This one’s dedicated to Jim Consolantis

If you don’t recognize her as the notorious Rachel from Season 7 of Big Brother, you don’t sit next to Jim. (BTW, she’s a peach IRL)
3D Printing from Kodak
Take a picture. Now move your camera 3 inches to either side and take the picture again. New printing software from Kodak will stitch the two shots together into a single 3D photo that you can see on your monitor or print out with a Kodak inkjet printer.
BUT…your subject can’t be in motion or it won’t work. Better for still-life shots. And you have to wear 3D glasses to get the effect, otherwise you just have a crazy, blurry photo.
In 30 years our grandkids will laugh at our 2011-era 3D photos and our 2010-era Hipstamatic shots.
Augmented Reality, brought to you by Qualcomm

Qualcomm and Mattel are showing off a nifty augmented-reality game for Android…Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em.
Alls you do is lay out the mat, point your phone’s camera at it, and the boxers duke it out on your screen. The game’s graphics look great, and it’s a “pre-commercial” demo so they aren’t sharing pricing info yet.
I think it’s safe to expect an explosion of these types of AR games over the next 12 months. (And while we’re on the subject, check out the demo of Josh Shabtai’s AR iPhone game, Falcon Gunner.)
Microsoft has a demo video of the new Surface table
Microsoft has a demo video of the new Surface table that was announced yesterday
This guy kind of looks like me

He has way better hair though. Rock on.
BlackBerry’s Tablet: The PlayBook

It was just announced today, and there aren’t final specs or pricing for it yet, but the BlackBerry PlayBook looks pretty cool.
The tablet looks like an iPad, but smaller, with a 7-inch screen. It connects to your BlackBerry handset via secure Bluetooth for syncing purposes, and can tether from your handset for cellular connectivity.
Some nice details: Flash + HTML5 support; 3MP front-facing camera; 5MP rear-facing camera (though will we take pictures with our tablets??); HDMI-out, MicroUSB port. All the stuff people want in their iPads.
The Playbook will come out in Q1…pretty soon. RIM wouldn’t let me pick one up and play with it, but from what I saw, the navigation looks smooth and intuitive.
Get Ready for 3D UGC (or maybe not)
A futurist’s rule of thumb: Technological innovations almost never go mainstream until they’re used for porn. So I guess it’s both good news and really bad news that 3D porn is likely just around the corner.

The tools are mostly in place for mainstream user-generated 3D content, too. Fuji has a $399 digicam that takes 3D photos (above), and Panasonic has a 3D camcorder for $1,399 (below). Those are good prices…the only barriers to adoption now are the prices of 3D TVs to view the content on, and the stupid glasses. And the perceived pointlessness of 3D. Ok, so I guess there are a few barriers to adoption, but affordable photo/video capture is no longer one of them.

Notes from Verizon’s press conference
Verizon has aggressive plans for expansion of its next-gen network. In 36 months, Verizon’s 4G LTE network will be as large as its 3G is today…with 175 markets by EOY. That’s more than 4 times more markets than Verizon has now (38, I believe).
That kind of reach and bandwidth are great for making mobile VoIP more practical, and they’re really emphasizing Skype video chat onstage right now. The added bandwidth also comes in handy with apps like Qik (which was just acquired by Skype) and FaceTime… if Verizon ever gets the iPhone.


