5 Quick Trends

Collaboration

• Microsoft researchers have developed a way to share and actively collaborate on any surface, in real-time.  Share and compare objects (play a game of checkers or chess), collaborate in real-time on documents, drawings, and whiteboards, hold live tutoring sessions (even music lessons?).  The basics of the technology are a light source equipped with a camera and a projector, so that the space where the light falls becomes the shared space, along with a bunch of programming to prevent the camera from picking up the projected visuals.  Pretty cool way to reshape remote sharing and visual stories.

• Coworking spaces have been around for a while, emerging in all parts of the country.  A new service from ShareDesk in Vancouver is taking coworking the next step – enabling AirBnb style leasing of workspaces.  Have an office that is sitting empty because you’re not hiring to replace its last occupant?  Lease it out for a space of hours up to months.  Need a conference room to run some meetings from while on the road?  Grab an unused one from a local company.  What makes this cool is that the idea is not only to capitalize on sharing spaces more effectively, it is all built around a spirit of collaboration – the idea that people sharing spaces will chat, bounce ideas, share frustrations, and troubleshoot together – in the end fostering greater creative solutions.  I like that.

Connection

• Second-grader Devon suffers from allergies.  They are so severe that attending school means risking his life.  His is confined to his home.  Unlike the bubble-boy, however, Devon is NOT isolated.  He has a robot avatar that goes to school for him.  Through its controls, the robot zooms through the school day, Devon’s face watching and participating via its cameras and screens.  A very cool way to give him a bit of normalcy despite his condition.

These last two are less trends and more just stuff I really appreciated:

• A wonderful post on the impact of writing (and storytelling) on your view of the world.  Thinking about the life you see around you with the mindset of building it into a story makes you pause, makes you look more closely, with greater wonder.  Up the wonder – write, craft stories.
  

  Her field notebook is not some convenient way to store lifeless data to be presented in lifeless papers so that other scientists can replicate some dull experiment; it’s the site of a collision between a mind and a world. That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write.

• Finally, an IKEA ad about hanging, playing, and adventuring with childhood favorites – and the joy of imagination. Watch to the end.