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And another thing...

One thing I seem to be doing recently is pruning my RSS feeds...I hope its not like the arboreal equivalent where you prune to promote growth, I'm tring to cut back on the amount of stuff I can get to comfortably cope with during the day without interfering with work!

This post introduces the "Attention" concept and the next big thing, "filters". I do think that people will suddenly realise they don't have time to actually read/sift through the 50/100/1000+ feeds. Identifying the quality posts within feeds, especially aggregator type feeds is difficult.

The real difficulty is that you don't want to filter out too much because you don't get the opportunity to see new and exciting things that would usually be outside your "filter" criteria. For instance, this looks amazing fun, "Pillow Fight Club" (via The Cool Hunter) but not in a million years would you have filter to capture something random like this.

I use desktopsidebar as it has an RSS reader continually "revolving" content - so I can scan posts while I'm waiting for something to compile, run, open or copy - and every so often you get a couple of gems like these,

Hand Gesture recognition library (via MAKE blog) - This got me really excited for some reason - I was buzzing with ideas after I saw the videos of it in action. Control TV with hand gestures? VR your home automation set up? gesture the curtains closing?

Talking of which, in true Minorty Report style, check this link (via Gizmodo) out to be totally amazed at how we will interact with computers and information in the near future. Although to be honest, as one commenter points out, what will it actually be good for? Moving blobby shapes around the screen..great, I do that all day, not!

Ok, on to more realistic stuff. Voice control your MCE2005 set up...sounds very cool to me. However some past experience with other voice control gadgets has not been good. A common problem is the "trigger" phrase can be picked up from background noise, even TV audio and its very annoying to have it go into command mode all by itself! I'd love to try this product but I don't want to have a headset on, or microphone I have to be near, so I found this array microphone. So - total cost of this gadget would be about $450, say £275 and it could be a complete waste of money (although I think this guy had the previous version). I'm not biting yet - maybe I'll see it in action at the Smart Home Show? Anyone out there with a higher money/sense ratio care to share their experience of this product?

I personally think that touch screen tablets will make a big impact in the control of MCE/Home Automation products. Already we have a (re?)launch of a Smart Screen from Panasonic. I will be getting a Tablet PC to use as my wireless PC to roam the house for surfing, although this caught my eye for pure surfing needs, the Pepper Pad - a low cost, Linux based, splash proof, touch screen tablet, neat!

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