KillerApp Sightings

We've seen a lot of news recently about PC-based karaoke services. Here's a new device that returns karaoke to its proper home, the bar. Using this high-speed wireless controller, which will be available in Japan this fall, karaoke enthusiasts can search thousands of songs in four languages by artist, title or category and save their favorites. They can also use the touch screen to view promotional videos and sports scores and - best of all - to order food and drink from the bar. The controller is waterproof, protecting it from fans who sing under the influence.

The controller, called the Kyoku-NAVI, is the result of a collaboration between Xing, a subsidiary of Brother, and IBM.

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KillerApp.Com readers are eligible for free tickets to DigitalLife, a four-day event that is dedicated to educating and inspiring consumers about the digital lifestyle at work, home and play and showing how the convergence of affordable, accessible technologies is enriching people's lives. DigitalLife will be held in New York City from October 12 through October 15.

For free tickets, use the source code “INSIDER” on this page, where you can print out your own tickets.

In addition, the first two readers to contact the KillerApp.Com editor here will receive VIP passes for October 12, entitling you to an exclusive tour of the show floor, special sponsor product unveilings prior to the public opening, and attendance at keynote addresses by Microsoft and Sony execs.

Products featured at DigitalLife include home entertainment, TVs, consumer electronics, home networking, gaming hardware and software, PCs and laptops, and mobile technologies such as phones, PDAs and MP3 players, as well as digital culture.

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How can young people grow up to be good citizens of the global village? One way is through contact with people and concerns outside their immediate neighborhood. Global Nomads Group, a nonprofit organization, uses videoconferencing to help students cross boundaries.

Global Nomads' PULSE program brings U.S. high schools together with each other and with experts on global issues. The first session this fall, "Landmines: Rats to the Rescue," focuses on the problem of landmines, and explores a de-mining program in Mozambique that uses rats to "sniff out" landmines and clear land. Six other topics are scheduled for the remainder of 2006: oil dependence and global warming, immigration, nuclear weapons, HIV/AIDS, malaria, and genocide in Sudan. PULSE is using videoconferencing equipment from Polycom.

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Finding the right gifts can be a challenge, and British retailer Boots decided to make holiday shopping easier with its 'Boots Gift Idea Generator.' In an interactive ad that ran on British television stations during the 2005 Christmas season, viewers could generate ideas right on their TV screens, using their remotes to answer questions like "Is she a glamour girl, classic beauty, party host, fun mum, or keen cook?"

Once viewers clicked their way through the idea generator, they had the option of receiving a text message listing all the presents they selected. Research funded by UK broadcasters found that three quarters of the people who interacted with the ad said they visited Boots to buy Christmas presents as a result.

You can see the ad, developed by Red Bee Media, here.

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If you're accused of a crime in Oakland County, Michigan, you can plead not guilty from the comfort of your holding cell. The county's new OakVideo system uses videoconferencing over a fiber optic network to connect district and circuit courts, the prosecutor's office, jail booking facilities, law enforcement agencies and community corrections. Up to four of these sites can participate in an arraignment - the legal proceeding where the accused answers an indictment.

Other pretrial events are also being conducted by videoconferencing. The prosecutor and police use videoconferencing to review evidence and prepare the warrant, and the judge signs the warrant after a video meeting with the police detective. In addition to videoconferencing, the OakView system creates case files with digital signatures.

Because prisoners don't have to be transported to and from court, the system saves time and money for police escorts, and the number of police on the streets is higher. Courts are more secure, too, when prisoners aren't being brought in and out.

The OakView system is now being marketed to other counties by Justice Digital Solutions.

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Would you like to explore a coral reef? Visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame? Learn how roller coasters are constructed? Students in schools with Tandberg videoconferencing equipment have access to the company's Connections program - virtual field trips offered free on a first-come, first-served basis. Each school can participate in two virtual field trips per semester. This semester, in addition to coral reefs and roller coasters, children are learning about animals in winter, Shakespeare, hip-hop technology and puppetry.

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Thousands of fans of Bravo's "Project Runway" reality show are flocking to Bravo's Web site to create their own episodes of the show. The mash-up application available on the site offers snippets of music, video and special effects that viewers can drag and drop into a timeline to create something that looks like a trailer for the show. Viewers can watch their own video collages, and, if they're happy with them, save them for others to watch.

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Surgeons can now bring consulting physicians into the operating room remotely, using medical-grade videoconferencing equipment from MedPresence. The equipment can be used for teaching purposes, too; surgeons and OR staff can see and instruct students as if they were in the operating room together. A 16' x 4' video wall in the classroom or conference room lets users see the horizontal landscape of the operating room and observe surgery from multiple points of view -- literally looking through the eyes of the surgeon. Images captured by surgical scopes are displayed on high-resolution monitors embedded in the desktop at each learning station.

Here's a video of the equipment in use at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.

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The sidewalks of New York once were famous for games like stickball and Ringolevio. Now they've moved into the digital age. This weekend, as part of the Conflux Festival, a six-square-block area of Brooklyn, New York has been turned into a virtual game board for a game of Urban Reversi.

Teams of players are competing in games of Othello, capturing intersections by improvising performance-art pieces based on randomly assigned words and then uploading camera phone images of the pieces over a wireless net to a centralized server. Members of the public can watch the game on the city streets and track its progress online.

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Students in 43 schools across the country read the Constitution together on Friday in a massive National Constitution Day videoconference event. Sponsored by MAGPI and the National Constitution Center, the event used high-quality videoconferencing technology and the Internet2 high-speed network to bridge hundreds of students across time zones and state borders, while thousands more watched the live webstream.

Each school site was assigned a portion of the Constitution to read, including Washington State School for the Blind, whose students read their portion from Braille, and the Scranton State School for the Deaf, whose students shared their section in sign language. The Cleveland Institute of Music created a musical score to accompany its readers. After the reading, students had the opportunity to ask each other questions and share observations.

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If you're a Time Warner Cable subscriber in Green Bay, Wisconsin or one of a few other cities, you can watch fantasy baseball along with the real thing. Fans use the digital cable remote to create their personal teams, and then get up-to-the-minute statistics whenever they're watching TV. The application, powered by BIAP Systems, gets data from the Internet and delivers it to the television screen.

The free service is meant to appeal to both hardcore fantasy gamers and ordinary baseball fans who just want to keep track of their favorite players. Viewers can choose among a variety of formats (full screen, part screen, ticker line, etc.) and can be alerted whenever a player on their fantasy team hits a home run or steals a base.

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A worldwide pandemic of a lethal virus, a wave of terrorist cyber attacks...it's hard to imagine a worse situation. Last month disaster responders, technologists and community leaders from more than ten countries assembled in San Diego to practice responding to this large-scale and complex disaster scenario. The week-long simulation, called Strong Angel III, was directed by Eric Rasmussen, a professor at San Diego State University; sponsors included agencies of the U.S. military, technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and Cisco, and humanitarian agencies like Save the Children.

Over the course of the week, volunteers learned a great deal about what did and didn't work as they tried to create emergency communications systems on the fly and deliver humanitarian aid. The simulation relied -- not always successfully -- on videoconferencing, GIS and other high-bandwidth applications to collect and disseminate information; in the words of one participant, the event was structured so that "failures were as instructive, if not more, as the successes."

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Is it found art or urban planning? The SENSEable City Lab at MIT created the Real Time Rome project for the architecture section of the 2006 Venice Bienniale, an art and design show. Data from cell phones, buses and taxis in Rome are aggregated in real time and visualized to show patterns of activity in the city.

These real-time maps show how neighborhoods are used at different times of day, how goods and services are distributed and how different social groups inhabit the city. The creators hope that revealing the pulse of the city will give people more control over their environment and "open the way to a more sustainable urban future."

In the image above, the yellow lines show buses and the red corresponds to density of people.

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Jazz musician Mike Gellar runs Mike's Master Classes, an online guitar school where the teachers are great jazz masters from around the world. Students anywhere can interact with teachers anywhere - and they don't have to worry about being out of town on the day of the lesson, or about the teacher going on tour. As long as everyone has a computer and a high-speed Internet connection, the class can go on.

The classes use the MegaMeeting videoconferencing facility, which is Web-based and requires no software download. The teacher broadcasts in real-time audio and video, so that students can watch and listen as if they were in the classroom. Students can use a chat facility to ask questions. MegaMeeting also has an instant-feedback capability, which lets students click on basic messages like "speak louder" or "slow down."

Here's Mike Gellar playing a lovely Ellington tune.

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They say it's all happening at the zoo, and now you can see for yourself. Washington's National Zoo keeps more than 20 webcams pointed at animals ranging from gorillas to microbes. Even if you can't manage a trip to the zoo, you can take a quick flamingo-watching break here.

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When a disaster strikes, the first responder to arrive on the scene becomes the incident commander, at least until a senior official arrives. But most police officers, firefighters, and EMTs have never been in charge of a disaster before, and there's no time for on-the-job training.

First responders will be better prepared to organize response teams after they've played "Incident Commander," a new simulation game developed by Breakaway Games. The game was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, which will be distributing it free of charge to first responders throughout the country.

Up to 16 players can train together, playing over a local network or the Internet. Players assume roles as commander or team member in scenarios such as a natural disaster, a school hostage situation, and a terrorism incident. Users can even add locations, buildings, events, and emergency agencies to make the scenarios more similar to what they might encounter in reality.

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