Half Baked Ideas =================== The Simulacra-cycle ------------------------- Bicycling with a light-weight (and functional!) helmet embedded with with 360 fisheye camera coverage. Also collect rotation/acceleration data and post-process out movements to give a stable 360 video image which can be played back with 3D goggles (or a basic computer/tablet interface?). Enhanced version would also record bike vibrations, pedal turns, audio, and handlebar positions, and this could be played back on an artificial bike. Solar Autonoma ----------------- An audio "artifact": a CD jewel case with a photovoltaic panel powering a generative digital/analog electronic music box which outputs hundreds of years worth of non-repeating audio to an 1/8" headphone jack. One crude output algorithm could be the raw position of a turning machine (probably a busy beaver) tape position over time. Another is interpreting a meta-stable cellular autonoma's cells as notes; perhaps the combination of these two ideas? Should be engineered to last at least a few decades without repairs, which means compensating for PV cell degredation. Techno-cyption ---------------- Robustly encode arbirary data into techno, similar to image-based stenography techniques. Should be able to recover the data from audio recorded live at a concert or rave; perhaps in real-time? Leads to "verboden" music which is illegal to broadcast and listen to? Robotic Mouse Cursor ----------------------- An omni-drive robot encased in a mouse, controlled by a touchstick or touchpad. Should translate very quickly, so the user feels like they are "mousing" and selecting over the floor. "Nest for Lighting" --------------------- Auto-dimming lights to react to ambient light levels. Could also do the opposite and stochastically vary the light level to give cloud-like effect in window-less rooms. Sciduino ---------- Open Hardware LabJack competitor. Compatible with wiring, Lua scripting, full free GCC toolchain. Support/drivers for Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, UNIX /dev points, EPICS, ROOT, ROS, RTEMS. "Industrial Quality" for $80-100, "Commercial Quality" $50. Characterized and well-documented analog interfaces. General Purpose Laptop CardBus FPGA Interface ----------------------------------------------- Computational acceleration (compression, codecs, crypto, real-time modeling/simulation), external digital interfacing (logic analyzer, USB debugging, HDMI, networking, etc), host debugging (watchdog, timing, console interface, bus sniffing, peripheral emulation, kernel unit tests). High-density pins to many different cable types (extra $$$) with logic-level shifters: "universal digital I/O". $100. Interforum ------------- * similar to livejournal, reddit, slashdot * federated accounts (user@domain.tld) with petnames via contact list * RSS feeds of new topics started by individuals or for groups * no concept of "friending" built in, but do have ACL (can view, can comment) based on contacts list * head of thread can be a canonical URI/URL of external content * abuse/downvote gets reported to thread-hosting domain * by default all user content is crypto-signed by default * policy is left to domain servers: moderation of new messages, retainment length, max number of users in a given topic, etc * store-and-forward? * primary anti-spam: only display stuff signed by people in contact lists * need a URI scheme for discussion threads * oauth? kerberos-like? * domain keys used to vouch for messages and users * integrated or parallel keyserver stuff? * cross-domain karma and spamlist sharing? * built-in GPG encryption, keyring * notification via XMPP? * crypto can happen either on server or by the client? * "profiles" are a seperate issue (webfinger?) * status updates could go through this, or XMPP or status.net? * TODO: salmon? * would need to specify: * storyboard of how a post/conversation would go * message formats * protocols between user-server and server-server * ascillary technologies: authentication, notification, encryption, contact management * interop: HTTP website Improved Email ----------------- * "reliable asynchronous user-specific messaging" * same store-and-forward paradigm; same IMAP-like message archive paradigm * every core message signed by user and domain; unsigned messages get dropped * core message headers can be pseudo-shadowed/re-written by extention headers * user signing can be delegated to domain * domain maintains public keyserver for all hosted users * forwarded messages (mailing lists) signed by forwarding domain * users or domains can brand a user or domain as spam/abusive * domains maintain a web of trust/karma using announcements, refuse messages from blacklisted users/domains * special abuse@, admin@ "out of band" addresses for resolving blocklist issues, not blocked except for severe cases * attachments signed seperately, referenced by core message * standardize (via defaults) on compressed UTF-8 message body optional safe-subset of HTML * hook into system-wide cacert/web-of-trust; individual user agents can specify fallback policy