Holo scene

3D TV is so 2010. People may not be saying this just yet, but if researchers at MIT continue their progress with holographic TV, we'll be wondering what all the fuss was about pretty soon.

What's the difference between 3D TV and holographic TV? 3D only comes out at you in one direction, while your location in the room directly impacts what you see with holographic TV - or 'holovideo', as those in the know like to call it. In other words, watching holographic TV is like having the events happen right there in the same room with you - instead of just having things come out of the TV at you.

While there have been previous developments in holographic TV, they've typically required visual data from a lot of sources. What makes the MIT developments so exciting is that they've created holographic TV from a single Xbox Kinect camera.

Here is Michael Bove, Group Head of Object-Based Media at MIT, explaining this development:

And for those who enjoy reading technical jargon, here's the team's recent research paper on the subject.

Eyes wide shut

How many times have you walked by a homeless person? How many times have you invented your own story about them? How many times have you stopped to ask them anything?
If you're like most of us, your answers are:
       1. Many;
       2. Often;
       3. Never.

Fifteen years ago, Mark Horvath would have given the same answers, as he drove his Mercedes mindlessly past the homeless on his way to and from his high-paying television job. Then he became homeless, and he came to the realization that it can happen to anyone. Now, Horvath has made it his mission to collect the stories that we have never taken the time to consider. And they are fascinating.

Horvath has documented hundreds of these stories from around the country on his site, InvisiblePeople.tv, and they are as compelling as they are disturbing. He is a master at capturing the circumstances that have led so many otherwise 'normal' members of society onto the streets, and how difficult it can be for them to extricate themselves from homelessness once it has become their reality.

Still, you may not be convinced. You may be thinking that these people are responsible for their fate. You may be right, but considering that the average age of the 3.5 million homeless people in the US is nine years-old, you might also be very, very wrong.

There are many stories on Horvath's site, why not start with his?

My Story from InvisiblePeople.tv on Vimeo.

Taking food for granting

Fundraising dinners are nothing new, but a growing international network has uncovered a new way to do them. Sunday Soup offer what they call meal-based micro-grants to creative projects in their respective neighborhoods.

The concept is as cool as it is simple: a community of people gather on a regular basis to share affordable meals, and donate the proceeds to a creative project of their choice. At each Sunday Soup gathering, prospective grantees present their projects while attendees dine. Then the diners vote, and the winner gets the grant.

So far, the network has granted nearly $20,000 in 25 locales, at a rate of roughly $400 per grant. There are currently over 20 Sunday Soup groups in the US, and anyone is welcome to start their own. Why not? The worst thing that could happen is that you'd have a great meal; the best thing that could happen is wide open to possibility.

Here's a piece NPR's Marketplace did on St Louis' Sloup"

Jets dream

The idea of jet packs is nothing new. They're regular stars in movies (including Logan's Run (left)), and there have been real-life variations on the theme ever since the Germans invented the pulse jet powered Himmelstürmer back in WWII.

As it turns out, there are a number of complications entailed in getting a jet pack to the market. First and foremost being, nearly every method of producing a jet is going to generate a lot of heat. That makes the prospect of flying one a - shall we say - hot topic.

1960s jet pack & protective suit

Another problem is finding enough fuel to fly for any length of time. There's only so much a person can carry, and mobility is kind of important when you're flying through the air.

So, while the concept is great, the possibility of you or me ever getting a chance to fly with a jet pack has been slim. Until now.

Canadian inventor, Raymond Li, has come up with the ingenious idea of using water to power you into the air. His JetLev jet pack goes on the market in March, and retails for around $100,000. It may look a little cumbersome, but imagine the possibilities: with a few tweaks, you could foreseeably jet across the ocean, or around the Great Lakes, even up the Amazon. Meanwhile, though, just expect to see these things in and around resorts:

Gym blob?

Have you ever had a gym membership? If so, how long did you maintain your workout regimen for? If you're like 80% of Americans, it wouldn't have taken long for you to find a plethora of other priorities that prevented you from attending more than once a week. And then, when you realized you were spending around $800 a year for the privilege of little more than a membership card, you probably did the same thing as half the people who get gym memberships, and quit within the first six months.

This equation doesn't work for you, and it doesn't work for the gym.

Which is why Yifan Zhang and Geoff Oberhofer came up with Gym-Pact. Inspired by their Harvard Economics Professor, Sendhil Mullainathan, who asserted that people are more motivated by immediate consequences than by future possibilities, Zhang and Oberhofer have developed a social enterprise program in Boston that encourages people to keep working out through monetary incentives.

These incentives work both ways: if you stick to your attendance commitments at a selection of fitness venues around Boston, you get great discounts on fitness memberships. If you don't, you get fined!

It's for your own good. Huge Red Bear doesn't want you to end up like him (and you don't want to argue with Huge Red Bear):

Birth rights

In Angola, nearly one in every five infants is dying. In the US, roughly three in every 500 infants die. In Singapore, the figure is closer to one in every 500. That the world's best infant mortality rate is 100 times better than the world's worst, is not only an indictment on a topsy-turvy set of global priorities; it's also a call to action.

But what can we do? It's hard to get the necessary technology to the people who need it the most.

Well, it turns out that it's not all about technology. A recent study conducted in Pakistan - where newborn deaths account for over half of all deaths under five years of age - demonstrated that newborn care counseling alone, accounted for a 15 percent decline in newborn mortality and a 21 percent reduction in the stillbirth rate.

In an article that highlights this study, Melinda Gates mentions her own experience in India (a country in which over a million kids under one month old die annually), where similar interventions cut newborn mortality rates in half. Here she is talking about it:

And to be fair, things are improving in Angola, as well:

STRaNDed in space

As a rule, it appears that smartphones are a whole lot smarter than the people using them. No offense intended, but really, how much of a smartphone's capacity does the average Joe use? There's enough technology in one of those things to fly a spaceship. Well, a satellite, anyway.

STRaND-1 stack and equipment

That's the opinion of the team at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), who are developing a satellite containing a smartphone payload, that they plan to launch later this year. Called STRaND-1 (Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator), the 'nano-satellite' weighs less than nine pounds, and could revolutionize satellite technology.

It really is a touch of genius: an extremely cheap, lightweight device that can be improved by anyone that knows how to develop apps. Suddenly, the sort of technology that only governments and large corporations could afford and program, is within reach of the average Joe who wanted to be able to do more with his smartphone! If the range of creative developments that have come through the internet are any indication, the possibilities for smartphone satellites are literally endless.

So it's unsurprising that SSTL should be the ones bringing us this technology. They're already into everything else: