KillerApp Sightings

A man lives in Chicago and his 80-year-old mother lives alone in Florida. How do they manage to have dinner together at the same dining table? The Virtual Family Dinner, a new prototype developed by researchers at the Accenture Technology Labs in Chicago, uses “ubiquitous computing” to bring families together.

“Long-distance caregivers live an average of 450 miles and over seven hours away from the person for whom they provide care, and nearly a quarter of the nation’s long-distance caregivers are the primary source of assistance for an elderly relative or friend,” said Dadong Wan, a senior researcher at Accenture Technology Labs and developer of the Virtual Family Dinner prototype. “This concept is intended to bring people together and remove the feelings of isolation common among the elderly and the frustration experienced by many caregivers who are unable to spend as much time with loved ones as they would like."

The Virtual Family Dinner, now being tested in the Lab’s “test kitchen,” uses small ceiling-mounted cameras that act as sensors. These track mom in her kitchen while she prepares a meal. Once the system sees that she has brought dishes to the table, it infers that she is ready to receive company.

A screen, which is transparent when not in use, pops up at the end of the dining room table. A computer application runs through a directory of preregistered family members and friends to find someone who is available for dinner -- or, at least, for a conversation during the meal. This person's image is projected, life-sized and in real time, on the screen – as though sitting at the end of the table - and mom no longer feels like she’s eating alone.

Accenture will be collaborating with university researchers to study the impact of the Virtual Family Dinner on the health of homebound older adults. They will be looking at factors such as whether the homebound adults eat more or better food and experience better quality of life, and whether caregivers feel less stress. Studies have already shown that people at high risk for undernourishment consume more than 100 calories more per meal if they eat with someone else.

Posted by Editor at 4:45 PM | Permalink

Video sharing sites are filling ever more specialized niches, and Xpeeri has created an unusual niche of its own. The site, still in beta, is dedicated to preserving the 8mm home movies of the past, in order to "save these historical and irreplaceable records before they slowly fade and are forever lost." Community members include both personal collectors and professional archivists.

A nifty facility, the GeoChronoVideo Locator, helps site visitors find videos from specific times and places. Other resources include help finding dealers who can convert old 8mm films to digital formats.

And if you're too young to remember the hula hoop craze of 1959, here's one family's experience of it.

Posted by Editor at 4:49 PM | Permalink

Computer-powered visualization tools that present information in a visually appealing, dynamic, and navigable way not only improve access to information but also encourage a better understanding of how pieces of information relate to each other.

With TouchGraph, a Java-based application platform, you can create dynamic visualization charts through an online interface.

An example of the TouchGraph application in action can be found at Mike-Love.net, a Genealogy of Influence visualization that shows the connections between 500 of the most influential writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians of Western culture. Roll over any of the names and you'll see a brief blurb about the person. Click on a name, and the entire chart morphs into a chart centered on the name you selected. If you right-click on the lines of influence and select the "Hide Edge" command, you can rework the graph to reflect a clearer picture of how one person inspired another.

TouchGraph's solution also includes search functionality, connections to remote and local databases, the ability to read data in multiple formats and analytic capabilities such as cluster detection and centrality ranking.

Posted by Editor at 3:38 PM | Permalink

With so many video-hosting services available, as well as an increasingly diverse product base of portable media players, consumers often need a quick and easy way to transcode video from one format into another. HeyWatch.com, an online service, lets users upload videos and transcode them to any of a number of formats.

With HeyWatch’s free service, users are allowed up to 10 encode sessions per month, and can host up to six hours of raw video and 12 hours of encoded video, with a maximum video length of 10 minutes. Premium services offer more encode sessions and increased hosting capacity.

HeyWatch also lets you grab a video straight from a Web site (including popular video sharing sites like YouTube) for transcoding. There's also a podcast client that lets you receive your encoded videos as soon as they’re ready, instead of having to check back on the site.

Posted by Editor at 12:01 AM | Permalink