Kidrobot QR Scavenger Hunt

Why vinyl is at the cutting edge of technology, or how to scan your way around Manhattan.

Since 2002, designer Paul Budnitz has been pushing the boundaries of what art toys can be in his iconic brand of super-premium vinyl toys, Kidrobot. Now, he is pushing the boundaries of what technology can do. As Android and other mobile platforms make QR codes an increasingly prevalent data tag format, why not have some fun with it? That’s exactly what Kidrobot is doing in Dunny Hunt 09 — a QR-based scavenger hunt around Manhattan, promoting Kidrobot’s Dunny Series 2009, from strategic creative studio WeArePlus.

The five-day hunt kicked off yesterday, offering Kidrobot fans daily clues leading to a promotional displays — posters, stickers, postcards, t-shirts — hidden all around the city. Kidrobot also provides links to free smartphone apps which, once installed, can be used to scan the QR codes embedded in the promotional displays. (Although their choice of iPhone app is BeeTagg Reader, we’d recommend UpCode instead.)

Victorious hunters can collect the day’s Virtual Dunny Collection image, with a chance to win various prizes, including limited-edition Dunny toys. The first person to scan the QR Code from the day’s hidden item wins a special reward. The grand prize is no less than a full set of the Dunny Series 2009 designer toys.

Dunny Series 2009 drops on September 10. Artists behind the collection include Amanda Visell, Mori Chack, Brandt Peters, Gary Taxali, Amy Ruppel, Travis Cain, Thomas Han, and more.

Notes & Neurons: Music, Emotion and the Brain

From axons to a cappella, or why music gives us chills and thrills.

Music is easily the widest-reaching, most universal emotional facilitator. Anecdotally, it shapes so many of life’s everyday experiences: An epic movie would fall flat without a cinematic soundtrack, a party without dance music is unthinkable, and a run without an upbeat playlist feels somehow much more tiresome. Scientifically, music has been shown to impact anything from our alertness and relaxation to our memory to our physical and emotional well-being.

Today, we take a look at just how music affects our brain and emotion, with Notes & Neurons: In Search of a Common Chorus — a fascinating event from the 2009 World Science Festival.

But before we launch into the geekier portion, here’s a quick improvised treat from phenomenal jazz and a cappella performer Bobby McFerrin, who embodies the intimate relationship between music and the human element.

The panel — hosted by John Schaefer and featuring Jamshed Barucha, scientist Daniel Levitin, Professor Lawrence Parsons and Bobby McFerrin — takes us through a series of live performances and demonstrations that illustrate music’s interaction with the brain and our emotions, exploring some of the most interesting questions about this incredible phenomenon.

Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment?

We encourage you to see the full Notes & Neurons: In Search of a Common Chorus program, or snack on some more digestible bites over at World Science Festival’s Vimeo channel.

And while we’re at it, we highly recommend neuroscientist Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain — an utterly fascinating read about the extreme effect music can have on our cognitive and emotional lives.

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The Mother of All Demos

Geek history, or why 2009 has nothing on 1968.

Today always has a certain arrogance towards yesterday — each generation likes to credit itself with the invention of, well, everything that matters. But certain things — personal computing, social networking, digital collaboration — are surely the product of our contemporary era, right? Wrong.

On December 9, 1968, Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart of the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute staged what’s been dubbed “the mother of all demos” — a 90-minute public multimedia demonstration that debuted personal and interactive computing to the world.

It was the cultural grand entrance of many of the technologies we use today: the computer mouse, hypertext linking, real-time text editing, multiple windows with flexible view control, screenshare teleconferencing.

Cure your presentism bias with a look at the full 1968 demo and catch Dr. Engelbart’s talk at Google Authors, where he delves into 57 years worth of his fascinating work on social networking systems.

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The Future of Data Tags: Bokodes

Japanese blurs, or what amateur photography has to do wtih tech innovation.

QR codes may be a hot topic these days, but the MIT Media Lab, true to their penchant for one-upping innovation, have come up with a formidable QR-killer. Bokodes — from “barcode” and bokeh, the Japanese word for the blurred area around a photographer’s point of focus — are new camera-based data tags with the capacity to hold a few thousand times more data than traditional barcodes.

Ten times smaller than barcodes, Bokodes’ low-cost optical design can be read from as far as 4 meters away, much farther than barcodes, by taking an out-of-focus photo with any off-the-shelf camera. Bokodes can also encode directional and angular information — something barcodes can’t do.

With the proliferating implementations of good ol’ QR codes, we can only imagine the possible applications of Bokodes — from crowd gaming in public spaces to helping interactive interfaces like Microsoft Surface determine the position and identification of objects placed on them. And although we probably won’t be seeing them hit the mainstream anytime soon, we have enough faith in geek culture to trust that brilliant applications are already being cooked up.

Bokodes come from the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab. The team is currently working on holographic Bokodes, which would greatly reduce the cost and size.