Which will be better: the Zuckerverse? Or the Appleverse?
Plus: The original iPod, augmented beer cans, armed robot dogs, skateboard legs and more!!
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been making news lately by talking about the “metaverse.” Zuckerberg says it’s the future of Facebook — and the internet. The “metaverse” is a virtual reality version of the internet, a shared VR space using real-world concepts like roads, buildings, rooms and everyday objects. People move around in this universe as avatars, which are 3D representations that can interact with other people through their avatars, and also interact with avatar-like entities that are really software agents. It’s basically The Matrix.
Meanwhile, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, has said publicly that AR is “the next big thing,” “superior to VR,” “a big idea, like the smartphone,” and he sees major applications for AR “in education, in consumers, in entertainment, in sports. I can see it in every business that I know anything about.”
Facebook or Apple, virtual or augmented. Which reality will we live in? (Link is free)
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. This is the original iPod!
A blog called Panic surfaced the world’s first-ever look at the original iPod prototype. Just in time for the device’s 20-year anniversary, we can see that the iPod — which transformed music, saved Apple, vindicated Steve Jobs’ return to Apple and turned Apple into a gadget company — had super humble beginnings.
2. How beer cans will look when we’re all wearing AR glasses
Augmented reality enthusiasts are using the platform Vuforia, which is capable of wrapping virtual images around a 3D object, to create content that appears (when you’re wearing VR glasses) to wrap around a beer can. One dude created what he calls “Beer Invaders,” which is space invaders played on a can of beer. It’s a perfect inevitability that when AR glasses go mainstream, beverage containers will come alive.
3. Arming a robot dog with a machine gun… what could go wrong?
Ghost Robotics and SWORD International collaborated on a project to mount a rifle to one of those robot dogs. They call it the Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle, or SPUR. And they mounted a 6.5mm Creedmoor rifle from SWORD to one of Ghost Robotics' quadrupedal unmanned ground vehicles, or Q-UGVs. The idea is that a human operator uses a laptop to line up targets and pull the trigger remotely. This is yet more proof that we’re all living in a cyberpunk novel.
4. Why wear an ordinary prosthetic leg when you can wear a skateboard?
Winner of this year’s Michelin Challenge Design is a prosthetic leg with a built-in skateboard! The design is called Crosswing by Drew Spahn. What’s next, a prosthetic arm that folds out into a tennis racket?
Mike’s List of Shameless Self Promotions
Here’s what I’ve been up to lately:
What is proactive cybersecurity, exactly?
Why cyber security demands that nothing and nobody is trusted. Ever.
CURRENT LOCATION: Oaxaca, Mexico
