Is it possible to incorporate a personalized "context" into the generator? Weather, market/news sentiments, calendar events, etc... to style the end result.
Killer feature(idea): Work with a Kinect sensor on a feedback loop to update the playlist based on number of people, size of the room, acoustics, aggregate playlist taste of people who "check-in" to the room so their tastes gets included (you're a good host right?). I imagine it would bring a more social component to the playlist and put that social component to use.
One thing I could foresee happening with the increased use of furniture/concepts like this (the UrbanDesk, as well as some of the other products from other companies) is that a user may get disoriented from using the same space for multiple purposes. I like having a room for different functions. A room for sleeping has a different feel than a room for working. A room for eating breakfast has a different feel than a room for eating dinner with family. A room for relaxing and watching TV casually, has a different feel than a room for entertaining guests. You get the picture. This helps create mental and emotional "spaces", but also leads to a lot of wasted space. With more people wanting to move back to the cities, I imagine this distinction between mental and emotional "spaces" will become more blurred. Does anyone know of any good products or services that would compliment these products? I'm thinking along the lines of programmable/wireless ambient lighting.
I wonder if also using a sandboxed localstorage as a memcached would be useful? I guess you would have to account for bandwidth, response time, and available memory. Also account for variable CPU usage, but I wonder if you could train an algorithm to account for these factors. I could see it being a great way to "get paid for using X Extension".
I've always thought it would be cool to have employers offer "MAKEation" days instead of vacation days. This would be time accumulated to take a month, a quarter, or even a year off to build your own product/service/dream. The company offering this would also provide mentors, resources, and periodic sit-downs to discuss investment into your new product/service/dream. You maintain your insurance throughout this time also. When you return to work, instead of having a meeting to "be brought back up to speed", you discuss with managers how to integrate your new business into the company, what you learned, and then make a presentation to the rest of your business/department. The idea being that every business can be it's own incubator of sorts. I would imagine this would attract top talent to your company, allow for new sources of revenue, keep your business fresh, and promote innovation among those that might otherwise be more risk-averse.
You might enjoy this broadcast that we (the radio show I work for) did last year on aging, the feeling of a lack of purpose, and what to do about it. It's mainly geared towards those about to retire, but it can also be relevant to others.
" because it was not technology related, at all. The only link it had to anything technology related was where the author worked."
I find articles like this interesting, regardless of the fact that they may be far from purely technical. I happen to think that technology is a means, not an end. Finding different perspectives on problems or circumstances that I may not have been exposed to allows me to better weigh pro's and con's of an issue and think of how technology could help solve/change/improve things.
"If someone integrated a contextual playlist generator into a web-IDE and changed the music based on length of current session, degree of nesting or other complexity values, time of day based on location, etc..., I think it would be a much appreciated feature."
Payment could be tied to a semi-annual or quarterly code contest where students compete in different "events". This could all be live-code-streamed. Judges are a collection of ______ (fill in the blank). The better the students in a particular course do, the more money that course creator gets. Funds for this prize could even be kickstarted, or funded by non-profits in the free-education domain, or through other means (prizes could even be free services from relevant start-ups?).
What I hear you saying is: "There could/should be a better way to do it". Adding ", hmmmmmmmmmmmmm...." to the end of that statement may be of some use to you or others, financially.
Instead of donating that 4 hours of time to one specific project in need, why not create a platform for others to donate time? Think of a kickstarter, but for man-hours.
Slightly off-topic, but I've always thought that the first wave of HCI to hit the market and gain traction would be the integration of Affective sensing tech. products and API's into popular areas like music, social networks, and health care. I've always thought this would bring down the cost, increase investment in the HCI/BCI space, and speed up the adoption rates and lead to a much faster improvement of HCI technologies.
why not make a "one vote, one cause, one day" type of widget that can be easily added to any website( configurable to square, horizontal rectangle, vertical rectangle, etc...). Similar to the HN forum, you can create a 'cause' thread, design a logo/message for that cause, and the cause can be voted on. The highest ranked cause of that particular day is displayed for 24 hours, then reset back to 0 votes to even the playing field for other causes. Is anyone else starting to see my vision for this? Does this already exist?
We will indeed be streaming live (thanks to our local CBS affiliates' already set-up streaming servers). I've sent you an email, and if you have any further questions please feel free to contact me.
Hah, interesting concept. At first glance, I thought it prob. wouldn't be the best thing to feature this on a show that targets people who see friends pass on a weekly, if not daily, basis. However, after thinking about it more, it would be interesting to see how they (seniors) think about the concept and if it differs from our(younger folks) point of view. Our show will be a live call-in show, so it could make for an interesting segment. What's your email?
Sounds interesting, I would really be interested in following up with you about this. I'm very interested in improving quality of life while at the same time reducing costs and overall inefficiencies. My email is radio4theages.tech@gmail.com.