Oh Boy. How to Fuck up the Announcement of a Great Invention Big Time.

August 11th, 2011 • Tech
Tags: 802.22, Cool, Experimental, IEEE, innovation, Tech, Tools, Trends, WLAN, World, WRAN

Engineers just know how to ruin a good story.

The thing which has just been announced as a new technical standard by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) will probably really be a revolution. But instead of giving this thing a really cool name they called it ‘WRAN’. Or to make it even more cryptic: 802.22.

‘WRAN’ stands for ‘Wireless Regional Area Network’. It basically takes the idea of your WLAN at home one step – or more – further and offers wireless internet access in an area up to 62miles/100km wide. We are talking about 12,000 Square Miles aka a lot. (via PCMasters)

As far as I understand this means we are getting one giant leap closer to Internet wherever we go. The potential implications of this new standard are absolutely breathtaking – just think about the challenge for Mobile carriers as well.

But anyway. It is good to see that there is absolutely no need to revise my stereotype of Engineers. You guys have possibly just invented one of the greatest technical solutions of our time and you call it “802.22″? Seriously IEEE: What the Fuck? This could have been the greatest product announcement since sliced bread. But you ruin it because you name it like a species of Alien Bacteria.

If you want to check out more of the IEEE’s fancy marketing concepts go check out their ‘Product page‘or the Wikipedia article.

It could have been good.

SixthSense. Redefining Man-Machine-Interaction.

November 18th, 2009 • Experimental, Tech, Tools
Tags: Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Gesture, innovation, Interfaces, Interview, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, TED, Touch, Trends, World

The latest series of Ted takes us to India. Pranav Mistry is a student at the notorious innovation factory M.I.T and inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. In this demo he explains this new type of men-machine interaction – including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all. Fantastic stuff.

google Wave. The last night of email?

September 30th, 2009 • 8 comments Allgemein, Tools, Trends
Tags: Business, Cool, google, google wave, Idea, innovation, Strategy, Tools

It’s only one more day until google Wave launches. 100,000 users will be the first to receive an invite and I hope I will be among them (try to get your invite here). Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and (mobile) collaboration. A wave will be both, conversation and a document where people can interact, share and integrate formats of all sorts (pics, videos, audio…) – and everything real time.

By what we know about google Wave it might really be a game changer and redefine collaboration and the social realm (think Twitter not Facebook). Waves will come with drag-and-drop functionality, be embeddable, integrate multiple formats etc and be open source. That means, developers will create applications for google Wave. In short: google Wave may the answer to the question ‘How would email look like if it was invented in 2009′. And I am looking forward to seeing what that means when it gets live.

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