Future Tech

01 Portable products

THE PORTABLE HOLOGRAPHIC DEVISE (PHD)

After the rise of Star Wars: A New Hope, in 1977 we saw an emerging fascination with futuristic gadgets. One in particular was the holographic devise we see built into R2D2 when show-ing Luke Skywalker a message sent by Princess Leia outlining her need for help of an old friend, Obi One Kenobi. The device projected a 3D image right in front of our eyes without the need for a screen or even a wall to project on. The fuzzy blue 3D im-age sat in the middle of the floor with it’s message as if it was a Borrower dressed as a Smurf giving us a message!

Since that moment we always looked towards a future where we could view our favorite shows and play our favorite games holographically and not with the use of a giant screen taking up most of the bedroom walls, limiting our space to hang up post-ers, art, instruments and shelves. However after the release of the P.H.D (Portable Holographic Devise) this can now be bought, and not just seen in Star Wars.

Built by the company that gave us the first projector back in the 1800’s, American company DLP Technologies have now gone the extra mile with the worlds first holographic device that can be held in your hand. This device which is only 5cm x 5cm and only 3cm thick sits in the palm of your hand perfectly, it only weights up to 500 grams projects an image directly in front of it.

The idea of the devise came when head of Future and Design innovation at DLP was at the theatre, he explains “... as i was watching this particular show, they used a fake body that slowly fell from the ceiling to demonstrate a slow-motion fall. The fake body itself was quite obviously fake and i wondered if it was easier to create a fully 3 dimensional image that has the flexibility to project an image anywhere that i wanted. Naturally you can imagine this was a tall order for my innovation team so i explained that this would only be a concept and we would take it from there onwards”.

After the first concept was released last year at the Technology Expo, “The devise has come along in leaps and bounds” explains James. “The technology started off quite difficult to produce, and when we did produce it, it needed a lot of hardware to keep it going. At that point in development we decided that it was probably best to keep it as an experiment and take what we can from it. But one of our engineers came up with an idea that revolutionized the way we actually cool our products down while the devise in the projec-tion mode. After this we innovated a whole new design which is why this new product looks so different from the others”.

When the product goes on sale in two years time for around £399.99 we will be able to find out how innovative it actually is. With news regarding Apple to bring out a portable holographic devise and Sony to be bringing one of their own too we’ll start seeing a race to see who’s is more durable, more compact and all the other usual test carried out on these products.


STICKERVISION

This new concept by The Early Learning Centre takes a huge amount of inspiration from the Harry Potter films. Upon watching back on them i notice the small articles in the local newspaper showing small 30 second to 1 minute clips of current affairs taking place. This then inspired the ELC to go out and find funding and get on board a technologies company to help with the idea of having a small sticker or magnet that can show a 1-3 minute clip of a show. They used the Muppets as an example to say that, if a child responds well to a certain scene in the muppets, you can programme your stickers throughout the house to either play the scene all at the same time, or as the child walks past them to play the video in circulation.

As you can tell the task wasn’t as easy as perhaps you may have thought, this being down to the resilient attention to detail brought on by ELC’s own head of technologies Peter Dean. He made sure that he did not budge on the issue that making a this exactly the same as a printed sticker was still kept as top priority.

“This was to be our major selling point, we wanted our product to stand out and we know that children can be a bit resilient with products when they’re lying around. It’s like having a troubled dog in your front room”. Well, it’s nice to know that he values the family pet as much as the children!

“The technology used to create this sticker was a lot harder than we first imagined” explains head to creative design at MowCorp. “We initially thought that we would be able to minimize the cur-rent TV panels we have and add an adhesive back to it to make it a sticker. But when we went to pitch the idea, we then finally understood that the stickers had to be exactly like a current printed one. Floppy and resistant to brutality. So we went back to the drawing board”.

As you can tell the task wasn’t as easy as perhaps you may have thought, this being down to the resilient attention to detail brought on by ELC’s own head of technologies Peter Dean. He made sure that he did not budge on the issue that making a this exactly the same as a printed sticker was still kept as top priority.

“This was to be our major selling point, we wanted our product to stand out and we know that children can be a bit resilient with products when they’re lying around. It’s like having a troubled dog in your front room”. Well, it’s nice to know that he values the family pet as much as the children!


MULTIPLE PEBBLE INTERFACE (MPI)

The multiple pebble interface is probably exactly how it sounds. Using ultra-nano technology from the Swiss tech company Bur-niche, Landz Technologies have managed to turn a household item of decoration into a single or multiple user interface com-plete with all freeview channels and up to 2160 pixel screen!

The idea of this amazing concept came from CEO Barney Cahirman, he tells me of how his wife consistently bought small pebbles from shops, took them home and put them in small vases and alike for decoration. “I hated it” states Barney, “I asked her to stop buying them but for some reason, she never did. So i decided to try and find an alternative use for them.... something i can enjoy”.

After a few sketchy idea’s he decided to try and use it as a portable interface to be used a a TV or to view TV shows. He explains how trying to link a receiver into the pebble itself was a ‘nightmare’ and then he had trouble with getting permission from the television broadcasters to allow him to do so. So he decided to try using the internet as the source.

“Using the internet was incredibly demanding, a lot of my staff thought that if we couldn’t get a TV transmission to it then how were we to get an internet signal to it! But after some time, we found that it was actually a lot easier than we initially thought. We did have to create some new technology that was built into the pebble itself and make it low costing, but we had it eventually”

This is then a revolutionary piece of equipment which is to be at low cost, apparently! The idea then of this equipment is that you have your pebble, you shine a light into it like a torch, if your out and about, or simply turn the room lights on if you at home, and it will illuminate the pebble itself. It has contact technology

in it that also recognizes if it is linked to one or more pebbles and this increases the size of the screen.

The amount of pebbles you use is theoretically endless, however the pixelation size is only, and i say only, up to 2160 pixels (double our current high definition pixelation rate).

As exciting as this is, this is only a concept, Landz Technologies have informed us over and over again that they wanted this to be a low budget alternative and ideally wanted to target the 15-30 year olds. So this needs to be relatively low tech (which is doesn’t sound to me) and relatively cheap, which produced a few more problems. The main issue being that they need this type of tech-nology to become more widely used in the commercial market. Because of this they are firstly targeting business’s and companies like Regus that use a lot of their office space for consultations and may need the use of this equipment.

So children who like this type of product and think it may be a useful idea, you may be buying it for your children!


PLAY DOUGH TV (PDTV)

The aptly named ‘Play Dough TV’, as concept model, is designed to appeal to the ages of 0-12. The idea behind this concept is bring interactive TV to kids in order to learn, it took taking inspiration, and quite a lot of it actually, from ‘The Muppets’ television program developed in to 1980’s in inspire children to learn and help the learning progress.

They understood that children between the ages above learnt the most when what it was that they were learning was repeated to them consistently over the course of a week. So they took a child’s play item that has been used the most, play dough, and applied an interactive TV screen to one color or one side of the dough. This Tv screen repeats a certain portion of whatever is programmed into it.

Although this is a concept MastTech are pretty serious about putting this into production, they say that they feel it is their responsibility to provide a great learning experience for small children, which has caused a stir in the scene as MastTech tra-ditionally provide advanced technologies to put n new weapons based systems for the US army. Questions have been asked but all accusations have been denied!

The creative influence behind this idea was based around the idea that a child can learn while doing. Although this is a typical approach to a lot of child learning experiences and can probably be explained a lot better without the use of a television in a toy, MastTech seem pretty certain on their attributes and are fairly forceful with their approach.


DIGITAL CONTACT LENS (DCL)

We currently have, on sale today, glasses that you can buy, either prescription or in sun resistant form, and on one side of the lens you can view a small section which is a small TV screen. You can view whichever you want providing that you upload it to the glasses first, or it streams a live feed from a small box that you can either place somewhere or keep on you.

Although this was brilliant technology for the time, it didn’t really take off, sales did not hit the roof as expected as there just want a huge market for it. One of the main problems of this product was that you couldn’t turn the small screen off, it was there all the time, so whenever you wanted to look left all you got was an eye full of whatever is going on behind you or your dog going nut’s at the corner of the sofa. Which to some people in recent news, was fairly fatal!

Introducing a new revolutionary devise built into a contact lens! This was first produced by the British Army and US Air Forces on special operation missions to record everything they can see and did, without the need of a bulky camera on their head which caused too much weight at the front of there helmets and more often than not, got shot or caught on something.

This small devise is an actual contact lens and can come with prescription lenses if need be, it fits lightly in your eye (same as any other contact lens) and allows you to see whatever you wish. Although this was initially built to project an image to a remote computer exactly what the viewer is seeing, it has been reversed engineered to do the opposite, You can view anything you wish using the internet. Watch your favorite shows while on the move, or watch a film on long distance travel, the digi-contact will manage with all sorts.

One of the best features, i think, for this devise is the ability to turn it off and then on again as you wish. Unlike the TV glasses that were built a few years back that do not hold this function

you can simply watch a film on the tube to work and then turn it off to carry on with your day without any problems.

Developed by a company who works closely with de-commissioned military technology they have transformed the way we now view both TV and cinema on the move. No more will we have to carry around clunky and horrible Apple Ipads to watch what we want through our journey to and from work and we can now view every-thing without causing the attention of a drug addict eyeing up our equipment after we’ve done some overtime on a wednesday night.

How this technology actually works is still classified information so i am unable to gain interview’s on how this went into produc-tion and the thinking process behind it. So unfortunately i am unable to bring to light how it works and so forth, so until i hear anymore, use you imagination!


MISTV

Similar to what you may think this means, it actually works on a very similar concept. It is essentially a mist that is sprayed either onto a platform or into the air (depending on the wind of course) and all the tiny water molecules converge to bring you a low resolution screen where you can watch a selection of whichever channels you wish that you pre programmed in . The Screen mist, or MisTV, usually only lasts for around 20-30 min-utes maximum and is, of course varied on the weather at the time. When used outside it is restricted largely to the weather, however, theoretically it can last up to 30 minutes if the average temperature is around 22 degrees Celsius and there is very little wind variation. Otherwise it will act the same as normal water droplets so in the face of wind and simply fly away!

The idea came from creative director Jan Tsichichold at Jakob Industries in Germany when he was driving through America. While stuck in traffic he caught himself staring at the light re-flection that creates a rainbow type haze when the light bounces of the tiny mist particles that comes from the small fans along the checkpoint counters at toll booths. He explains “When i was looking at these small flashes of light, i wondered if i could get the light to reflect an image. When i took it to the lab and we did some experiments, i noticed that not only was it possible to use this light to create an image but in temperatures over 30 Degrees it was possible to use that as a power source to connect as such things as the internet”.

This in turn means that the spray mist can be used as both a TV and a devise in which you can connect to the internet. Although the internet connection is very weak so the MisTV holds a stored hard drive in the bottle of liquid which can hold a backup battery and allows you to store downloaded files to so you can stream without any interruptions


VIRTUAL REALITY HELMET (VRH)

The product most people buy most issiues of most technology magazines is due to the hope of finding a glimpse of informa-tion regarding some form of virtual reality form of playing games, watching TV or entering another form of reality dictated by so many film producers of the 1980’s.

The new VRH (aptly named Virtual Reality Helmet) started life off with the exact same plan. To bring you exactly what you wanted, exactly what they said they would in the movies! But as you can imagine, modern technology only went so far and so what we’re left with is a form of virtual reality that brings you everything you wanted but without the touch-ability that Wild Palms did. It can give you the full effect of actually being in the film, with the senses, the feeling of wind blowing over you and the smell of a BBQ (but i wouldn’t want to watch ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ in a T-shirt).

This amazing new concept developed by JMTech in New Jersey works through a helmet, or what looks like a race ready crash helmet for formula 1 drivers. You place the helmet over your head and inside the helmet are small censors that stimulate part of your brain activating certain censors to give you the feel-ing of ‘being there’. In simple forms it gives you an almighty hallucination for just the amount of time that the helmet is on for, so it doesn’t carry on making you talk to you TV as if it’s your mother...and vice versa.

This revolutionary piece of equipment is hailed as the next huge step forward in visual entertainment and could sadly see the demise of the cinema, but fear not Odeon, it is only a concept and JMTech do not expect this to be release to the general public for another 10 years, at least!

Part of the engineering team Richard Hammer spoke to me briefly regarding the technology and why we are so far from seeing a

working model.“Although the product work’s it is mainly theory based and haven’t been able to fully test it for long periods of time on a human subject. There are far more tests and regulations we have to abide by before we can even think about using human test subjects for more than 3 minute intervals”. I asked Richard if he has used the VRH himself and he replied with, “I have, i loved it and i’m excited to see the finished product. The part that really got to me was how it genuinely felt like you were there in the movie experiencing things the same as the character’s. Although this may make the job of the film producer a lot harder if he/she wants to capture the emotion of the moment. Especially if it is animated!”

the final product, i have been informed and as i explained earlier, is to be depicted as a helmet. Apparently this is not the final product so it could look completely different to this once it has reached the end of testing.


BUBBLE VISION

When you were young, did you ever go to the local newsagent, purchase (or get your mum to purchase) the solution that was essentially bubble bath that came with a little stick with a loop on the end. You dip the stick onto the solution and blow out a bubble. You would then stare in wonder as your 5 year old eyes catch a glimpse of a reflection behind you and you imagine it was part of a television show playing in the bubbles everywhere so you were constantly surrounded by F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

No? Okay, me neither but it sounds like something a child would do, and on that note i currently have a concept copy of a new Viewing platform that uses a similar bubble solution to the one your mum used to buy you (i did used to buy that as a child). Their theory is that public and government funding go through so much money and effort to produce a screen that plays a small 30 second clip of the news as your driving down the M1, or a clip of sky sports news on the duel carriageway on Euston Road and they think it is a waste. Their current technology allows a small bubble to erupt from the side of the road, it expands and it gets closer to the centre and on the film of the bubble itself is a viewing platform which shows a small clip of news, or sport or which ever you wish.

The main drive behind this technology is David Wenters, CEO and a firm supporter of the Save our Planet foundation which looks into new ways in providing low carbon technologies. As the bubble explodes after a period of time, it leaves behind nothing but h20 and c02, which combined are 2h20, which to me is just a mixture of carbon and water.

This re-useable and renewable energy source is starting to al-ready radically change the way we view TV and the internet and they have been commissioned already to look into a more per-manent way of viewing in places like the London Underground and your homes! But they have advised me that they are taking this step by step and making sure this finished product is

ready to hit the streets before anything else takes off.

“We wanted to radically change the way in which we use energy” States David, “There are so many wires around these days and so much information going about that i think at some point, are we going to run out of room?” Those of you who might know, know that this is already a talking point within government. Our fossil fuel supplies are running low, our country is getting smaller while the inhabitants are getting bigger and bigger in numbers also. It’s common mathematics that eventually we are going to run out of room. So at 14 inches by 17 inches, you can agree that this product is very small, and with only 2 moving parts it sounds very durable. It only needs 4amps and 150volts to run it and can be battery powered of straight from an electrical source.“We are also looking into solar powered products now as it runs on such low power, we think we can sustain it on sun power alone without the need for even a backup power source”.


WATER TV (WTV)

When I first heard about this, I was slightly concerned abouteverything that I drank for the foreseeable 24 hours and it had me thinking...

If you can turn water into a TV what happens when you drink it?

The answer is nothing actually! It’s not your usual type of water straight from the tap, although it looks, feels and tastes very similar.

Head of technology Andy GIllman explains that “If you take a 50cl bottle of water, add our solution to it and turn on our receiver within 6 feet of the water soluable, the water then turns into a viewing platform”. Now, when I first heard this I had a slightly different image in my head of what this was going to look like, I imagined that it would look like someone projecting an image onto a puddle. But when I arrived at Mungu Research Labaratory in California I noticed that the water in actually a high definition screen with rather good clarity. Easily viewable, even at a distance.

The idea behind this is actually pretty similar to a product previ-ously tested named Bubble Vision, it is the continued annoyance however, of huge plastic and television screen that get updated every 2-3 months and so everyone throws them away to pur-chase a new one. So they decided that is they created something that was adaptable to new technologies and fairly versatile, there would be no need for asuch garbage and waste.

How it works? Well, if you take a standard bottle of purified water, any amount i’ve been told is okay (it depends on what size screen you want). Add half a teaspoon of the solution to it, leave to rest for 10 minutes then slowly pour onto the ground.

Although I feel I will have to warn you not to drink to water with the solution in it, although it wont kill you, it will cause some

serious injury to your body. Your kidneys become so damaged that you will be an equivilent of an alcoholic after 15 years of binging.


iWATCH

As you can probably imagine, the Iwatch is Apple’s new concept for the market willing to pay an extortionate amount for anything with an apple logo on the front, so they’ve introduced the new Iwatch. Which is, in essence, an Ipod nano with the primary function as, a watch! Not particularly inventive I am happy to admit.

Apple have announced that the likelihood this will be released into the market is rather slim. “There’s simply not a big enough market for us to be persuaded that we should release it in our line of products”. So for those of you who picked up this magazine on the notion that we’ve featured a new Ipod product before anyone else then you’re about to be disappointed i’m afraid.

The Iwatch supports all the usual I….. tricks which mostly revolve around an Ipod, so as you can imagine this watch comes in both 2GB and 4GB forms, supporting a plastic strap similar to those found on a Casio your mum bought you when you first went to high school so you wouldn’t be late for class. It sits at around 350g in weight and is around 1.67 X 1.99 inches, so it’s not the smallest gadget in the world, however if you remember that it fit’s a 4GB Ipod in there as well then you’ll forgive them.

“The idea behind this was to integrate Ipod’s and music to the everyday item, we found that the Iphone received huge appeal mostly because it was primarily a phone and so acted as 2 in 1. On that note, we obviously couldn’t start by putting Ipod technology in earrings and nail varnish as that would be far too clunky and our assumption is that the taste for most other types of jewelry is not governed by the practicality. So we started looking at the function of using our products while doing other sports such as running”.

So as Tim Margey, public relations, informs us this product is primarily set for the sport fans out there. Aimed mostly as the

gym enthusiasts and those who don’t have time to go home, change, then go to the gym and wish to simply plug and go while they’re running as the usual Ipod’s are a touch too big. Especially if your new to the gym…

The Iwatch then seems like a good idea once you go into the subject of having a product for those who wish to listen to music while at the gym, as it is strapped to your wrist (it also comes with an app for gym workouts than sync in time with the music). How-ever i cant see an entire market being placed on this product and unless a bright green 2 inch watch becomes a fashion sense then, unfortunately, it may not have such of a market to be released.

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