Keep an eye on the TV – with the TV in your eye

By Fiona Macrae

It sounds like science fiction – contact lenses that transmit TV shows and tattoos that let us feel the emotions of the actors on screen. Yet experts believe both could be reality within ten years. They say the constant miniaturisation of technology will lead to TV sets being shrunk to the size of contact lenses and powered by body heat.

Making contact: TVs will shrink in the near future Channels could be changed by voice commands or a wave of the hand, says a report on the future of home entertainment.

Ian Pearson, a ‘futurologist’ who advises companies on new technologies, said of the TV contact lens: ‘You will just pop it into your eye in the morning and take it out at the end of the day.’

Digital tattoos, meanwhile, will pick up on the emotions portrayed by actors in TV shows and create impulses allowing us to feel the same emotions.

This would allow James Bond fans to feel the thrill of outdoing the enemy or sports fans to experience the elation of jubilant players, the report, commissioned by electrical retailer Comet, predicts.

The report said that while the predictions may sound like pie in the sky, most of the know-how already exists.

While the wearer’s eyes might seem a bit tinted to onlookers, they wouldn’t be able to tell what program was being viewed, a report on the future of home entertainment states.

It states: ‘We could even get to the point where we’ll be able to immerse ourselves in a football game, making it feel like you’re running alongside your favorite player or berating the ref.’

Miriam Rayman, of the Future Laboratory consultancy, which compiled the report, said that while the predictions may sound pie in the sky, most of the know-how already exists.

She said: ‘The technology is getting smaller and smaller and people are trying to work out how to make it more immersible. They are trying to bring it closer and closer to the eye.’

Bob Darke, Comet’s commercial director, said: ‘The future of home entertainment will go well beyond wafer-thin screens – we will be networked to our TVs emotionally and we will enjoy interacting with our home entertainment systems.

‘The world, in all its multi-sensory forms, will literally come to us, just the way we want it. It will give staying in and slouching on the sofa a whole new meaning.’

Nine-year-old writes hit iPhone app

Programming for the under-tens

By Mike Smith

You might think you’re pretty hot stuff because you’ve figured out how to change your Facebook status from your iPhone, but you’ve got nothing on nine-year-old Lim Ding Wen.

This young prodigy from Singapore is fluent in six programming languages, according to a BBC report this week, and his newest creation, an iPhone drawing game called Doodle Kids, has racked up over 4,000 downloads in just two weeks. He wrote it for his younger sisters, who love to draw.

Doodle Kids, which lets players sketch with their fingers on the iPhone’s screen and shake it, Etch-A-Sketch-style, to clear, has already racked up a healthy three-and-a-half star rating on the App Store. One reviewer commented: “Awesome app!…Amazing that something like this was made by a 9 year old”.

Want to try it out for yourself? If you have iTunes installed, you can find it right here, for free.

quienteadmite.com

Hace rato me encontraba meditando y elaborando mentalmente una propuesta para el jefe Diego para ver si se anima a convertir este blog en un sitio como el Metroflog, en vista de que a varios visitantes parece importarles mucho la cantidad de comentarios que aparecen en los posts y nada mas les falta empezar a escribir estupideces como:

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ia pase a firmarte tu metro y a ponerte mi _____. Ahora visita tu mi metro porque acabo de subir una pik donde uso la playera rosita que tanto te gusta, jijiji. Atte CaballeroWallace.

Independientemente de lo propenso a albureadas que resultan frases como “visita mi metro” o “nada mas vine a ponerte mi ____”, resulta penoso (¿o se dice penudo?) ver como utilizan la tecnología las personas pobres que tienen acceso a Internet. Mi meditación fue interrumpida por un mensaje de correo donde me hacen una oferta tentadora que es el sueño de los aspirantes a vouyeristas.

Y el tema del correo recibido me lleva a hablar de los que siguen enviando correos y haciendo propaganda gratuita en su nickname del messenger de sitios como quienteadmite.com y sus 283 variantes.

El método clásico de este tipo de páginas webs es enganchar al usuario con banners coloridos y un mensaje tentador:

Ya podrás saber el estado real de tus contactos,
quien te tiene sin admisión, y quien te ha eliminado
sin que ellos se den cuenta

¿Que esperas para revisarlo?

Lo único que tienes que hacer para acceder a tan codiciado dato, es proporcionar la dirección de correo de tu contacto, y ellos te avisaran a tu correo cuando obtengan gratis esa información para ti.

Y cuando digo gratis, es que no te cobran nada, son personas altruistas que nada mas quieren proporcionar un servicio a las personas urgidas por invadir la privacidad de sus contactos. Ah y no se te olvide “de pasadita” proporcionar la contraseña de tu buzón de correo. ¿Para que? Quien sabe, pero si ellos lo solicitan debe de ser para poder revisar que te llegó el correo que te van a enviar.

Los ingenieros en sistemas y los programadores se desviven inventando, desarrollando y perfeccionando herramientas que protejan la seguridad de las computadoras ¿y todo para que? Para que el propio usuario incauto proporcione voluntariamente información confidencial a terceras personas que nadie sabe si tienen buenas o malas intenciones pero que son buenos en cuestiones de ingeniería social.

¿Hasta donde vamos a llegar? Lo sabremos cuando estemos ahí.

Chanate.