Are you jealous of those nice CIA drones? Get your - iPhone controlled - personal drone, the Parrot AR.Drone:

We’re really raising a lot of questions around privacy these days aren’t we ;) ?

We have certainly forgotten, but there were definitely a few prerequisites to the existence of the iPod :D

Dutch Army research between WWI and WWII. Link (via lobollo)

Progress is always a double edged sword, here comes another example:

Traffic lights using state-of-the-art LED illumination use 90 percent less electricity, offer a much longer service life and are more durable than their incandescent counterparts […] Unfortunately, the low-watt LED units burn much cooler than its white-hot counterpart making it unable to melt snow off weather exposed traffic fixtures.

Link

With the work needed to clear the lights (”compressed air”, “city workers to brush the snow off by hand”) what is the true benefit of these in terms of carbon emission?

Unlike other demos, this one seems to recreate the physical and metaphorical “touch” of magazines with a screen. Could this replace paper?

Video on Vimeo

Two quick links before going offline for the week-end:

A Belgium study reveals a divide among the 16-25. Most of them are good at chatting, watching videos and downloading, but some remain unable to accomplish the online tasks that “society expects from them”, like filling out an online form.

The conclusions of your study undermine some ideas about the generation of “digital natives”, which is generally believed to master the new information and communication technologies.

This is not quite the case. We wanted to examine the case of so-called “off-line” youth, which have virtually no use of Internet and computer tools. In reality, only a minority of 16-25 years are cut off from these tools. But for some of them, it is very difficult to cross the bridge between “their” Internet world - chat, downloading or listening to music and videos online - and the usage that society expects of them, starting with their employers.

It would thus be a second “digital divide”?

Yes, but it does not separate those who have Web access and those who do not have access. It is a gap between a world of entertainment and a larger universe. The skills deployed in the two worlds are not the same: to chat and lay out a document do not use the same skills, for example. During the study, facilitators of employment centers have explained that some young people took fright at an electronic registration form, while they spend maybe ten hours a day on the Web to listen music or talking with their friends.

Link (in Google english here)

I also did a quick interview (in French) for the radio of a local college here in Brittany. A fun and interesting discussion touching on innovation and education. It is one of these “expat” moment, for the Swiss I’m French, for the French I’m Swiss ;)

Entrepreneur suisse et co-créateur de la conférence internationale Lift. Il nous donne son point vue sur l’évolution des comportements sociaux liés à l’utilisation et au développement des nouvelles technologies.

Link

This video asks the question me thinks ;D

Check the new website, introducing our rebirth with Fabien Girardin and Nicolas Nova! We offer a variety of services organized around 5 axis:

Understand
We explore how people behave and interact with technologies in their environment, and use these insights to design better experiences. We rely on field research methodologies that enable clients to better understand their users.

Assess
We assess innovation through product audits, reviews and testing and field as well as desk research. We then develop a detailed assessment of the project at hand based on our expertise and targeted needs. We finally suggest improvements and alternative solutions

Share
Acquiring the right knowledge is the first step towards change, followed by spreading the word. We give lectures and run workshops on technology, innovation, design and social change. We also use our conference experience to organize private and public events for our clients.

Foresee
We map possible future changes to highlight new opportunities and prepare for them. We use futures research and tools to map emerging social and technological shifts and prepare for them.

Create
We create instantiations of possible near future applications. Based on prototyping methods, we make product ideas or insights coming from field studies materialize.

We currently specialize in the following domains: web and internet, video games, mobile and location-based services, urban computing and robotics/networked objects.

Why innovation will never only be about asking people what they need, but also the fact of dictators geniuses like Steve Jobs:

“design research is great when it comes to improving existing product categories but essentially useless when it comes to new, innovative breakthroughs. I reached this conclusion through examination of a range of product innovations, most especially looking at those major conceptual breakthroughs that have had huge impact upon society as well as the more common, mundane small, continual improvements. “

Don Norman, Link

Nice, only 200′000$ a seat, contact your accredited Space Travel Agent now ;)

The latest member of the swimming robo-fish family shows how bio-mimetism (the concept we were recently introduced to by Gunter Pauli) is inspiring engineers around the world.

There are great projects in the region, the EPFL developing the salamander and fly robots. Makes me think it would be a nice theme for Lift10, I would really be eager to hear the results of the experiment that had robots and cockroaches interact in Belgium (see video below).