode 183 – Enhanced Reality

Michael & Michael talk about the promise of bots who listen into meetings, take notes & action items on your behalf, entering them into your tool of choice for follow up.  Talk about the power of the pen — and quite a step up from “Alexa, add eggs to my grocery list”. Michael R brings up the fact that we’re still in a generation 1.1 world when it comes to AR — really in the beginning stages.  Starting point will be in enterprise and entertainment before AR applications begin to really show up outside of these areas. Intriguing question:  are … Continue reading

Episode 181 – Robotic Rockband

Baby, don’t hurt me.  Or order things on my Amazon Echo when I don’t want them.  Michael and Michael start off this episode talking about the South Park season premiere, which plays a prank on the viewers by the audio dialog of the show launching commands on the viewer’s voice controlled devices (such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home). I for one, welcome our new rockin’ robotic rockband overlords.  And when you watch the video of Nigel Stanford’s Automatica, we think you will too. Michael and Michael wrap up this episode talking about the recently concluded NASA Cassini mission and … Continue reading

Episode 180 – Augmented Beer Goggles

 Jan 2008 Activeworlds video of Van Gogh mashup of multiple paintings Augmented reality is hitting the news every few moments, you can crack open a cold one and start seeing things.  Or you can try on a new hair color from the app by Modiface.  Of course, you can experiment with how you would look in a new pair of shades from Ray-Ban. For even more fun, the Art Gallery of Ontario uses the ReBlink app to have the people in the paintings take selfies of the art gallery patrons taking selfies of them.  This reminded Michael and Michael of … Continue reading