Did this ever come out of left field. C|Net is reporting (Link) that Motorola is buying Symbol Technologies. I’ve followed both companies for over a decade; having had friends who worked as designers at Motorola (including fellow CIA alumnus Frank Tyneski who, last I heard, was the Director of Design Integration at Research In Motion – the Blackberry company) and an old business acquaintance, Curt Croley, who is/was Manager of Industrial Design at Symbol. Symbol is also the company that swallowed an old client, Telxon, for whom I did design work in the mid-90’s. Even so, I’ve never considered the two companies merging. This is a big deal. What happens when a technology powerhouse like Motorola – which happens to also be a major cell phone manufacturer – gets access to Symbol’s RFID technology (and their patents)? I’ll have to take some time to wrap my head around this one.

A couple of weeks ago I happened across a video showing some very realistic movement for a hexabot which was similar to another one about which I had posted (reLink). Truth is, I didn’t like seeing it tethered which is why I didn’t post another entry (yeah, I know, that’s irrelevant; but still…). So while taking a look at my YouTube subscriptions this morning I noticed that the tether is now gone and the creepy little crawly robot is dancing for the folks at WETA. Very cool.

There’s a blog entry posted by HP’s Vice President of Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence, Eric Kintz, (Link) that might be of interest to some of you. He discusses the issue of how marketers and advertisers should deal with the multiple identities people create for their various online activities (I wish he’d stuck to the customer/consumer issue, but that’s not really what he’s addressing here). His response to it is what he calls “dissociative identity marketing”.

…”dissociative identity” refers to the existence in an individual of two or more distinct identities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment. “Dissociative identity marketing” would refer to the relationship a brand establishes with the various personas of a consumer, from the blogging persona, to the social network persona or the gaming persona.

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When I read about this new employee-free convenience store (Link) yesterday via the Velcro City Tourist Board site, the first thing that came to my mind was how the Real and Virtual Worlds are really starting to mash up. All we need is for one of these Get & Go kiosk stores to accept virtual currency for people who are unaware of what’s happening in virtual worlds like EVE Online and Second Life to come face-to-face with the future. It won’t be people exchanging “game” currency for real world currency in the backend of some computer network, and it won’t be people using virtual bucks to order real things online. This is on the corner of Main and Exchange in Averageville. Watch the news coverage that’s sure to come.

Next up, automated Rapid-Manufacturing Marts. It won’t be long before we hear, “Hey honey, I’m stopping by the RM-Mart on the way home – need anything?”

{Image source: kioskmarketplace.com}

With UbiComp 2006 starting Monday, I’m curious if there will be panels discussing transreal Things similar to kirkyans. I’m expecting there will be, but I’m wondering why no one (at least on the sites I visit) is openly discussing something that seems rather obvious; why it is I don’t read anything about an inversion of the kirkyan concept. There’s lots of talk about blogjects and spimes, but not much more it seems.

The closest thing I’ve read is in Sterling’s old keynote address at Siggraph 2004 (Link). He hints at it, but in the mess of converting Rashid’s superficial “blobject” into something with real meaning, he more or less winds up taking a shotgun approach primarily centered on physical objects and industrial manufacturing without providing much more than what some people had already been discussing. Read the following excerpt: Continue reading →