Wired Nextfest – James Seng's Blog

This is going to be a very long post based on the 250 photos and a dozen of Youtube clips I just uploaded.

I spent nearly 2 days at the exhibition. The first day is crowded with kids and students so it feel more like a trip to the science center. A trip to science center pretty sum it up; Perhaps there are just too many impressive displays, nothing really stand out as “wow!”.

Entering the door, you would be greeted with this beautiful display of light and music

This Kick Ass Kung-Fu exhibit has one of the longest queue. I can see this in an arcade next year.

The other long queue is for this brainball game, a mental game. It looks very impressive because it looks like telekinetic but actually it is quite simple once you know how it works.

	Digital Steamworks has a 3D game on display. Whats is interesting is not the 3D game (which is pretty common) but that the game is an re-enactment of the actual football game rendered in 3D environment.I spoke to the founder and he said they only need one camera to capture the information. By rendering it in 3D, they could zoom and view the game in all angles. Now, imaging doing this real-time.
	This gadget thats looks like a stupid wedge is actually a 360 cameras to capture panorama pictures. Most 360 cameras I know are huge, assembled from off-the-shelf high-end cameras mounted on a car. This camera is small enough wear on the head!It is only a prototype but I would love to get my hand on a couple for a project I am working on!
	Bumptop may not have a multi-touch screen like Perceptive Pixel but they do have a very cool interface that looks like comes from Microsoft Surface.Hitachi also have a touch interface developed for a whiteboard but I take any picture.
	Pacman brings back memories! But this one takes the cut by having a physical “pacman” :-)
	My kids would love dancing beatbot! Click on picture to see how it dance! Each beatbot comes with a mic, so they can listen to the music and dance to it, it also have a camera so it can makes eye contact.
	Who don’t want a personal transporter or the bike that looks like it comes out of Akira.
	One of the is real, the other is an android. Can you guess which one?
	More robots. I only managed to capture video for one robot.
	Human power supercomputer
	3D printer that “prints” .
	I am not sure what this does but the interface looks damn cool! Click on picture to see the video.
	This is a solar cell. While most researchers focus to squeeze higher energy conversation from the cell (state of the art is about 21%), the cells still have to align to the sunlight thus normally it is mounted on mechanical platform that moves with the sun. This spherical solar cell does not require any alignment.
	What so special about the green stuff? It contains bacterial that absorb carbon dioxide and sunlight and produce ethanol. I see great business potential from it – producing carbon credits and bio-fuel a the same time. But whether it is feasible or not depends on many other factors, like how much the bacterial cost, how much ethanol produce, the cost of oil, etc. The devil is in the detail.