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It's a wrap: So long SXSW, see you next year
So much happened at SXSW, where to start? Well, you may have heard that the President rolled into town. He took the chance to warn -- the mainly tech crowd -- about not being "absolutists" on encryption, given what a hot topic that is right now. Meanwhile, Sony's R&D Lab debuted the prototype for its new Arc wearable speaker, which is worn around the neck, has voice commands and even a camera inside. Samsung, not to be outdone, showed up with headphones that let you "feel" movement in VR games via electrical impulses. We're aware that sounds like some kind of torture tool, but it is what it is.
SXSW showed me Here's Active Listening buds are a sound idea
"SXSW is all about the big ideas." I've been saying it all week long. It's true. Here in Austin is not the place to launch a phone, it's where you show an idea about how to get people to Mars, or how to feel g-force in mobile VR. This is where apps like Twitter and Foursquare breakthrough and gain mainstream popularity. It's where vaporous ideas can crystalize into something people understand. Here -- a pair of earbuds that modify the audio around you -- had me struggling to understand them. Until this weekend, that is.
Giphy wants to be the Netflix of GIFs
GIFs are portable human expressions. Looped images of grumpy cats, falling babies and weird Drake moves convey a barrage of information and emotions in a way that words and emojis cannot. While the format has been around since 1987, the ability to copy and paste it into a conversation is much more recent. It was the creation of Giphy, an animated GIF search engine, that made pop culture references searchable and shareable in an instant.
Sennheiser's 3D audio for VR feels totally natural
Sennheiser announced its 3D audio platform AMBEO at CES this year, and today at SXSW I got a chance to try a VR demo and see how it sounds. Using a standard pair of headphones and a stock Gear VR, I was transported into a church where a lone piano player sat a few feet in front of me. As she began to play, I looked all around the virtual room -- and the audio mix adjusted on the fly, no matter how I moved, to keep the piano's audio rooted exactly where it should be in the virtual space.
Ohlala CEO Pia Poppenreiter on what 'paid dating' really means
Ohlala, an app that facilitates "paid dates," caused a ripple of raised eyebrows when it launched in New York last month. Despite Ohlala's insistence that it is not about paying for sex, people had a hard time figuring out what it really was for. The company maintains that line, but a few mixed signals are making it hard for the message to stick. Go to the website and you'll be greeted with an image of a man and a women just about to kiss, before an explanation of how the service works. Further down, a small note exclaims, "Ohlala is not an escort service. Escorts are not welcome." I sat down with co-founder and CEO Pia Poppenreiter at SXSW to figure out what Ohlala is, and whether it deserves its salacious reputation.
J.J. Abrams talks to SXSW about how technology has democratized filmmaking
After President Obama's keynote, a SXSW session featuring J.J. Abrams alongside his friend Andrew Jarecki (writer and director HBO miniseries The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst) was probably the hottest panel of the conference. Around 2,000 attendees showed up to get a tease of West World, the HBO series Abrams is executive producing, and hear a conversation between Abrams and Jarecki about how technology has changed filmmaking for the better.
Samsung's experimental headphones send electric impulses to your brain
Not to be outdone by Sony's experimental Future Lab hardware, Samsung is showing off a trio of projects from its C-Lab teams. The most intriguing of these three is definitely the Entrim 4D hardware. It looks like a basic pair of over-ear headphones, but they use electrical signals to trick your brain into feeling a sense of motion.
Mr. Robot has an FBI consultant to make hacking look authentic
A line of people snakes through the halls until it winds down a flight of stairs; more than 1,000 fans are anxiously waiting for the doors to open inside the Austin Convention Center. They're here to see the creator and lead actors of Mr. Robot, the most compelling TV show about hackers in recent memory.
AirJamz is a wristband that turns air guitar into wear guitar
The tagline reads: "AirJamz is the wearable Air Guitar that you have to see to believe." To be fair, you probably can believe it, especially if you're familiar with Zivix. The company is best known for Jamstik, a small wireless guitar that helps you learn to shred, or play more than just axe-sounds, with your iPhone and iPad. AirJamz is for those that want to forego the whole playing part altogether, and just pretend they're slaying. Imagine Guitar Hero boiled down into a $50 wristband with an accelerometer and an app that "plays" guitar if you strum along in time and you've basically got it. We got to see it in action at SXSW, demoed by some of the world's finest fictional fretboard aficionados.
ICYMI: Drawing bot, 3M's future plan and an orb with a soul
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-232743{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-232743, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-232743{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-232743").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Artist Sougwen Chung creates art with help from a robotic arm, take a tour of 3M's exhibit, which visualizes the challenges the earth will face by 2050 and finally, bask in the glow of a large orb with AI that changes its display depending on what the humans around it are doing. There will be one more SXSW-dedicated ICYMI episodes this week, but we'll be back on Thursday from the studio. As always, please share any interesting science or tech videos, anytime! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd.
NASA wants your help to get to Mars in the next 25 years
The idea of a manned mission to Mars got in the public consciousness in a big way over the past few years, thanks in large part to Andy Weir's novel The Martian and its excellent big-screen adaptation. I'll admit that I haven't always been fascinated by space travel, but the book and movie captured my imagination in a way I hadn't expected and made the SXSW panel "Surviving the Red Planet" a must-see. The panel reinforced the fact that a true mission to Mars remains a long way off, but it also had a big focus on recruiting the talent out there to help NASA get there -- even if you're not a rocket scientist, or a scientist of any kind.
US bill would train law enforcement to fight online harassment
People weren't just talking about how to deal with online harassment at SXSW -- they were also taking steps to put anti-harassment laws on the books. Representative Katherine Clark has unveiled a federal bill, the Cybercrime Enforcement Training Assistance Act, that would provide $20 million per year to law enforcement (including dispatchers, police and prosecutors) to equip it for tackling harassment and other internet crimes. An extra $4 million would go toward a national set of resources that would teach cops how to investigate these crimes and deal with their repercussions for women, the LGBT community and other groups.
Life after death: How will you handle your digital legacy?
You're dead. It's the hypothetical scenario Megan Yip, an estate-planning attorney, gives her clients when they show up at her office in the Bay Area. She makes them think about what they would want to do with their belongings before asking them to create a catalog of everything they own. It's a standard step in the making of a last will. But Yip adds another layer to the process. She asks for a digital inventory that details their online existence.
Inside the mind-reading dream factory that is Chaotic Moon
For two weeks every March, Austin, TX, transforms into the media playground known as SXSW. Everyone from brands like McDonalds and Budweiser, to indie app developers descend on the city to share ideas big and small, serious and irreverent. Tucked away above a restaurant just off of 5th street, however, is a place where there dreaming never stops. That place is the HQ of Chaotic Moon -- a digital idea factory that seems to exist for one simple reason: "What can we try next?" Naturally, when SXSW sets up around the team, it's the perfect chance to show off their latest ideas, and we got to see what they've been cooking up (and, for once, it's not BBQ).
ICYMI: Sony's sound necklace, smart music earbuds and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-515226{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-515226, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-515226{width:570px;display:block;} #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-929316{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-929316, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-929316{width:640px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-929316").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It: Austin played host to SXSW by starting the Interactive portion of the conference with musical tech you didn't know you wanted. We got a tour of Sony's R&D Lab for a look at its new Arc wearable speaker, Sony's interactive tabletop projector that the company is trying to get on the market asap. And we tried out the smart concert earbuds Here by Doppler Labs. There will be two more SXSW-dedicated ICYMI episodes this week, but we'll be back on Thursday from the studio. As always, please share any interesting science or tech videos, anytime! Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag to @mskerryd.
SXSW's online harassment summit was a peaceful look at an ugly problem
Last fall, the organizers of SXSW thrust themselves into a storm of controversy. The event's organizers cancelled two panels -- one of which was dedicated to delving into the hot topic of online harassment -- because it had received threats of violence. The harassers had essentially shut down a panel to discuss harassment, and SXSW quickly faced intense judgement for it. Media companies threatened boycotts, panel participants were outraged, the whole situation was badly managed. SXSW quickly responded by reinstating the two panels and dedicating an entire day to the subject of online harassment. There were a few more bumps in the road. Notably, the organizers added one of the canceled panels to the online harassment summit, even though it was basically a pro-GamerGate panel that ostensibly had nothing to do directly with the day's subject. That panel was moved, and it felt like SXSW had finally addressed the myriad of issues it created. Today in Austin, the online harassment summit took place, and all told it was a pretty peaceful forum to discuss one of the more important and difficult issues facing the technology community as well as the women and minorities who are frequently harassed when using the internet.
Making your own functioning R2-D2 is a labor of love
Last year at CES, I remember seeing a life-size, fully functioning R2-D2 unit (minus the Leia hologram, sadly). I assumed it was hired out from a professional movie props unit or something similar; now I'm not so sure. Walking around SX Create -- the maker faire section at SXSW -- I bumped into not one, but two equally well-made replicas only to find they were handmade. In fact, there's an entire club -- funnily enough, called R2-D2 Builders -- dedicated to making them. What's more, the models I saw were built using a veritable menagerie of weird and wonderful items, including a good old lazy susan. But that doesn't mean building your own R2 comes cheap, or is a project for the faint-hearted.
Sony shows off its first set of weird and wild Future Labs prototypes
Last week, Sony took the wraps off its Future Lab initiative -- an R&D arm of the company showing off early prototypes of products and gathering feedback to help shape their development process. Today at SXSW, Sony showed off some of those prototypes to the press. As expected, the company had a new type of wearable to show off. It's called "Concept N," and its arc-like design reminded me of some Bluetooth headphone sets out there -- but the device is quite a bit different from a simple pair of headphones.
Bot Party asks: Are robots the future of comedy?
"You're so ugly, you scared the crap out of the toilet." That joke was delivered by a robot called Annabel wearing a sparkly blue prom dress. This is peak SXSW. The reason why Annabel is telling terrible one-liners is simple, if a little odd. Years ago, Arthur Simone, co-founder of Coldtowne Theater in Austin, started an improv show with his dog for a bet. It was a chain of events that would lead him to wonder if you could do improv comedy with a robot. Working with Martin Triplett, founder of Red Sky Robotics, they created "Bot Party" to find out. Annabel's toilet humor might not have Saturday Night Live worried, but it's proof that it's possible. She's also available for weddings.
President Obama urges SXSW audience not to be 'absolutists' on encryption
South by Southwest managed to get a pretty good keynote speaker as it kicked things off today: President Obama. The president sat down with Evan Smith, editor-in-chief of The Texas Tribune, for a quick but wide-ranging interview loosely focused on civic engagement in the 21st century. He also spent about ten minutes discussing the ongoing battle between privacy and security as highlighted by the battle between the FBI and Apple. As a practiced politician, Obama avoided coming down too hard on any one side, and he said he wasn't able to discuss the ongoing FBI vs. Apple case at all. But by and large his message was that sacrificing some degree of privacy for the sake of our safety has served the country well for hundreds of years, and he expects we'll figure out a way to do so digitally as well.
