bring on the internet of things

The more real world objects pop up that connect to the Internet, the more demand there is for network infrastructure like sensors and routers. 

Cisco has designed an infographic that offers a simple example of how Internet of Things will affect you in your everyday life. It also states that by 2020, there will be 50 billion ‘things’ connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows.

The number of things connected to the Internet has already exceeded the number of people on earth. So this is a big trend - and big business for Cisco and other technology companies.

via readwriteweb

markup any webpage - and share

Meet MarkUp.io It lets you draw on any webpage with a variety of tools to express your thoughts, make a point or just simply edit. Just grab and drop the bookmarklet from the site to your bookmarks bar to use any time. Yes, no downloading needed! When you want to make notes on a webpage, click your bookmarklet to load the MarkUp toolbar. Publish when you’re ready to share your thoughts.

Seriously rad.  Lucky you for knowing me.  :)

Foursquare on steroids

Psst! I Tweeted about this one today, but loved it so much I thought it was worth a post. So here y’aar. :)

Assuming you haven’t been tweeting under a rock recently you’re prolly aware of Google’s aggressive run at the local business market. (Its Places offering and Interior store view endeavor for example). And as geolocation departs from trend to basic need and digital desire many a digerati have found themselves hunting for more out of the geo-apps they rely on. (Personally, I’ve been using Foursquare by proxy through Instagram because of its robust photo sharing feature, for example).

Well get ready peeps! Local is heating up fast and Google isn’t the only one looking to give a simple, smart and social kick in the arse to the run of the mill location model. Meet What Spot Now. It’s bound to be on the tip of your tongue a few times this year. (And lets face it, I’m right about these things.  :) )

Unlike any other location-based app on the market, What Spot Now? combines software and hardware to help patrons both save money and discover new places to hang out – discovery not based on hearsay, but reality — through its trademarked “SpotCams” mounted inside neighborhood venues. (How flippin’ awesome would it be to get a quick stream (or photo set, even!) of a potential spot on your hit-list?) You can! If you live in Portland. :)

WSN currently has 11 Portland locations you can view from your phone before leaving your home. Portland residents will recognize such names as Saucebox Café & Bar, Bridgeport Brewing Company: Brewpub, 23 Hoyt Restaurant & Bar, The Someday Lounge, Schmizza Pub & Grub, Backspace, On Deck Sports Bar & Grill, Bo Restobar, Bailey’s Taproom, La Costita on Barbur, and the Crown Room.

Im big on this one, Portland. You’re privy to exciting technology that might very well change the way patrons and venues think about the age-old concept of “happy hour”.

Kudos to Spotlight Mobile. WSN is a slick way to discover nearby venues and a practical alternative to the location-sharing services offered by Foursquare or Facebook. Its a sure hit if you can keep that WiFi network in place. Keep it comin’.

Your music in the cloud

While Microsoft is trying to convince you that they actually have anything signifigant to do with the “cloud”, real apps are popping up all over the place that are changing the data crunching, access, and storage game - all remotely.

Lord knows I’ve had lots to say about music in the past.  And much of what I loved about personal music on the interwebs continues to get finger blasted by The Man.  But there are a few great apps still out there. One such app came across my radar yesterday called Mougg and it’s awesome.

With Mougg, you can upload your music to their web server and then access it from wherever you are in the world, provided you have an internet connection. With 1GB of free storage space, which is likely to grow, but even in the short term is a pretty big deal. It literally lets you access your music from anywhere. And its so easy to use, moments after you’ve created your account you are already uploaded and listening to music almost instantly.

Great, so they do “data” well. What about the interface? First of all its browser based (AND NO FLASH) - so this means you can access your library anywhere you’re connected to the internets including your IPants.  But even beyond that - the interface it kick ass. Technically speaking.  It’s beautiful to look at an use and if you’ve played with Spotify or Itunes or Rad.io (how do you say Rad.io anyway?) you’re ready to rock. If that’s what your into.

shameless self-promotion: Tegu is LIVE!

 

Hey! Thought I’d take a quick moment to introduce you to a pet project of mine.

Meet Tegu. A startup Toy Company that I have been involved with since 2010. Tegu “the blocks that click” are green, sustainable, beautifully design pieces of art - loaded up with magnets inside. They are unassumingly cool and once you pick them up you can’t put them down. Tegu LIVE is the first outcome of our journey together as business partners.

Think of it as an online playmate and owner’s manual. Full of ideas and instruction to inspire you to create with Tegu. Having given the block to my boys, I can attest to their quality and beauty. But I can also attest to how challenging they can be! Tegu LIVE aims at helping people through the learning and creation process by making the entire think interactive.

Would love your thoughts. There’s quite an operation behind the scenes at POKE making it all happen. Stop by sometime and we’ll show you!

- Tom

The two coolest things you'll find online today.

1. Turntube

Cross fade YouTube videos and create playlists. ‘nuff said.

2. KickAss

Bored? How about turning any webpage into an awesome time-killing totally nostalgic asteroids game. In seconds. Thought so. Try it on my site, here. Just click this: Kick Ass!

Rad, right?  Want to blow up any webpage? Drag those same words to your toolbar. Head to your favorite site. Hit the button. Bam. Yer Welcome.

<3,

me

(thanks @neonarcade for the tip on Kick Ass.)

yummy nerdy design (for a gloomy monday!)

Welp, these sweet (and very creative) toys brought a lil’ sunshine to a rainy Monday in CT. The video and the toys are the product of Beth Algieri and Jonny Plummer, two directors / designers with a common passion making awesome. Hope you enjoi!

Parallel Parking from Yum Yum London on Vimeo.

mercedes gets it: simple smart and social service augmentation

Mercedes-Benz just announced a new app that connects its in-car navigation systems with its customers’ iPhones. Mbrace version 2.0 still lets drivers unlock their vehicles and, more importantly, find it in a crowded parking lot while adding location-based personal assistance ranging from entertainment, restaurant, directions, and traffic updates via Mercedes-Benz’s Concierge service — assuming you’re are an mbrace PLUS customer. Destination information is then fired off directly to your in-vehicle navigation system to get you there. The updated app also includes enhanced Roadside Assistance that transmits the driver’s location whenever a call is initiated.

stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays Oh, MY!

This is the result of the Open Innovation experiment. It is an experience video showing the future of screen technology with stretchable screens, transparent screens and e-ink displays, to name a few.

Fist-bumping is way cooler than Poking

Remember what it was like to meet people before Facepants? You know, with coffee and high-fives and fist-bumps and shit?  

Meet Meet Joe. A new, low-tech alternative to Facebook and its ilk that requires no online profile but relies on personal introductions instead.

Serving the Chicago area, Meet Joe focuses on introducing people to new friends based on their interests and the kinds of people they want to meet. Users begin by signing up with the service online—that may actually be the last time they use its website. From there, Joe Drake, the company’s founder, will contact them personally via email to set up a confidential meeting over coffee or a drink. Based on their description of who they’re hoping to find, Joe will then coordinate an opportunity for them to meet someone or a small group of people—he’ll even help coordinate schedules and recommend an activity based on everyone’s personalities, interests and preferences. Joe! That’s rad! Looking for someone to start a NY outpost? :)

from the site

“Joe is like a great tailor or a trusted real estate agent, but he doesn’t have an assistant and he never takes a day off. You’ll be able to reach him by email, phone, text, or instant message within 24 hours unless he is in jail, a coma, or the world is ending.”

The price of a personal consultation and one meeting with potential friends is USD 29.

Ideas are easy. Realizing one isn't.

Looks like someone shares our philosophy. Honored that its Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame.) :D

“You’d be hard pressed to come up with an idea so bad that it couldn’t succeed with the right execution. And it would be even harder to imagine a great idea that couldn’t fail if the execution were left to morons.

Ideas are worthless. Execution is everything.”

— Scott Adams

Amen Scott. Amen.

the stats behind the interweb's number 1 business

Hokay folks. This time we’re looking at the internet’s biggest business: Pornography. Special thanks to these guys for passing it along.

There’s an old anecdote about the most interesting technological advances and creative ideas happen in online pornography first. There’s a reason for that - the numbers are staggering! It has been traded online since the 1980’s, even in the form of ASCII art, and then, with the rise of the world wide web in the 1990’s, adult webistes began springing up everywhere.

the coolest thing you have ever seen in your entire life. period.

OK, bold headline. But holy shit balls this is awesome. Meet “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009) - Caleb Larsen”.

What is it you ask? A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter by Caleb Larsen is a physical sculpture that is perptually attempting to auction itself on eBay. Here is the ebay auction, the current bid is $4,250. Yep.

Every ten minutes the black box pings a server on the internet via the ethernet connection to check if it is for sale on the eBay. If its auction has ended or it has sold, it automatically creates a new auction of itself.

Rad, right? If a person buys it on eBay, the current owner is required to send it to the new owner. The new owner must then plug it into ethernet, and the cycle repeats itself.

I’m seriously going to be thinking about how awesome this is all day. And now you are too.

if I can dream on the road

Great synopsis of If I Can Dream by the housemates themselves. Just days to go! You can read more about If I Can Dream here.

social networking meets the union.

Thanks to the power of people and the internet, the unemployed now have their own union, and it’s catching on quickly.

The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

You can follow UCubed on twitter, and joining a Cube is at www.unionofunemployed.com is as simple as it is important:

• Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube.
• Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood.
• Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that cntains 162 activists.
• Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks, nor can merchants avoid them.

from the site:

You lost your job. You’re not alone. 31 million Americans face the same challenges. You want your job back. You want your life back. But you can’t do it alone. Neither can anyone else. You all need each other. That’s what UCubed is here to do: Help you and 31 million other Americans organize, work together and get back to work. Let UCubed help you connect. Form a cube, and multipy your political and economic power by 6. Then by 36. Eventually, by 31 million. Take Control.

if I can dream (big)

Yay! The folks at Mashable covered If I Can Dream again today. Pretty sweet since we’re so close to launch. (It’s set to premiere on March 2 on Hulu and IfICanDream.com.) See the latest teaser video below. 

For those that haven’t gotten the low-down yet, If I Can Dream is a live, made-for-web TV experiment — that will use Hulu as the “Television Network”, will be broadast live 24/7 at IfICanDream.com, and follow the lives of five young people – a musician, an actor, two actresses and a model – as they leave their hometowns and live together high up in Hollywood Hills – and go on their journey to stardom as their journey is documented across the Internet via Twitter, MySpace Hulu, etc.

Full disclosure this little labor of love is the baby of my little nerd tank POKE.

some great comments from mashable below

The show — with new episodes released every week — will take a reality-esque look at the lives of five aspiring artists who are trying to make it in Hollywood. A sneak peek of the episode can be seen below.

What’s especially interesting about If I Can Dream is not just the fact that it sprung from Hulu (a website) and Simon Fuller (of traditional TV fame), but that the content and format seem much more broadcast-like than typical web/TV shows.

Essentially the series has all the ingredients of a network television show, but an entirely different and experimental distribution model. It appears as if the basic premise being tested is whether or not the web as a platform can syndicate and distribute highly produced content and churn out a hit show without broadcast as a medium. Although we’ve seen web TV shows make their marks in the entertainment industry — The Guild comes to mind — we’ve yet to see this exact formula tested online. So the real question is: Can this formula pump out a hit show on the same level as a hit TV show?

Good question Jennifer. I confidently say from everyone back at POKE, we sure hope so. In a world where Hulu and Boxee are about to explode…it seems like a great wager to make. Wouldn’t you say? 

Readers, what say you?

youtube "player" piano is awesome

Interactive YouTube-based piano. Awesome. That is all.

(Be sure to let it load fully before you play!)

muji + legos = Bob The Sculptor

Is your kid more like more like Paul Teutul than Bob the Builder? Then peep this.

From Today and Tomorrow: The Japanese retail brand MUJI and LEGO teamed up to develop a set of 4 different boxes. Inside those boxes you’ll find the classic LEGO bricks but also a few sheets of paper. No big deal. But when you also have the right punch hole tool, you can combine both to create something new. I really like this concept. You can order a set here (when you speak sone Japanese).

Flippin’ sweet.