IT Trends :: Thursday, September 28, 2006
New Technology
Order Me a Mojito with Your Table’s Touch Screen, Please
At the University of Westminster, the student union has added six new high tech tables at which students can order food and drinks from popup screens. Using the screens, students can scroll through the list of beverages and choose what they want. Orders are transmitted to the bar using Ethernet over power line, and the drinks brought directly to their tables. Students can also flirt with students at the other of the six new tables…
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Internet’s Future in 2020 Debated
A Pew report surveyed more than 700 experts about the future of the Internet. Over half those polled had a very positive vision of the Internet’s future, but many had serious reservations. There’s plenty of interesting food for thought here, but the most intriguing response is that nearly 60 percent of them expect “a counter culture of Luddites would emerge, some resorting to violence.”…
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User-Driven Planning for Digital-Image Delivery
This article draws on two projects funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation concerning the ways colleges and universities can support the legitimate sharing of digital learning resources for scholarly use. The 2001-2003 Visual Image User Study (VIUS) assessed the scholarly needs of digital image users-faculty, staff, and students. That study led to the 2003-2006 development of LionShare, an authenticated peer-to-peer network for a variety of e-learning resources, including digital images…
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Eons: 'MySpace' for the Boomer Set
This one looks pretty cool, but we’re thinking we might focus our energies on Gather.com, a social networking space for people who listen to NPR. But some 300,000 users have logged onto a new Web site, Eons.com, in the past few weeks. The site is banking on a digital awakening among recreation-minded boomers and matures, a growing and increasingly active demographic, online and everywhere else…
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