Powerpoint warriors, be free!

In 2000, I got more-or-less exclusive access to a data projector. I was very excited – this thing was sleek! Weighing in at a mere 6 kilorgrams, it was no bigger than my torso and came in ultra-designery beige-and-grey. Six months later, I sprained my wrist trying to put it on a table. I made a little whimpering sound, and the executives around the table asked me if I was ok.

Move forward to 2006 – my latest projector weighs in at 1.5 kilograms, is the size of my foot (I’m a size 13), and comes in a curvy iPod white. It hooks up to my laptop successfully three out of every four times I try, and sounds like a small propellor plane starting up whenever I turn it on.

Like digital cameras, projectors have improved over the last few years. Unlike digital cameras, they have not become tiny, ubiquitous and integrated into the average joe (or joanna’s) average day.

If you’re anything like me, you dream about finding a very small, very portable projector. So imagine how excited I was when I stumbled on this:

Microvision’s pico projector is described in one of their recent press releases as “ultra-minature”. The same press release talks about their teaming up with Motorola to build the first projector integrated into a cell phone. Up to now, price and portability have restricted projector use to powerpoint warriors and home theatre nuts. But now, I can see the ability to easily and flexibly project data on any surface for an audience (or even for one’s own personal use) becoming socially and professionally important.

And I can’t wait to see how consumers start to use this capability in ways the designers could never have guessed.

7 things that should win a Nobel prize

I let loose a small cheer today when I heard that Elbert Fert and Peter Gruenberg won a Nobel prize for some slick science that led to the development of really little hard drives, which in turn led to iPods, which in turn led to a revolution in music and media consumption.

I mean, mp3 players are a big deal. I have friends who rediscovered music because they shelled out a couple of hundred bucks on one of these devices and spent the next year bopping to their own personal soundtrack. How often is it that you can point to a nobel prize winner and say, “Cooooooool.”

In the spirit of rewarding groovy science, I hereby propose to the Nobel Committee that the following category be added to next year’s list:

The Nobel Prize for Coooooool

Obvious contenders would be:

1. Google. Because how cool is a search engine that finds everything from pornography to…well, all that other stuff on the internet. Like funny pictures and Dilbert and stuff.

2. Facebook. Because I experience indecent amounts of schadenfroid I whenever I read the latest status update of that big kid who used to beat me up in school (“Johnny is verry proud because he is teh employee of the months at macdonnalds”).

3. Twitter. I want to know every inane thing you are doing, all the time. Because I am a stalker.

4. ____sucks.com. Because revenge is sweet, and finally, the little guys can use the internet to protest injustice like it’s the world’s biggest megaphone.

5. Spore. Because it’s a game that lets you start with a little bacteria and evolve it to a super-race space-faring conquistadors. That’s cool. It should also annoy creationists. That’s cooler.

6. Buffy. I know, it’s passe now, but c’mon, you secretly worship Buffy. She kung fu’s vampires, for Chirst’s sake. Kung Fu’s. Vampires.

7. Pirate vs Ninja Batteries. Because they’re Pirate vs Ninja batteries.

Nobel prize organisers, note well.