Ultimate Geek Post

I thought I would try the ultimate geek thing today and blog from a conference I am attending called Tools of Change put on by O'Reilly the famous STM publisher and technology pioneer. The are kindly providing free wireless during the conference to enable this. Nearly 1 out of 3 people here have their computer open checking email, IM'ing, blogging, and who knows what else...

We just watch an interesting keynote from Dale Dougherty on the beauty of print and he spoke a lot about Make magazine, a very cool magazine about how to make things. He read a very funny and moving letter written by a reader who discusses the anticipation of the arrival of the magazine and the total disruption of his day when it arrives. The audience applauded when he finished reading it.

Now we are looking at a book prototype from Manolos Kelaidis which blends the physical and digital worlds in print. He just demoed a prototype book where he clicked with his finger on the book on the word Mona Lisa and it did a Google search on his computer. VERY COOL! Much applause from the audience.

Another example of reading an essay and you want to see what others are saying about it, clicking on the paragraph brings you to a blog on the topic. Also instant translation if you find words in a different language and now he just played a song (Beatles yellow submarine) from the book with the lyrics printed on the other page.

He uses conductive ink on the page with some embedded electronics in the spine to communicate with the computer. Very cool and promising stuff for things like education and training. (think physical book with a picture of a giraffe that actually played "this is a giraffe", or a mail-order catalog that can order with a touch of a button).

It's the future of books.

Signing off for now... more from the conference later.