Few more things I picked up at ETech Day 2
a) James Larsson, power hacker, showed some amazing hacks he done. Some stuff he did is amazing (and pretty dangerous!) Like turning his old CRT into a mouse trap (8Mb AVI :-) He delivered the whole thing in such a funny manner that everyone was laughing throughout the session!
b) Natalie Jeremijenko, power geekgirl with some very cool puppies (and ducks and gooses).
Isn’t the i-Cybie (the doggie above) cute! It is price 10x cheaper then Aibo (<100USD on ebay) and can do similar stuff. And best of all, it is programmable and hackable – you should see what she did to some of these animals. I think I am going to order one (vaguely remembers his wife wanted a pet for the baby :-)
c) Clay Shirky gave a wonderful talk why Ontology is overrated. Very good reasons too on why taxonomy and ontology does not work in real life (It imposed one view of the world to all) using Yahoo!, Google etc past experience.
I wish I have spoken to him before we started our Digital Content Exchange. But luckily, he also said at the end that ontology would make sense if it is applied to a small specialized group (phew).
I love talks that screw with my brains, telling me how I ever believe before was wrong and then change my perspective. Shirky certainly did this time :-)
d) Highlight of the day goes to Maker Fair. I thought I was a hacker but geez, beside these folks, I am a complete noob!
Let see, the famous Philip Torrone which his cool hacks (OQO adapted for Car, iPod Linux, Gameboy hacks etc)
Andrew “bunnie” Huang, famous for being the first to reverse engineered xbox security with his electronics (dont ask me what they do :P).
There are many more but just one more hack by Joe Grand who hook up a microprocess to his toaster! Gosh, isn’t that cool? I should have gotten this toaster for my wife instead.
And oh yea, I got a free copy of Make magazine. Guess what I will be doing when I get home.
