[From ZDnet’s Tech Broiler blog] Retail in 2021: When clicks have buried bricks Summary: Ten years from now, virtually all shopping will take place at home. By Jason Perlow | November 29, 2011 Edgewater, New Jersey. Mindy Konsumer was in waking sleep when she heard the sound of birds tweeting. They progressively got louder, and louder and louder. She pulled the covers over her head. “Ugh. Why did Josef set it to those horrible birds again instead of my wind chimes?” “Bitch, deactivate the alarm. I’m up.” YES MINDY. GOOD MORNING. IT IS MONDAY, 8:30AM, THE 29TH OF NOVEMBER, 2021.…

[From Transportation Nation] Choose Your Own Rail Adventure By Matt Dellinger | 11/28/2011 “I remember the first time I saw a train go by,” a choked-up grown man says in the video trailer for Railworks’s Train Simulator 2012. He goes on, with a weepy nostalgia that rivals the treacliest Chevy commercial. “My dad took me to the crossing one hot summer evening….. I could see the engineer in his cab. Gotta be the best seat in the world.” Though Amtrak ridership reached a record high, and House Transportation Chairman John Mica has recently warmed to the idea of Amtrak-led high…

[From The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog, where the post includes two videos including the ad and additional images] The Blogger Who Found Jenny Not on the Block By Noam Cohen November 24, 2011 A new ad featuring the pop star Jennifer Lopez behind the wheel of a Fiat 500 as she reflects on her Bronx upbringing may have done the impossible – shock a jaded public well accustomed to fakery in TV advertising. The ad uses a body double for the scenes in the Bronx, which have been carefully spliced with material shot with Ms. Lopez in Los…

[From The University of Maine’s Maine Campus] [Image: Rob Stigile, Maine Campus features editor, tries on the Head Mounted Display at the VEMI lab. Photo by Jesse Scardina] Get plugged in UMaine virtual reality lab creates something from nothing By Robert Stigile Thursday, November 10th, 2011 Imagine you are in a Boston hotel room on the 20th floor when all of a sudden an explosion rocks the building, shattering glass and activating alarms of various kinds throughout the neighborhood. This emergency scenario presents a multitude of barriers on the path to safety: blocked exits, hallways engulfed in flames, streets closed…

[From IT World’s CoreIT blog; a related story can be found in New Scientist] Researchers build computer monitor into contact lens It’s only one pixel, but it gets the image and power wirelessly, and didn’t hurt the rabbit By Kevin Fogarty November 22, 2011 There have been a million science-fictioney stories, movies, photos and late-night caffeine-psychosis-induced hallucinations imagining how super-mobile, universally connected and unrealistically convenient computing will be in 10 years, or 20 or 50. None of them quite got past [the] barrier posed by the one component of any computer system that can’t shrink in size to a nanoparticle…

[From DigInfo TV, where the story includes a 2:51 minute video; more information is available at the researchers’ web site] [Image: ‘Invoked Computing’ at home] Invoked Computing – Device-free Ubiquitous Augmented Reality 18 November 2011 A research group at the University of Tokyo are creating a new paradigm in Human Computer Interaction. Dubbed ‘Invoked Computing’ the idea is to turn everyday objects into computer interfaces and communication devices. “For example, if you make a gesture, the computer should be able to recognize this as “I want to use the telephone”. So with an iPhone for example, you have everything in…