Media Technology

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here’s video of the flexible, full-color OLED display that Sony unveiled at last week’s SID conference.

My local Shell station has decided to augment its super-low prices of just $3.60 a gallon with some alternate revenue: automatic full-video and audio advertisements blasted at you while you pump gas.

At least there’s some satisfaction in the movie trailer they were showing in the rotation — after being subjected to several annoying ads there’s something satisfying about seeing explosions playing out on your gas pump.

Here’s a video of an incredible talk Hans Rosling gave at last year’s TED conference. On one level it’s a talk about trends in world health (Rosling is a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden), but at another level it’s about the need for much better visualization tools so people can make sense out of all the data we already have freely available in public databases. The whole talk is an example, using tools developed by the non-profit Rosling founded called Gapminder.

After watching the video, check out Gapminder World, being hosted by Google.

(Thanks to my dad for the link!)

Wells Fargo is using optical scanning and OCR to improve how their customers deposit checks in ATMs. No more empty envelope drawers and out-of-ink pens; now you just put all your checks and cash in a stack and insert it into the slot. The ATM automatically scans each one in, does optical character recognition to tell how much each is for and puts up a verification screen. After you correct the amounts, the machine will either spit out a receipt with a summary line for each transaction or a printed image of each scanned check. From their press release:

“With the new technology, you don’t need to spend time writing on an envelope or keying in a deposit amount. You just insert your money into a slot and the machine sorts, counts and verifies it,” said Jonathan Velline, head of Wells Fargo’s ATM Banking division. “Our Envelope-Free ATMs also converts paper checks into a digital image which then appears on the ATM screen and receipt, so you know your check was received. You can’t get this in the traditional envelope world.”

I used one of their machines in Alameda recently and it was pretty slick, though I had to insert each of my three checks individually since it couldn’t handle my differently-sized and somewhat wallet-wrinkled stack.

Photo credit: Jason de Fillippo

Nice earthquake preparedness ad campaign from the Bay Area Red Cross: they’ve got a billboard truck in San Francisco’s Justin Herman plaza that when viewed from the right angle overlays right on top of the real architecture. More on the campaign here. (Via Jason de Fillippo, thanks to my cousin Aaron for the link.)

From an NPR interview with Principal Ed Kovochich, who has banned cell phones in his Milwaukee high school because they’ve been causing flash crowds at what would otherwise have been a simple one-on-one fight:

Quite a bit of the school was text messaged where the fight was taking place, and soon there were hundreds, and they were cheering and jeering and usually you get into that mob violence mentality. And suddenly what was 3-on-1 became 3-on-2 and then 3-on-3 and etc. and before you knew it we had a lot of kids fighting.

The New York Times discusses the new trend towards building your own custom television commercials via the Web:

They can automatically add names of local sales agents or dealership addresses, and they can change the content of the ad, depending on where it is showing, to appeal to various demographic groups. Among the companies that have used these services are Wendy’s, Ford Motor, Coldwell Banker and Warner Independent Pictures… The automated system it is offering to advertisers, called Pick-n-Click, is currently available only for automotive advertisers and has 150,000 components —like voice-overs, video footage and text options.

Polymervision has announced a partnership with Telecom Italia to roll out (pun intended, sorry) an e-book reader with a flexible display:

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

(Thanks to Dirk for the link.)

The Polaroid spin-off Zink just unveiled a new full-color thermal-paper printer based on technology from Polaroid’s Project Opal. From the SJ Mercury News:

Zink prints a 2-by-3-inch picture in 30 seconds — somewhat slower than inkjet printers — that comes out dry. It brings back the instant gratification of 1970s-era Polaroid picture, without forcing you to wait for it to develop. And it’s a much better quality print than Polaroids were.

With Zink devices, the plastic paper has layers of plastic in the middle with millions of tiny crystal dyes that can be activated by heat. If you heat the paper a certain amount, the dyes melt and you get yellow. If you heat it less but for a slightly longer time, you get magenta. If you heat it a little less and slightly longer, you get cyan. Those colors can be mixed to print any color. If you think of microwaving a frozen dinner, you get the idea.

The special paper is still a little expensive (about 80 cents for a 4-by-6-inch print) because it has to be doped with ink over the entire surface, but the company hopes to reduce the cost in the future.

The original Choose Your Own Adventure books are now available as audio ebooks for your iPod. If you’d like to try a free download, turn to page 22.If you’d like to continue walking until you reach the end, turn to page 42. (Thanks to Janie for the link.)