Dominic Basulto

Updated 8:30 a.m.:

The SpaceX lanch was delayed yet again, this time at the last minute. The launch was aborted at the end of the countdown early Saturday morning, according to the Associated Press, even catching NASA’s seasoned commenter George Diller by surprise:

It’s time — yet again — for the weekly wrap-up of stories on Ideas@Innovations and elsewhere on the Web. It was an interesting week, covering everything from the Facebook IPO (read the latest from the Post’s Hayley Tsukayama), Hollywood's impending doom, JPMorgan’s missing billions, a misplaced bias against humanities students in Silicon Valley, the Instagram Industry and the merging of moguls in Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

The roadshow for the upcoming Facebook IPO, together with the heightened public scrutiny into Facebook's inner workings, has opened our eyes to the ways the Internet business as we know it looks a lot like the entertainment industry.

With reports that Facebook has a new, higher IPO range of $34 to $38 per share, attention turns to the company’s latest and largest acquisitions, including photo editing and sharing app Instagram.

The company, much like Facebook, has led to a number of innovations, some of which have resulted in the creation of whole companies. In fact, as Co.Design’s Mark Wilson reported, one designer is working to create a camera called Socialmatic solely for Instagram. The camera merely exists in 3D renderings and, as Wilson points out, seems a bit like a move backwards on photography’s evolutionary timeline. But the continued innovation around Instagram, whether backwards or forwards, highlights the value of the app outside of merely online photo sharing.

When news first broke Thursday that JPMorgan's credit derivatives portfolio had sustained a loss of $2 billion, and potentially as much as $5 billion, on trades gone awry, there was an immediate call for greater regulatory oversight over banks’ high-risk trading activities. The message was clear: "If you're going to be a bank, then you can't play at the casino,” as the Post’s Ezra Klein writes. At the same time that the market was lopping off billions of dollars in shareholder value, JPMorgan was purging top executives responsible for the bungled trades and facing awkward questions about its public stance in favor self-regulation. If banks can’t regulate themselves, though, who can?

It was an interesting week in Innovations (it’s not every week we get to feature “Bonnie and Clyde”). Often there’s more than I can possibly cram into the blog. So I’ve decided to start doing a week in review using Storify — the handy-dandy storytelling utility. The wrap-up includes pieces that have appeared here and elsewhere. Let us know what you think of the wrap-up in the comments. We’re, of course, open to suggestions.

Mother’s Day weekend is upon us, and if you are a fan of National Public Radio and the Technology Entertainment and Design conference better known as TED, then this, for you, should be the mother of all audio experiences.

Last fall, Stanford began offering online courses taught by the likes of Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. Last month, ideas conference TED announced that it was unlocking its TED Talks videos and encouraging educators to mash them up with YouTube videos as part of their TED-ed initiative. Last week, Harvard and MIT unveiled edX: the chance to study courses from two of the nation’s most prestigious universities via the Internet. So, here’s the question: Are we at the start of a brave new era of higher education and rapidly accelerating intelligence?

Update 5/10/2012 7:08 a.m.: Nate St. Pierre, the author of the original haox, has posted a ”deconstruction” of the piece, outlining his reasons for writing it, including that he was ”tired of all the same old boring blog posts rolling past me that day,” and that he ”wanted to illustrate one of the drawbacks to our ‘first and fastest’ news aggregation and reporting mentality, especially online.”

The recent political debate over CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) this past month has — if nothing else — helped people understand how all of the various players in the Internet ecosystem have their own unique biases in how you use the Internet. But what about the digital devices and platforms these interest groups seek to regulate?

If you haven’t heard, a new mobile application is curating restaurant deals exclusively for Apple employees.

If this sounds oddly like SWAG (the acronym for “stuff we all get” where the “we” often refers to celebrities), you’re right ... sort of. Think of it as SWAG with a twist.

Lincoln Center in New York hosted a “sleep-over” in April.

One participant sported teddy-bear ears. But don’t be fooled: this was not an event for children.

This was a Red Bull-drinking, no-sleeping group composed of programmers, filmmakers, gamers, and graphic artists, among other tech and creative types. This was the first-ever Story Hack — an event produced by StoryCode, a not-for-profit dedicated to the future of cross-media storytelling, in partnership with the Film Society of Lincoln Center and studio/technology company Murmur.

This piece originally appeared on the WaPo Labs Blog on May 7.WaPo Labs is the digital team at the Washington Post Company focused on innovation and experimenting with emerging technologies.

What do the following images have in common?

There are a mind-boggling number of ways for companies to collect online data about their customers and prospects and transform that data into sophisticated, social profiles that give them insight into both current and future behavior. They are getting so good at it, in fact, that sometimes they know when you're pregnant before your parents do. This practice of social profiling, which some have likened to a new form of racism, quickly enters a gray area when employers use information from social networks to screen prospective employees, or when universities use this information to deny admission to certain students. As we add entirely new types of information to our online social profiles — including our organ donor status — at what point will this intrusion into our personal lives cross the line?

It seems increasingly likely that SpaceX will be the first private entity to send a rocket to dock with the International Space Station.

As The Washington Post’s Marc Kaufman and Brian Vastag report, SpaceX, in collaboration with NASA, is “targeting” May 8 as the launch date for the company’s Dragon Capsule. It would be the first attempt to launch a privately designed and built spacecraft to dock with the station.

Within minutes of the space shuttle’s Manhattan flyover, photos began to appear on Instagram. The images were so evocative that a headline on Fast Company declared, "Instagram was made for this."

The event, much like the death of Whitney Houston, generated an outpouring of nostalgia and emotion online, followed by a collective rush to define its relevance for others. Whether we like it or not, these moments serve as an example of the new role we all play in the crafting of a collective, global memory.

Re-Thinking the New Aesthetic

James Bridle’s initial collection of the New Aesthetic included satellite images, superimposed digital and physical maps, physical goods that look like pixel art, and real shoes made to look as if they were low-polygon 3D renders. His tumblr—the closest thing to an official record of New Aesthetics—offers even more curiosities. A screenshot of a Flickr search for broken Kindle e-readers. A list of tweets announcing the surprising discovery that the Titanic was a real ocean-liner and not just a film. A histogram of player moods while playing Xbox Live. A Wells Fargo ATM that laments having missed a customer’s birthday.

via: The Atlantic

Google Begins Testing of Augmented Reality Glasses

If you venture into a coffee shop in the coming months and see someone with a pair of futuristic glasses that look like a prop from “Star Trek,” don’t worry. It’s probably just a Google employee testing the company’s new augmented-reality glasses.

via: New York Times

Bruce Sterling on the New Aesthetic

Nobody doubts that there has been a blurring of our physical and digital worlds - but did you know that there is actually a term to describe this? Visionary Bruce Sterling refers to it as the New Aesthetic:

“One of the core themes of the New Aesthetic has been our collaboration with technology, whether that’s bots, digital cameras or satellites (and whether that collaboration is conscious or unconscious), and a useful visual shorthand for that collaboration has been glitchy and pixelated imagery, a way of seeing that seems to reveal a blurring between “the real” and “the digital”, the physical and the virtual, the human and the machine.”

What’s interesting is that it is, in many ways, a response to hipster-embraced “retro-ness” and the belief that the only authenticity can be found in the past.

via: The New Aesthetic Panel at SXSW

Steampunk Reading Glove

The TUNE Project (Tangible, Ubiquitous, Narrative Environment), makes use of the reading glove, which allows players to hear a narrative about an object. Part research project, game and story, this steampunk reading glove lets the user experience “psychometry,” or the psychic power of object reading. 

via: Ecouterre

In the new Spring 2012 issue of Speakers Academy, interviews and profiles of featured speakers are accompanied by “View with Layar” logos on the pages of the magazine. Scanning these pages displays bonus videos, giving readers a look at the speakers in action.

via: Layar

A Computer Screen That Touches Back

We all love our keyboards and the sensory interaction.  But the emergence of  touch screens have actually hindered typing.  From the touch pad to smart phone, keying in text against a flat “feelingless” screen has been a problem. Today, the touch screens can provide a whole new level of magic.  A screen that actually touches back!

via: John Nosta

PINWHEEL: CATERINA FAKE’S NEWEST VENTURE

Pinwheel is like Flickr for geotagged notes… a service that lets you collect and share notes based on locations. Pinwheel is a way to transmit and receive information about particular locations that isn’t tied to one action—like a checkin, or a game. 

via: Gizmodo

UNLOCK A MERCEDES WITH YOUR OWN CAR KEYS

German ad agency Lukas Lindemann Rosinski did a nice job with these digital outdoor ads for Mercedes-Benz that passersby could control with their remote car keys. The point was to show off the Viano’s roomy passenger cabin. So, every time someone clicked their car keys at the ads, the Viano’s side door opened to reveal what could fit inside. Examples included an entire Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit, hot girls, giant robots, a Power Ranger dance troupe, hot girls again, sumo wrestlers, and a sauna (full of hot girls).

via: Adweek

Smart appliances are part of a larger trend toward smart electronics, which took hold with phones and is now moving rapidly toward televisions and household appliances. “Smart” may have been the most commonly used adjective at the recent International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas — with smart TVs, cameras, vacuums, remote controls, to name a few, on abundant display. The idea is that consumers can control the devices, which can communicate wirelessly, with their smartphones, tablets or televisions. So the owner of a smart refrigerator could check what’s in the refrigerator on a smartphone, and in some instances, send photographs to be displayed on the refrigerator’s LCD screen.

via: New York Times

Nokia Does Augmented Reality: Nokia City Lens combines map and points-of-interest data with what is seen in the camera’s viewfinder to show what is nearby, and in which direction. The program is a labs project for now, but the company is planning a beta next month.

via: All Things D

Reveal, created by The NY Times Company Research & Development Lab, is a mirror platform that explores the roles information and media might play in our future routines. […] A smart mirror like Reveal displays your heath stats, the weather and news headlines while you’re brushing your teeth. The R&D team calls this daily connection an “information routine,” and is fueled in part by the growth of advanced health and fitness tools on the market, like UP by Jawbone. A killer feature in the Reveal is its “augmented reflection,” or the use of a semi-reflective glass surface that displays high-contrast graphics over real world objects. Dig deeper, and you’ll see that the whole experience is fully fleshed out.

via: The Next Web

Jewelry brand Swarovski Elements is launching its “Let It Sparkle” campaign on the busy streets of Rodeo Drive this holiday season. The unique campaign is a combination of in-store, out of home and mobile marketing that allows consumers to virtually bring Swarovski products to life. Mobile users take advantage of an augmented reality app by GoldRun to discover pictures of limited-edition products that were made in collaboration with brands such as Missoni, La Perla and Stuart Weitzman. Consumers can then share these photos with their friends, family and virtual strangers. 

via: PSFK

This is nothing short of brilliant. T-Mobile has recently held a brainstorming session with the UK’s National Farmers’ Union. Farmers are now going to brand their cows with QR codes… when cows go to auction they are now going to be sprayed with a QR code which links back to the animal’s provenance and vaccination history. The best bit is that this information can be read by anyone with a smartphone - compare that to the existing situation where farmers can tag their cattle with chips to identify them.

via: GoMo News

Philips just released a new iPad 2 app called Vital Signs Camera that uses the camera to measure your heart and breathing rate. It detects subtle beat-to-beat changes in the color of your face to measure your heart rate. 

via: Dr. Jay Parkinson, MD

You have to take your hats off to American clothing store JC Penney for creating one of the most practical and clever uses for QR codes in a long while. When you purchase a gift from any JC Penney store, you receive a ‘Santa tag’ which has a accompanying QR code. By scanning it, you can then record a personalised voice message for the person you’re giving the gift to. Once you’ve that done, just stick the QR code onto the present and send it off.

via: Simply Zesty

Created by Inglobe Technologies in collaboration withAscanio Malgarini for Optimares, an italian company that specializes in the manufacturing of aircraft interiors, “optimARes” is the first iPad2 application that allows to interact with virtual models of airplane seats directly in the real physical space using AR technology. 

via: AR Blog

Domino’s Pizza has found a novel way to engage iPad users and maybe sell a few more pizzas along the way. The pizza chain has created an app that lets you make a pizza onscreen and then order it in real life. Domino’s Pizza Hero is a game/app that simulates the experience of kneading dough, spreading sauce, sprinkling cheese, placing toppings and cutting slices all while a timer ticks away. The object is to make the pizza as quickly as possible and to closely mimic the experience of real Domino’s workers. 

via: Mashable

One of the biggest names in the augmented reality space is Layar. It’s been around for quite some time, but the newest addition is the rollout of Vision, a tool that lets advertisers and content owners easily integrate augmented reality ads into their publications. Better yet, it’s launching with a huge partner, the very popular Dutch women’s glossy magazine called Linda. 

via: The Next Web