We all hear about the inspiring and brilliant TED videos where inventors, thought leaders and social activists give a scintillating 18-20 minutes speech about their own topic of interest. While the talks about social media, politics, economics, language, design, architecture and many more gave us much food for thought, there are interesting TED demo videos which give us a glimpse of future technologies and what is going to come. We start with a series of interesting demos from how one can synthesize a three dimensional structure using a set of images (coming out of Microsoft Research), a new type of GUI desktop interface for operating system and lastly, wireless electricity and how we can get our phones charge without wires.
- Demo 1 – Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos Photosynth: Blaise Aguera y Arcas leads a dazzling demo of Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos culled from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them.
Why it is interesting: First, it shows how one can utilize similar images from the same object and create the 3D landscape in exactly how the object looks structurally. In Singapore, when some of us visited Microsoft Innovation Centre Singapore, we were treated the same demo with the landscape where the Merlion is situated by constructing different photo images from the public.
- Demo 2 – Anand Agarawala demos BumpTop: Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered “walls.”
Why it is interesting: It offers a glimpse to us on how the next generation of operating systems desktop interface might look like, and using file size and other attributes with a graphical depiction to allow us to decide which files are important. Actually, we wonder why Apple or Microsoft has not bought over this idea yet for their new Mac OS X or Windows 7 interfaces.
- Demo 3 – Eric Giler demonstrates the usage of Wireless electricity: Eric Giler wants to untangle our wired lives with cable-free electric power. Here, he covers what this sci-fi tech offers, and demos MIT’s breakthrough version, WiTricity — a near-to-market invention that may soon recharge your cell phone, car, pacemaker.
Why it is interesting: This is one video which can show you the future where you don’t need to look for a socket to charge your phone or computer. It utilizes a traditional principle in physics using electromagnetism to get devices charged within a certain vicinity. You can already imagine that you can do the same with cars if you have a large plate in the parking area.
Editor’s Note: The abstracts of the talks are sourced from TED.com
Related Links:
[1] BL, My 5 Favourite TED Videos
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