Horizon Scanning

 I’ve been very busy recently but today got a short period to catch up on some things and I want to share a summary of my favourites with you.

(1) IBM is looking at 3D Gaming for business and education. In particular for staff development through their Innov8 product, there’s a CNET aritcle about it here . It’s a bit of a clunky product by all accounts but it’s the direction they’re taking that interests me most.

(2) Alfresco, the Enterprise Content Management System provider, and in my opinion one of the best providers which also happens to be Open Source rather than costing businesses and arm and a leg for a poorer product, is releasing version 1.9 which includes integratino with a lot of open source community tools including Facebook, Mediawiki, iGoogle and so forth. This again is more interesting because of the direction taken and the fact that other ECM vendors are starting to follow suit.

(3) Holographic T.V. (think of Starts Wars and the “Help me Obi Wan…” projection of Princess Leia from R2D2). Researchers at the University of Southern California have perfected a 3D image projection that can be viewed from any angle using only a spinning mirror and a holographic diffuser (whatever that is). Imagine the uses for such technology, Truely interactive T.V. where you can go around (and through!) the action, staggering.

(4) Nintendo have produced the iFit (following on from iSports) which has a whole host of games to improve oneself. It comes with a balance board pad that you stand on and works out your BMI, and it covers sports, exercise and yoga type activities and provides you with “Brain Training” style feedback on how you’re doing and what it believes your ‘fitness age’ is. Scary. 

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