During my daily rss-feeds check I stumbled upon this new Web Trend Map by the Information Architects.

Click here to download it in Pdf-format

Here another nice phenomenon I came across in my daily blog feed-overload.
It’s called video tracing. This is a technique which allows you to generate a 3d-model by drawing lines in a video.
What i like about it that it can also be used to generate a 3d-model of your face.
I’m not quite sure how much time this will take up.

Have a look at the video below. Thanks to the Australian Centre of Visual Technologies for this interesting technology

For more detailed information about the technology click on this link

Have a look at this video.
Amazing what you can do with a Wii…

For more info check the guys website.

Today a came across a very nice ‘new’ thing that was created by Microsoft Research and the University of Washington and the help of the recently by Microsoft acquired startup called Seadragon

Here’s a short video from TED-Talks about it:

It’s called Photosync.
Was Photosync does is generate a 3D model based on numerous still-images.Imagine getting an e-mail of the New York Times in a few years with only a map that contains a few pins where you can click on. Then it zooms in and it gives you an 3D-overview of the area where an event is taking place. Pictures taken by journalists on the spot will be adopted into the scenes so it looks like you’re standing in the middle of the event as it takes place.It’s also a nice technology for the travel industry. Just sent your agent to a resort with a camera with integrated GPS and set the camera to high speed photography. Click away!

Of course there are many more possibilities. Let’s just wait and see what more nice things come out of the MS Labs.

Yesterday I was doing a bit of surfing and I stumbled upon the site of Asterpix.
Asterpix is a software-company that enables companies/people to add hyper links to areas in movies, creating a so called Hypervideo

Amazed by the simplicity of the application I started thinking what the possibilities could be.
To broaden my horizon I looked up a report to see what the digital television penetration is in the Netherlands (Click here for the UK figures).

Turns out that over 3.000.000 subscribers are currently registered (16 miljon people live in NL)!
In the UK there are 30.000.000 households….

What if you would use the technology Asterpix uses and create a TV channel with high quality series and you give all digital viewers a TV-remote with Nintendo Wii-capabilities, so if they see a product they like they can click on it and it is stored in their favorites. After the show is finished the favorites show up and people can click on them to be forwarded to the website of the sponsor who paid to have his product featured in that show.
This technology can also be used on the millions of Apple iPhones/Windows Mobile-phones.

By providing this new channel to companies it will maybe finally pave the way for a TV-channel that once again shows more programs than commercials.

I think it’s just a matter of time.

Update 30-01-2008: Click here for a small demo by LogicaCMG of this technology

Today I came across the following site ShowBeyond.

With this site you cane create a (picture)presentation. Nothing special…. lots of sites do it I know.

The nice thing however of this one is that it let’s you configure your presentation just like in Abobe Flash.
You can adapt the time length of each picture shown.
Put music under it and add narration.

Check it out.

Hopefully they’ll add an ppt-upload feature just like Slideshare and create the possibility to upload video.
And they better also have a look at Sliderocket.com although I think that this is more a professional application that exceeds your average powerpoint user

Just watched a great lecture on “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”.

Randy is the man behind the ‘Alice Project’.
Click here to get to know him better by watching his lecture.

It’s a shame that he’s suffering from pancreatic cancer and won’t be with us for long.

Thank you Randy.

Update: Here another lecture he gave at the University of Virginia.

Currently I’m busy writing an article about innovation.
For this I’m gathering various reports.

Here some nice reading material I’ve come across so far:

Economist Intelligence Unit - Foresight 2020

TNS Infratest - “Horizons 2020″

Happy reading for now.

Last month the BCG finished their survey on innovation based on the input of over 500 c-level and almost 2,500 senior management participants.

Based on the results the following top 10 of innovating companies was published, for R&D expenses see the 10K-filings:

1. Apple (10K-filing)
2. Google (10K-filing)
3. Toyota (10K - page 44)
4. General Electric (10K-filing - page 24 & Innovator profiles & Innovation Timeline)
5. Microsoft (10K-filing -page 9 & Microsoft Research)
6. Procter & Gamble (10K-filing - Page 67 & P&G R&D)
7. 3M (10K-filing - Page 19)
8. Walt Disney (10K-filing)
9. IBM (10K-filing)
10. Sony (10K-filing - page 48)

Companies who were on the 2006 list but didn’t return in 2007 are:
Nokia (8th place in 2006)
Starbucks (9th place in 2006)

Based on the results on page 9 of the survey it will be interesting to see what the list for 2008 will look like, because the consumer goods industry (contains P&G, Apple, Sony and 3M) is the industry where the trends regarding investments in innovation are showing the least growth (22% significant increse, 34% slighty increase, 34% no significant increase, 10% slightly decrease).

In total 67% of the respondents said their companies will increase investments on innovation in 2007.

For 66% of the respondents, Innovation is in the top 3 of strategic priorities in 2007.

Download the full survey here

Here you can find the 2006 survey