Concepts about reclaiming public space, conversation design and human-centered technology were discussed at a small idea sharing night recently.

The Living Wall Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is aimed at creating electronically enhanced wallpaper that will be able to turn on and control devices.

MIT has also developed a tool called Eyebrowse, a Firefox add-on that enables you to record, visualize and share your browser history in real-time.

A component of the MIT Media Lab’s “Metropath(olgies)” installation, which looks at the non-stop flow of communication and information in the modern world,  Personas delivers a data portrait of your online identity by combining natural language processing and Internet search tools.
Enter your first and last name into the search box, and watch as Personas matches your name to a pre-existing set of categories created through an algorithmic method that references a vast body of data.
The philosophy behind the installation, according to the Personas site:
Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the [...]

The MIT Media Lab has developed a new type of data tag called Bokode, which has the capacity to hold thousands of times more information than the traditional barcode. The name is a combination of barcode, and the Japanese term Bokeh, which refers to the blurred area around a photographer’s point of focus.
Bokodes are circular in shape and much smaller than a barcode -about 3mm wide- and consist of an LED along with a mask and lens. Information is stored in the light that shines through the mask, and can be read by taking an out of focus photo from [...]

If the stories behind our physical things help to add value at the point of purchase (provenance) and throughout the lifetime of a product (object narrative), why can’t that value extend beyond our ownership and follow these items to their final resting places? With the launch of their newest project, Trash Track, MIT researchers  from the SENSEable City Laboratory endeavor to do just that, using electronic tags to trace the things we throw away as they move through the entire disposal system.

By monitoring the time and costs associated with transporting our garbage to dumps and landfills, the MIT team hopes to [...]

Foot Pump Phone Chargers
Festival goers at Glastonbury, in the U.K., can charge their cell-phones through using a standard airbed foot pump, the type normally found all over festival sites. The Orange Gotwind power pump’s turbine is rotated at speeds of up to 2000 rpm from the air flow generated by the foot pump, this turbine then directly drives the small but powerful alternator. A 5 minute phone call will require approximately 1 minute of foot pumping.
Learn more here.

Green Applications
T-Mobile introduces Green Perks, a free downloadable application that delivers exclusive [...]

PingPongPlus, a digital project out of MIT, brings an element of interactivity to the traditional game of table tennis, with a surface that visually reacts to the game as it happens. Projectors work in conjunction with sensors that detect the movement of the ball, causing effects such as water ripples upon impact. The ball’s motion also influences the rhythm of the accompanying music. The MIT team hopes PingPongPlus will let players explore “new ways to couple athletic recreation and social interaction with engaging digital enhancements.”
[via Make]

Given reality’s inherent limitations – saddled with realness and only able to offer us information that we can intuit from our five senses – it’s no wonder that more and more people are turning to their increasingly complex mobile devices to rediscover that zest they once had for life, hoping to add another layer of meaning to their experiences in the world. But what if that capability was already at our fingertips? Thanks to an ongoing MIT project called “SixthSense,” the future is now – albeit a bit clunky – and life just got a lot more interactive.  Their about page [...]

The latest issue of Nature reports that researchers at MIT are working on a new kind of lithium super battery that could be fully charged or discharged in a mere 10 seconds. The miracle of ten seconds to full charge is an obvious benefit, but how about rapid discharge? Electric and hybrid cars could use the surge of power when rapid acceleration is needed. Ars Technica has the break down of the science behind this possible breakthrough here.
[also: BBC via Engadget]

Elizabeth Goldring of MIT is working on a device that may help certain legally blind people see. In some cases of blindness, a functional retina is hidden behind cloudy lenses which block any kind of clear vision. Doctors currently use a large, and very expensive device called a scanning laser opthalmoscope, which can temporarily focus an image on these hidden lenses, allowing people to temporarily see. Goldring’s device replicates this process on a much smaller scale, using a hacked together combination of a digital camera and a color LED back-lit LCD screen. She’s been working on this portable SLO for [...]