Since the dawn of the internet, mankind has been looking for way to surf the web together, simultaneously, in a single browser. Okay maybe not, but that didn’t stop Swedish artist Jonas Lund from enabling people to do just that in his We See in Every Direction project. I would have called it “Browsing with Strangers.”

Anyway, you might be wondering what it’s like to use the same browser – at the same time – with random strangers. Wired writer Liz Stinson did some in-the-wild testing to find out:

I decided to give Lund’s browser a test run. I launched We See and noticed two other cursors flitting about the screen. Suddenly, text started to fill the URL bar: “Are we the only ones on this browser at the moment,” one of my fellow surfers asked. We were. In the span of two minutes, the page jumped from the Google France home screen to a news story about soccer to an image search for “lovely shit.” That’s when I decided to lead our group over to Wired.com. We made brief stops by Gadget Lab, this story about whales and Underwire before hopping over to the Tumblr, “Local People With Their Arms Crossed.” My group appeared to have good taste. From there, things got a little weird and a little too NSFW to mention here, but what do you expect from the wild west of shared web surfing?

On May 29, Lund hosted an official Surf Party that drew around 100 people. At any given time, there were at least 25 cursors on the browser vying for control. At one point, Google got so confused that it threw out a captcha, unwittingly presenting the group with a hilarious challenge. “While solving a captcha normally isn’t so difficult, trying to solve it when 25 people share the same text box and each of them are presented with a different captcha was pretty chaotic,” Lund said. “That lasted around 10 minutes and was just fantastic to watch.”

We See In Every Direction Official Surf Party from JONAS LUND on Vimeo.

Forget clean diesel. Forget hybrids, or cars that run on solar power or vegetable oil. Instead, what if a car ran on Tweets? Okay, Tweets and electricity.

A small group of high school students in Kansas City actually made it happen. As part of an extra-curricular program (this was regular curriculum in my school, but whatever) they modified a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia so that it only runs when it gets mentioned in the Twittersphere.

As the Wired article notes, “If that sounds like a publicity stunt, that’s because it is. And it’s for a good cause.”

Here are the basic details:

This year, the team put an electric drivetrain in a 1967 Karmann Ghia. Next week, they’re driving it from Kansas City to Washington, D.C. for a chance to meet elected officials and raise awareness about education. To make sure their voices are heard, they’ve attached an Arduino to the electric drivetrain and programmed it to let the car move forward only when there’s social media buzz about the project. Minddrive calls it “social fuel,” and it provides an important lesson for students: If you want people to care about what you’re doing, you have to make sure they know about it.

My initial reaction was that this HAD to be a joke. It wasn’t. My second thought – something many of the commenters have pointed out – was that this thing better damn well work if they are indeed planning to drive it to the nation’s capital.

I trust they’re done a fair amount of in-the-wild testing, but if you see a red Karmann Ghia on the side of the highway, don’t stop to help them change a tire, stop and send them a Tweet.

We have seen a lot of buzz around google glass, what it means for the future, debates on who will be willing to purchase it or be a first adopter. But the realisty is that there are some really compelling things that people plan to use glass for. Here the top 10 ways people plan to use google glass from ReadWriteWeb:

1. Enhancing Surgery With Augmented Reality – “the technology could be use by surgeons as virtual assistants in the operating room. Timothy Lee, a surgical resident at New York University, proposes using Glass to record operations for teaching purposes, enable remote assistance via livestream and show the surgeon vitals, CT scan and other pertinent medical information. “
2. Revolutionizing Higher Education – “For students, Google Glass could be transformative. Some are even talking about how Glass could potentially aid those with learning disabilities.  Recording lectures, live streaming them for remote access, audio-note taking and supplementing lectures with related data are just the beginning.”
3. Enhancing Less Formal, More Hands-On Learning – “Just like people post tutorial videos to YouTube, a camera-equipped camera you wear on your face opens up new possibilities for teaching people things from a hands-on, first person perspective. Fixing things, cooking meals, learning to play the guitar.”
4. Augmented Reality Gaming – “With technology like Glass, game developers can overlay gameplay over the real world, and plenty of them are already thinking about how to take their Android games to this new, exciting (or creepy) level.”
5. Overcoming Disabilities – “At the University of New Brunswick Libraries, Jeff Carter wants to use Glass to make things more accessible to the visually impaired via real-time optical character recognition and text-to-speech translation. “
6. Stargazing – “Amateur astronomers will be able to look at the sky with a whole new layer of digital insight using tiny, face-mounted computers. “
7. Healthier Living – “If Santa Clara University student Alexander Vincent Molloy has his way, you’ll also be able to return health-related information about foods while you’re cooking or even shopping.”
8. Reconnecting With History – “Armed with Glass-supported Android apps, walking through the historical Old City District of Philadelphia or the history-rich parks of Massachusetts could be like taking one of those audio-guided tours on digital steroids.”
9. Augmented Reality Art – “It doesn’t have to bound by museum walls, either. European design agency Nuelandherzer says it would use Glassto create an augmented reality experience for viewing and learning about urban street art around the world.”
10. Real-Time Language Translation – “Using technology Google already owns (OCR and Google Translate), Glass could translate foreign signs and menus. Even more compelling is the device’s theoretical ability to translate spoken language into real-time subtitles, effectively eliminating any language barrier between two Glass-wearing individuals.”

Check out the whole article here. What would you use Google Glass for?

I am not exactly a gun enthusiast, but, being a bit of a geek I find this fascninating. Tracking Point has developed a Linux powered sniper rifle. “The heart of the product lies in a Linux-powered rifle scope. This is not your typical glass scope. Instead, it’s a video recording system that runs the stream through an image processing engine and presents you with a heads-up display. On the rifle is a special button to “paint” a red dot onto your target. The image processing engine sees the dot and keeps it on your target, regardless of motion (your’s or the target’s). Squeeze the trigger to arm the rifle, and the HUD gives you an aiming reticule with a blue dot in the middle. You need to line up the target’s red dot with your HUD’s blue dot. When your HUD’s blue dot lines up correctly with the target’s red dot the rifle will fire. If the dots don’t line up, the rifle won’t fire. In essence, you can’t take a bad shot with this system.” (Read more at TechCrunch)

What if your headphones could detect your mood and play a song that coincides with it? Now they can.

A prototype of a new kind of headphones debuted at SXSW Interactive last week. The Mico headphones – developed by Neurowear – detect a user’s state of mind and select a song to fit their mood. According to Nic Halverson of Mashable:

“…the headphones feature a protruding electroencephalograph (EEG) sensor that scans brain patterns to match a person’s mood with an appropriate song.

When plugged in to a smart device running Mico’s app, the headphones detect the wearer’s state of mind and select a “neuro-tagged,” mood-fitting song from Neurowear’s database. The sides of the ear pieces illuminate when music plays and even show symbols — such as Zzz — if the user is sleepy, stressed or focused.”

However, Halverson brings up an issue; if you’re in an depressed state, you don’t always want to listen to sad music – or what if the headphones select the wrong song? Software as complex as this is certainly going to need some usability and functional in-the-wild testing to verify user-friendliness in a variety of real world scenarios.

Here’s look at how the Mico headphones work:

There have been countless spottings of him at events, navigating the streets or simply riding public transportation in those unmistakable glasses.

Google’s Co-Founder, Sergey Brin, was most recently seen last week riding the downtown train in New York sporting his Google Glass Specs. According to Jon Russell of The Next Web:

“That a man as fabulously wealthy as Brin uses the train to get around is quite amusing. With his winter hat, beard and plastic bag, he looks just like a regular guy. Albeit one rocking a $1,500 set of glasses.

It’s pretty incredible to think that this technology — which was unveiled last April and demoed at Google IO in June when Brin showed a video of him skydiving with a pair – is being worn out and about among ordinary people, many of whom probably have no idea what it is…let alone how much it is worth.

Is this a glimpse of the future when ordinary folks are wearing Google Glass while doing everyday activities…? Brin will certainly hope so.”

While flying through the air skydiving might not be the best representation of real world usage, a man as brilliant and powerful as Brin knows the importance of testing a product in-the-wild before launching it.  As Russell mentioned, people other than Brin are out testing the specs. In fact, we recently featured an interview with a Googler who was stopped by a reporter while taking the glasses for a spin. In-the-wild testing is a must – and Google knows it.

Mobile apps can already control your lights, car doors and house alarm, so why not your toilet to?

A Japanese company has created a toilet – expected to hit the market in early 2013 – that can be controlled via an Android app and bluetooth connection. Here are the details from DNA:

Using the My Satis Android app, toilet users will be able to control the Bluetooth-equipped bathroom fitting with their smart phone.

Every features including flushing, lifting the toilet seat and sprays can be controlled.

Users can record their own preferred settings, and even play back music through the toilet’s speakers.

The system also records each use to monitor both water and electricity bills.

It also has a health function which creates a diary for users to see how own they have used the toilet.

Read the full article at DNA >>

Have fun testing that one!

A light powered by gravity might sound impossible, but designers in London have built and now received funding for a real world lamp called the “GravityLight”. The lamp is $5 and will be able to light homes without requiring any electrical power source.

How does it work? According to John Koetsier of VentureBeat:

“Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves have spent four years developing GravityLight, which uses the Earth’s gravity to generate enough power to light an LED bulb for half an hour — no electrical grid, batteries, or any external generator required.

Using the GravityLight simply requires removing the small white lamp from its bag, hanging it up, filling the bag with about 20 pounds of dirt or rocks, and attaching the bag to bottom of the device.

Gravity powers a generator, light fills your room, and every 30 minutes, you hoist the bag back up.

The goal is to provide clean, efficient light for the 1.5 billion human beings on this planet who still do not have reliable access to electricity and use kerosene-powered lamps. According to Riddiford and Reeves, the use of kerosene results in vastly higher cancer rates due to smoke inhalation, and 2.5 million burn victims due to dropped or jostled lamps every year in India alone. Not to mention the cost: 10 percent to 20 percent of a household’s income in the developing world can go to fuel for lighting.”

A very in-the-wild friendly lamp – at that.  GravityLight could really be beneficial, so long as it has been tested outside the lab. Check out a video on the lamp here.

The ‘as seen in movies’ gadgets just keep coming! We recently covered Star Trek, before that was Star Wars and fantasy movies. Now let’s check out what real life gadgets Q, from James Bond, inspired. From Gizmodo:

Homing Beacon - Goldfinger
Tracking devices are a spy-world staple, now available to anyone, regardless of security clearance. … Products made by Applied Digital Solutions [provide] satellite location tracking for individuals.

Lasers - Goldfinger
Remember when Auric Goldfinger tried to cut James Bond in half  with a laser powerful enough to cut steel? Well, that same technology is now available to anyone interested in amusing a cat. And, thanks to the Internet, even the convenience store model can be turned into something a little more villainous.

Gyroplane – You Only Live Twice
This Wallis WA-116 Series 1 gyroplane (codename Little Nellie). In the movie it has rockets, machine guns, flamethrowers, and missiles. Though only released in very limited quantities to private citizens, these little birds were real!

Fingerprint Scanner – Diamonds Are Forever
Tiffany Case and her unique biometric scanner were fooled by Bond’s fake fingerprint. These days the technology is so smart and widespread that there might be a small fingerprint scanner in your notebook computer-and it’s probably way too sophisticated to be fooled by a lifeless prosthesis.

Ring Camera – A View to a Kill
Nowadays miniaturized cameras are everywhere-like in the “Camer-ing,” which is a discreet digital camera built in a ring. This neat device is designed by Hyeonsik Studio & Jeon Yengwon, and we’re counting the minutes until it reaches product.

Sony Ericsson K800 – Casino Royale
Back in 2006, the Sony Ericsson K800i phone cyber-shot camera was a pretty nice bit of kit: GPS and a fast 3.2 megapixel digital camera is at your secret service. These days, well, it’s declassified, to say the least.

Profile Touchscreen – Casino Royale
At MI6 headquarters, Bond’s employers use a Profile Touchscreen Device in order to gather information about possible suspects. There’s no magic in this digital table—it’s basically the Microsoft-Samsung PixelSense (formerly known as Surface).

Check out even more real life James Bond gadgets at Gizmodo >>>

We already know that the testing matrix is giant and takes a lot of dedication to tackle. But most companies are dealing with one medium (let’s say mobile), maybe two (mobile and web). Few companies have to accommodate just about every screen size and streaming device on the market. But Netflix does. And because of this they encode each of their movies and TV shows 120 times. In fact, getting a movie ready is a 7+ step process.

Thanks to Gigaom for finding this interesting bit of information.