Just for fun it is Friday… The ultimate neo-nomad basic that can do it all… except laundry… or what?

More on crookedbrains… Some use the Macbook Air to cut their birthday cake… So trivial.

I couldn’t stop laughing! minimoo:

Thank you Swissmiss!

Trouvé dans le Magazine des Aéroports de Paris (en même temps qu’un article sur Bruno Marzloff de Chronos :) Extrait de de la conférence de presse sur le concept de luminothérapie. Recherche: luminothérapie sur le site http://www.aeroportsdeparis.fr/

“Solution au décalage horaire et au blues hivernal : les boutiques d’Aéroports de Paris initient les passagers à la luminothérapie

A partir du 20 décembre, et pour la première fois dans un aéroport, les passagers
se verront proposer gratuitement une initiation à la luminothérapie pour recharger
leurs batteries avant leur départ !

Les passagers pourront tester à Paris-Orly et de Paris-Charles de Gaulle cette nouvelle technique de bien-être qui permet notamment de diminuer les effets du décalage horaire et du “blues hivernal”. Le programme proposé par les boutiques d’Aéroports de Paris prévoit d’une part, des espaces fixes de luminothérapie et d’autre part, des équipes mobiles pour des séances “express” en salle d’embarquement.

A partir de janvier 2008, la luminothérapie sera disponible dans les boutiques d’Aéroports de Paris. A Paris-Charles de Gaulle, les points de vente Be Relax proposeront des massages “anti-jet lag” et des produits de luminothérapie.”

La technologie est de Philips (Philips Energy Light) !

Would be nice to locate when you are in a rush at the airport.

Read in Le Monde, this article about Top-Braille a nomadic object that enables blinds to have access to information:

“Brevetée dès 1996, la souris nomade TopBraille a valu à son concepteur, Raoul Parienti, le prix de l’innovation 2007, décerné le 13 décembre par le magazine L’Usine nouvelle dans le cadre du prix des ingénieurs. Ancien professeur de mathématiques, le lauréat, sensibilisé aux problèmes de vue dont souffrait sa soeur, a fondé en 2004 l’entreprise Vision pour développer son invention. L’appareil, muni d’une microcaméra, déchiffre les caractères d’imprimerie d’une taille comprise entre 0,7 et 15 mm de hauteur et envoie les images à un processeur intégré. Le tout offre une telle simplicité d’emploi pour l’usager qu’un apprentissage de quelques heures, affirme Raoul Parienti, suffit à maîtriser le Top-Braille.”

Screenshot from the website: www.top-braille.com

The wine room at the Clarion Collection Hotel in Københaven has an automat that serves you an exact dose of 65cl of wine, not a drop more. I like the concept though it is not well displayed (The space around it is too awkward)…

Thanks to Mehdi, some news about hotel innovations: check the Accor Innovation website.

A guided tour of room 307:

“Access to the room is controlled by radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, a solution that Accor developed in cooperation with VingCard Assa Abloy. The door lock opens when it detects a radio frequency microchip in the hotel key card or in a Samsung mobile phone that is scheduled to reach the market in January 2008. The room’s safe also uses this technology. In the next 18 months to three years, all mobile phones worldwide will meet NFC standards and be able to use this technology.”

Check also room 1014.

Suitehotel created nomadsphere, a new community website for architects who want to travel with other nomads:

“ Planning a trip to Berlin? Just connect to www.nomadsphere.com to get in touch with another nomad who shares your interests and just happens to be in Berlin at the same time.”

Personally, I am on so many Social Networking websites that I regularly forget my passwords…

I found the above advertising postcard in a book I borrowed from the library (as all neo-nomad qui se respecte must do, plug into libraries and share resources)… I was reading a 1972 edition of Chambre d’Hôtel by Colette, so I am guessing the advertising for the products of linguaphone (a hundred year-old company) dates from the seventies. Anyway, this image triggered quite a lot of thoughts… First, that learning another language becomes more important with the meeting of other cultures, i.e. there would not be any language courses if there weren’t any travel. Second, I always wondered how Marco Polo communicated with Gengis. As a architect I never had any problem, if I could not speak I could draw… (Now… if you cannot draw, you can always use Point It, the Travellers’ Language Kit) which leads us to the beginnings of writings and cuneiform scripts in Sumer… pictograms were they, illustrating an object/place/activity, different from ideograms, representing ideas. Third, the thought of a universal language… Or four, at least an alphabet like the Morse code and the NATO alphabet, the international radiotelephony alphabet that was developed to ensure the intelligibility of voice signals over radio even to a non-English native speaker… The link between language, technology and travel is here obvious. Which brings us exactly to what started my tirade, the vinyl as a technology that supports teaching/learning… as maybe an ancestor to the CD or CD-Rom or the podcast… Wikipedia offers a history of virtual learning environment, history that dates before the 1940’s. Here is an article on Computer Enhanced Language Learning; and a book chapter on technology to support learning…

My friend Jan, who will go to Gengis’ land in January to distribute the One Laptop per Child sends me the note below. Funny that a generation of traditionnal nomads will transform into neo-nomads via a green looking device :) Well… they already are modern… check this picture (sorry for the reflection :( of an image taken by Titouan Lamazou when in Mongolia… (In the background in very small, you would notice a Mongolian yurt). A modern nomad in Mongolia…

From now through November 26, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) non-profit association is offering a unique opportunity to help provide connected laptops to the poorest and most remote children of the world, while receiving an XO laptop for your own child. Please look at www.laptopgiving.org. You have the opportunity to Give One Get One for $399, or give many, if you wish. By popular demand, there are ways to direct 60 or more to your favorite school, as well.

OLPC is an education project, not a laptop project. Children are a mission, not a market. After 30+ years of research at the MIT Media Lab, based on Seymour Papert’s theories of constructionism, we have had three years to pilot in primary schools around the world, in Cambodia, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Peru and other places. The XO laptop is now in mass production. It was reviewed recently by the NY Times. If you have a chance, I urge you glance at David Pogue’s video as well.

Our goal is to reach the poorest and most remote children, in countries where as many as 50% do not even go to school. The long term purpose is to eliminate poverty.

The reason you are getting this e-mail is that at some time over the past ten years, you received or sent an e-mail from or to me, or were on a cc list. I know, this is a kind of spam and, in some cases the recipient will be somebody I wrote this week, in other cases the recipient may not even be alive. I did not try to edit the 30,000+ e-mail addresses. But more than anything, whether you join Give One Get One or not, please tell your friends and family. This really could change the world.

PS: If you participate in Give One Get One, your donation comes with one year of complimentary access to T-Mobile HotSpot locations throughout the United States (a $350 value). Details are on www.laptopgiving.org.

Article in the Economist, Nov. 15, 2007: A bank in Every Pocket (p. 18 in the print edition).

An excerpt:

These “branchless” schemes typically allow customers to deposit and withdraw cash through a mobile operator’s airtime-resale agents, and send money to other people via text messages that can be exchanged for cash by visiting an agent. Workers can then be paid by phone; taxi-drivers and delivery-drivers can accept payments without carrying cash around; money can be easily sent to friends and family. A popular use is to deposit money before making a long journey and then withdraw it at the other end, which is safer than carrying lots of cash.

The article’s background:

The growth in the number of mobile-phone users is nothing short of spectacular. In 1990 there were just over 11m of them worldwide. Today almost 2.5 billion consumers own mobile phones. Some see their spread as the key to bridging the digital divide and boosting development in poor countries. Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising’s promised land. They are also changing politics, generally for the better.

Competition among telecoms operators and handset-makers is fierce. In Europe, the former racked up huge debts around the turn of the millennium while bidding wildly for third-generation (3G) network licenses. To their disappointment, consumer interest in 3G has been lacklustre. Worse yet, whizzy new services (like mobile TV and wireless broadband) are likely to be carried on other networks in future. Still, the state of play is fluid and speculation remains fevered as to where the phone will go next.

Still can’t get how you can type and drive at the same time… Thank you N.B. for the link… But here is how one can cope with mobility when you have a chauffeur… A classic… “what I am going to do while in transit?” Is that so boring to do nothing? Check this Car computer System.