It’s an Innovation Geekfest! AT&T’s Tech Showcase

November 9, 2009 by 8 Comments

On Thursday, November 5, I attended the AT&T Technology Showcase in San Francisco. The Tech Showcase presents some of the latest cool inventions coming from AT&T Labs. Imagine a highly professional, well-resourced Maker Faire. AT&T calls the showcase, “The Art of the Possible”, stressing the experimental nature of this stuff.

While I’m not actually a geek, there were some cool things there. And notice the iPhone usage in these inventions.

For easy reference, I’ve included some anchor links below:

iPhone Microprojector

AT&T iPhone microprojectorThis was really cool. It’s a device that lets you broadcast video and images on any surface. You insert your iPhone into the microprojector and point it where you want to display. It uses three-color lasers to display images. With lasers, the image is always in focus, regardless of distance from the display surface.

The inventor stressed the medical uses of it. He showed how a brain scan would look. Doctors can view results on-the-fly, on any surface. This gives them the ability to react much more quickly to medical conditions.

But another guy watching this and I both had the same thought: this would be great for business. Sales presentations held on your iPhone. It also seems like something that work at trade shows.

And how about watching videos through your iPhone? Not on the small iPhone screen, but broadcast on a nearby wall or a screen in the back of a car seat? That would be pretty slick.

iPhone as Voice-Powered TV Remote

For the ultimate in minimizing the steps needed to find a show: the voice-powered TV remote. Here’s how I saw it work:

  • Say something like “basketball this evening”
  • System searches a show schedule for “basketball” instances
  • It’s intelligent enough to understand “evening” as a set of defined hours
  • Serves up a list of programs that match the voice-entered search
  • Pick the one you want, watch or record it

To use this, you need an Internet Protocol (IP) TV. For a demo, see MG Siegler’s YouTube video, taken as part of his TechCrunch coverage:

Ad Hoc Social Networking

Under the research initiative, “Just in Time Mobile Services”, is this wild concept.You ask total strangers to provide you with information about some location in which you’re interested. Here’s a process flow:

Ad Hoc Social Networking process flow

Say there’s some place you want to go to, but it can be hit-or-miss there. Maybe too crowded, not enough people, delay in some event, etc. You reach out this Ad Hoc Social Network. The Network system finds people who are in that location. They agree to answer a question. You check out the ratings for those people, select the one with a sufficient rating. You then ask them about the location. After they give you an answer, you determine whether the answer was good, and rate them.

All of this done anonymously.

Key here are the ratings. Your rely on those with better online reputations. As for incentives to participate, maybe there’s some lessons in foursquare (points, badges, mayors).

Internet Protocol TV

AT&T offers a digital TV content  delivery service called U-verse. It uses Internet Protocol to deliver signals, and competes with Comcast and other cable providers, as well as satellite TV providers. There are some cool experiments developed for U-verse, including a few they aren’t ready to make public.

Here are some of the cool things they’ve done in the Lab for IPTV:

Use iPhone pictures to find programs: The monthly U-verse guide provides information on upcoming programs, including photos from those programs. Use the iPhone to snap a picture of a program. Send it to the application in the  IPTV. The TV matches the picture from the iPhone to a program, and shows a list of upcoming episodes. Record the ones you want.

Twitter: Add a scrolling ticker to the bottom of your screen. You when this would be good? When BIG stories break that capture the nation’s attention. They invariably have # hashtags. Have a running ticker of hashtags across the bottom of your screen while watching live coverage from a new station.

Throw media objects from phone to TV: Say you have a video on your iPhone 3GS. With this app, you simply “throw” it to the IPTV. The video will be loaded to the TV, and begins to play. If you had an IP stereo, this would work for music.

FamilyMap: Want to know where your kids are? This app tracks the signals for your family’s phones, and plots their locations on a map. A FamilyMap. I’m going to remember this for my kids in about a decade.

Telehealth Remote Monitoring

At the World Innovation Forum, futurist Paul Saffo said that sensors are the BIG next technology wave. The telehealth remote monitoring project shows one way this will be true.

At the Technology Showcase, one Labs researcher showed off a sensor that tracks the foot signature of people (“smart slippers”). With four sensors in a slipper, it tracks the unique foot signature of an individual. The sensors will measure the footstrike, and provide data that can identify if something is off. If something is off, family and care providers can be alerted.

AT&T has a vision to develop sensors that can track a number of health related conditions. I took a picture of a poster that gives a high level view of their direction. Notice the age demographic of the couple under “You” to the left of the picture:

AT&T Telehealth Remote Monitoring

This is an area of growth, not just for AT&T, but for the technology industry overall. The New York Times just ran a story about this topic, Watch the Walk and Prevent a Fall. The article noted:

Researchers are beginning to apply the digital tools of low-cost wireless sensors in carpets, clothing and rooms to monitor an older person’s walking and activity. The continuous measurement and greater precision afforded by simple computing devices, researchers say, promise to deliver new insights on risk factors and tailored prevention measures.

If The Graduate were remade today, the man at the graduation party would whisper “sensors” in Dustin Hoffman’s ear.

GeoCasting

Finally, I took in the GeoCast demo. What is GeoCasting? It allows you to communicate between mobile handsets without the need for a cell or data network.

Sort of like an updated version of walkie talkies.

This is essentially a very localized peer-to-peer way of communicating. It relies on sensing nearby phones. The use case demo I saw related to public safety. Imagine there is a disturbance of some type on a college campus. School authorities would have access to a broadcast application, which would localize instructions to students on the campus. If you were inside a building where the disturbance was occurring, you’d get one set of instructions, perhaps telling you the safe way out. If you were on a different part of campus, away from the problem, you’d get instrucitons to stay in your room and lock it down.

GeoCasting is an innovative way to localize information out to mobile handset holders. One could see interesting commercial applications for this, such as retailers sending messages to consumers nearby.

Good stuff coming from the AT&T Labs guys. Look forward to some of this becoming commercial. I may seriously have to get U-verse TV when it becomes available in my neighborhood.

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IBM Public Policy Prediction Markets: Collective Wisdom on Education, Transportation, Energy and Healthcare

August 27, 2009 by 5 Comments

IBM Smarter CitiesIBM recently launched its Smarter Cities initiative. Part of its overall SmarterPlanet project, Smarter Cities is an effort to find solutions to the problems that will occur due to our ever-increasing population growth in urban centers around the world:

In 1900, only 13% of the world’s population lived in cities. By 2050, that number will have risen to 70%. We are adding the equivalent of seven New Yorks to the planet every year.

This unprecedented urbanization is both an emblem of our economic and societal progress—especially for the world’s emerging nations—and a huge strain on the planet’s infrastructure. It’s a challenge felt urgently by mayors, heads of economic development, school administrators, police chiefs and other civic leaders.

IBM has the smarts and global heft to be a major voice in innovating solutions for the problems that urban population growth will bring on. And of course, it doesn’t hurt that there will be government expenditures to make sure we’ve got the infrastructure ready.

IBM CEO Sam Palmisano laid out three fundamental changes to global urban areas:

  1. Our world is becoming instrumented: Sensors and devices are coming down in cost, and increasing in functionality, giving us “for the first time ever, real-time instrumentation of a wide range of the world’s systems”
  2. Our world is becoming interconnected: With the rise of devices with these sensors, “systems and objects can now ‘speak’ to one another”
  3. All things are becoming intelligent: Better sensors, increased computing power and more information from interconnection mean that “intelligence can be translated into action, making our systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive-in a word, smarter.”

The sensors thing is interesting. I’ve heard both Tim O’Reilly and Paul Saffo talk about sensors as the big area of technology growth and opportunity.

As part of this initiative, IBM (in conjunction with Spigit) is running a series of prediction markets that you can participate in. The objective is to tap the collective wisdom of people around the world. Here  are the prediction markets for which they’re seeking your perspectives:

Education

  • Which approach will be most effective in enabling better education outcome within a major city? (link)
  • In order to increase the proportion of the population completing high school by 10% over the next five years; major cities will begin transforming education in what way (link)

Transportation

  • Which company offers the best portfolio regarding Smarter Transportation? (link)
  • In a major city, what will need to be improved in order to make transportation more efficient? (link)
  • What enhancement can a major city make over the next year to be a global technology leader in public transportation? (link)
  • What transportation enhancement will a major city, like New York, need to make to relieve its traffic congestion? (link)

Utilities

  • Which of the following will be the most important to the rapid deployment and adoption of Smart Grids? (link)
  • Over the next five years, what changes should a major city first implement to reduce energy waste and use its resources efficiently? (link)
  • Which of the following will reduce household energy consumption the most within a major city like New York? (link)
  • Which of the following should be a primary objective for a major city over the next five years? (link)

Government Services

  • The current economic crisis will change plans for high priority projects in a major city in which way over the next few years? (link)
  • If you were a mayor of a major city, which method would you use to assess the needs of your city, the business community and your citizens? (link)
  • In 2011, what will be the primary method for citizens to communicate with their smarter city governments? (link)
  • What immediate step should a major city government take over the next year to emerge as a leader in e-governance? (link)

Public Safety

  • Over the next five years, what transformation will large cities make to their public safety systems to reduce the physical / personal crime rate against people, property, and infrastructure by half (50%)? (link)
  • If a large city wants to improve its overall public safety position (i.e. reducing traffic fatalities, decreasing gang violence, improving emergency response capabilities) in which public safety area (or related city sub-system) should it target investment over the next year? (link)

Healthcare

  • Which of the following sub-system improvement will be most effective in providing immediate benefit to healthcare delivery for citizens in a leading smarter city? (link)
  • Over the next five years, what will major city hospitals do to increase efficiency and deliver better quality healthcare to its citizens? (link)

Other

  • What are the top challenges large cities (i.e. populations over 5M) within emerging markets will face within the next five years? (link)
  • What region(s) will recover most quickly from the current global economic crisis? (link)

If addressing these issues is something that interests you, check out IBM’s SmarterCities Predictive Idea Markets.

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