The current issue of Fast Company has a great article “Can’t Touch This” by Adam L. Penenberg about Jeff Han, who with his company Perceptive Pixel, is developing an amazing multi-touch display system that could revolutionize how people interact with machines and work with information. For years systems like this have been featured in sci-fi films, but now it looks like they might be close to reality. Check out Jeff Han and Phil Davidson’s great video demo to get a better idea of how the system works.

Until now, the touch screen has been limited to the uninspiring sort found at an ATM or an airport ticket kiosk–basically screens with electronic buttons that recognize one finger at a time. Han’s touch display, by contrast, redefines the way commands are given to a computer: It uses both movement and pressure–from multiple inputs, whether 2 fingers or 20–to convey information to the silicon brain under the display. Already, industries and companies as diverse as defense contractor Lockheed Martin, CBS News, Pixar, and unnameable government intelligence agencies have approached Han to get hold of his invention. And, no surprise, he has formed a startup company to market it, Perceptive Pixel.

Here’s a video of Jeff’s talk at TED 2006 featuring an earlier version of his system.

via » Chris Pirillo

Last week our awesome team over at Laughing Squid Web Hosting successfully converted the entire laughingsquid.net website to WordPress. What’s really interesting is that when looking at it, you would have no idea that anything was even changed, but now the entire website is dynamic PHP WordPress pages served from a MySQL database. We were able to use WordPress as a 100% CMS without any blogging functionality (we keep our hosting blog is offsite over at wordpress.com).

As I worked my way around the World Trade Center site I came across the “Floodwall” installation located in the Liberty Street Bridge at the World Financial Center. It features 610 drawers from New Orleans neighborhoods flooded by Hurricane Katrina. The drawers were collected by artist Jana Napoli, who arranged them into a “floodwall” along side of the bridge which parallels the Ground Zero site. It’s a stunning juxtaposition between the two tragedies, one man-made and one natural.

In this site-specific installation, the drawers sit upright along a 230 foot long platform, which spans the length of Liberty Street Bridge – standing like empty luggage without their passengers and flowing like a levee, broken in places. Beneath the drawers, placed in intervals along the platform, moving-message LED signs silently repeat the words of the people who have parted with these drawers.

On my recent trip to New York, I was curious to see how things had changed over the years with the World Trade Center site at Ground Zero. It walked completely around the construction area, shooting photos at various locations along the way (occasionally I would find a hole in the fence and get a clear shot). The last time I was down there was in July 2002, 10 months after the 9/11 attacks. Here are photos from that previous trip.

Of course this time there was a bunch of information regarding The Memorial that is being built on the site as well as the new Freedom Tower.

Another change since my last visit was The Port Authority’s re-opening of the World Trade Center PATH station. Outside the station, there is currently a 9/11 photo memorial and what is really interesting is that after you descend into the station, the entire far wall is a fenced off area that overlooks the Ground Zero site.

Canadian actor Charles Ross is currently in town performing his One Man Star Wars Trilogy at Post Street Theatre in San Francisco through March 11th. Several people I know went to the opening last night and said it was a really hilarious show.

One Man Star Wars Trilogy is a hilarious, high energy, nonstop blast through the original Star Wars trilogy, but with one catch: there’s only one cast member, Charles Ross. This writer and solo performer spent way too much of his childhood in a galaxy far, far away and continues to spend his adulthood there. Ross plays all the characters, recreates the effects, sings the music, flies the ships, and fights both sides of the light saber battles, making for a side-splitting evening.

Here’s a video demo from a live show.

Charles also performs a “One Man Lord of the Rings”, doing 40 characters from 3 masterworks in 3600 seconds.

Vancouver is known for its great coffee. I’ve been to several really good cafes on previous trips and I’m always looking for others. At Northern Voice I was hanging out with Arieanna & Ianiv, who write the excellent blog Vancouver Coffee, recommended that I check out The Elysian Room in Kitsilano. I’m glad I took their advice.

It’s a beautiful cafe that serves amazing coffee and espresso drinks, as well as selling their own Elysian Coffee beans and other varieties. Not only do they have a one of the infamous Clover machines, but they are also an authorized Clover dealer. The cafe’s owner, Alistair was super friendly and allowed me to shoot as many photos of the cafe as I wanted (not all cafes I’ve been to are so accommodating) and he even brewed up some special coffee in the Clover for me to taste.

When you are in Vancouver, be sure to stop by, it’s well worth it.

The SXSW Interactive Festival starts next week in Austin on Friday, March 9th and runs through Tuesday, March 13th. It is part of the larger SXSW Conference which also includes separate Film and Music festivals. This really is starting to look like the year that everyone who hasn’t been yet, is going. This will be my third year at SXSWi and last year was much bigger and action-packed than 2005. One can only image the scale of this year’s event and the speaker list alone gives you a good indication of the hugeness of it all. Oh yeah, then there are the parties…

If this is your first time to SXSWi, then I highly recommend checking out my friend Min Jung Kim’s panel on Friday “How to Rawk SXSW”. MJ’s a seasoned veteran of SXSW and she’s put together a great group of hardcore attendees that will give you tips on how to get the most out the conference.

Here are my photos from SXSW Interactive 2006.

Also, like last year, BarCamp Austin will be running con-currently with SXSWi on March 9th and 10th. Here are my photos from last year’s BarCamp Austin.

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, February 28th) is the final installment of Ask Dr. Hal at 12 Galaxies. Of course this is not to be confused with the previous last Ask Dr. Hal at 12 Galaxies that took place a year ago, but at least this is last one for now until Chicken John decides that it’s no longer the last one.

From Hal’s newsletter:

Only one more Ask Dr. Hal! show remains, set for the last day of February, 2007. This is the last chance for those who have been prevented, by one impediment or another, from attending and experiencing this entertainment in a venue named by Playboy online as one of the nation’s top ten rock clubs, an entertainment which has pioneered a new form of theatrical expression and interactive comedic interchange. Failing this, these unfortunates are doomed to wander in eternal incomprehension, forced to listen to their more fortunate fellows expound at great length on the memorable, life-changing experiences they encountered at 12 Galaxies. Kind of like Burning Man in that regard– yes, in all fairness, the comparison needs to be made.

WonderCon 2007, Northern California’s largest comics and pop culture convention, takes place this Friday, March 2nd through Sunday March 4th at Moscone Center South in San Francisco. Here’s are this year’s full schedule, featured guests, list of exhibitors and Artists’ Alley.

WonderCon storms into Moscone Center South on March 2, 3 and 4 for another three-day history-making event. With an attendance of close to 18,000 in 2006 the Bay Area’s premier comics convention has quickly become an eagerly awaited yearly event. Like its big sister show to the south, Comic-Con International, WonderCon combines the worlds of comics and pop culture to offer a lively and exciting mix of shopping and stargazing. Here’s your chance to meet some of your favorite writers and artists and even some Hollywood stars!

Today the Laughing Squid Flickr photostream reached another milestone as it pasted 1,000,000 views since I first started uploading photos there two years ago. Here are some current statistics:

total photos uploaded to Flickr: 15,981

photostream views: 1,000,548

number of photosets: 368

photo with most interestingness: Tiki Bar TV

photo with most views: Swarm Demo @ Digg v3 Party

photo with most favorites: Laughing Squid Photo by Brian McCarty

photo with most comments: Like a Rock, Only Dumber

Previous milestones include 10,000 photos (April 2006) and 100,000 views (October 2005).

Our travels north of Vancouver took us to the wonderful little village of Horseshoe Bay, one of the main ports for BC Ferries. The majority of visitors to Horseshoe Bay travel there specifically to catch ferries to numerous destinations, including Nanaimo and Victoria on Vancouver Island, but there is one lane off of Highway 1 that instead of taking you to the ferries, brings you to the village of Horseshoe Bay. It’s well worth the side trip if you ever have a chance. It was raining really hard while we were there, but I managed to shoot a few photos before getting completely soaked.

On the way out of the village, we found our way to Whytecliff Park, which has absolutely stunning views of Howe Sound. At first we thought we saw people having a picnic, which was odd considering how hard it was raining. When we took a closer look we discovered that it was scuba gear spread out on the picnic tables. That seemed a bit odd, but looking out at the cove, we saw several divers in the water and others suiting up on the beach. We spoke with one of them and he explained that this area was Canada’s first Salt Water Marine Protected Area (MPA) and is known worldwide as an excellent scuba diving location. Here are some photos I shot of Whytecliff Park, including the unexpected sight of people scuba diving off the coast of BC on a cold and rainy day in February.

The beautiful Lions’ Gate Bridge connects Vancouver with North Vancouver and West Vancouver. Here are a few photos I shot from the eastern shore of Stanley Park as Lori and I made our way to the bridge from some exploring up north on our extra day in Vancouver after the conclusion of Northern Voice 2007.

English chalk artist Julian Beever creates truly fantastic pavement drawings in 3D using a technique know as anamorphosis. More examples of his work can be found on his website and his Flickr photostream.

Some have dubbed him “the Pavement Picasso,” as his work, like the Spanish Master’s in his Cubist period, centers on three-dimensionality. Each drawing must be seen from one special viewpoint and if the viewer moves from it the illusion is lost and the drawing becomes an unrecognizable distortion.

Last year the BBC did a story on the “Pavement Picasso”, covering his process creating Chinese New Year 3D sidewalk art in Birmingham.

Here’s a time-lapse video of Julian creating the Fountain of Youth chalk drawing last month in Union Square, New York City commissioned by skincare products company AVEENO.

I’m currently in Vancouver for Northern Voice 2007, a great blogging conference that is taking place on the main University of British Columbia (UBC) campus. Anil Dash just gave the keynote this morning about “Making Change Happen”. While here I’ll be taking in some of the talks, catching up with friends and shooting a few photos.

Josh Trank and Studio 8 produced “Drunken Jedi Trailer Trash”, a hilarious video that shows that bad things can happen when lightsabers get into the hands of drunken idiots. Here’s the behind the scenes story at how the video was produced.