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Super Capacitors: instantly chargeable batteries would be really handy in about a million things, electric cars being most notable Augmented Reality: If we get

Super Capacitors: instantly chargeable batteries would be really handy in about a million things, electric cars being most notable Augmented Reality: If we get it right, it will obsolete/improve a whole bunch of stuff (laptops, books, phones, movie theaters come to mind) Cloud computing: I don't mean avoiding the pain of buying servers, I mean the final ultimate realization of dumb terminal and central processing hub (combined with augmented reality and you've got an always-on computational extension of self with zero bulky hardware) growing things with algae: Oil, steak, ears (likely in that order) 3D printers: I just want to have an infinite cheap supply of standard rectangular Lego blocks. Further out: Fusion, hopefully cold: water in, power out (and I suppose whatever elements we're short on at the moment) my physics gets a little shaky here but I think fusion up to Fe is energy positive so an unlimited supply of iron could turn into some interesting things. Hole diggers: Bullet train from New York to Paris that falls to its destination (and of course climbs to decelerate the second half of the trip)

jodrellblank 18y ago
Augmented Reality Yeah! There was a recent press release from Nokia about their prototype service where you can take a picture of a poster, and it recognises the event and finds the details for you, and local showings if it's a film, etc. There's a recent video link on HN of an android/G1 app which pulls location-aware data from the web and allows you to hold your G1 up with the camera looking at the horizon, and it annotates the video feed with information about the main things you can see. Shazzam has been able to recognise currently playing music for ages, and snaptell can recognise a photo of almost any common CD, book or DVD and pull up more data. Android/the G1 has a change-behaviour-based-on-GPS-location feature. Augmented reality is here if you look for it and want it. I hope it's not too long before I can take a picture of a sign in a foreign country, and have it OCR'd and the text run through Google Translate.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  Followup: This http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789 (How did that pass by with no votes and no replies?)

jodrellblank 18y ago

Augmented Reality Yeah! There was a recent press release from Nokia about their prototype service where you can take a picture of a poster, and it recognises the event and finds the details for you, and local showings if it's a film, etc. There's a recent video link on HN of an android/G1 app which pulls location-aware data from the web and allows you to hold your G1 up with the camera looking at the horizon, and it annotates the video feed with information about the main things you can see. Shazzam has been able to recognise currently playing music for ages, and snaptell can recognise a photo of almost any common CD, book or DVD and pull up more data. Android/the G1 has a change-behaviour-based-on-GPS-location feature. Augmented reality is here if you look for it and want it. I hope it's not too long before I can take a picture of a sign in a foreign country, and have it OCR'd and the text run through Google Translate.

jodrellblank 18y ago
Followup: This http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=492789 (How did that pass by with no votes and no replies?)