Author Archive
Eye-control headphones clearly the best invention of Mobile World Congress
Leave it to the Japanese. I’ve speculated before about what kind of creative sensors you could load in to a mobile device. How about headphones that pick up the tiny electrical impulses emitted by your facial muscles when you move your eyes?
Here is a live demo of a Docomo volunteer controlling a cell phone music [...]
Why and how to ditch your slow-ass hard drive for an SSD
The setup:
Putting it to the test:
The Results:
SSD are the single best upgrade you can give your computer. This one a Runcore device is even compatible with older 1.8″ PATA drive systems found in common ultra portables like my Dell D430 or the Macbook Air. Remember when Apple was trying to sell SSD upgrades for $900? [...]
Why it’s Google that needs a Twitter too, more than twitterers need some new g-twitteroo
So what’s the deal with this new Google buzz thing.
Google’s core premise is the googlerank, that uncanny linking metric that derives all its notions of web page authority from what other pages and links of authority link to such pages. But, these days, with 90% at best of pages and links on the world [...]
Forget the SuperBowl, the America’s Cup is on
Tonight, right now is the eve of the 33rd America’s Cup. Now two years late, this race is a culmination of 2 years of legal battles between Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli over the rules, venue, boats and every other aspect you can imagine. What it’s resulted in however is something spectacular for sailing and [...]
Got your ticket yet for PowerPoint Karaoke? [updated]
This Friday, my good friend Jay Goldman and I are organizing Toronto’s first PowerPoint Karaoke event. It’s going to be awesome. From the official description:
The Stage is Yours, the Slides Aren’t
PowerPoint Karaoke brings presentations from the conference room to the karaoke stage in an entertaining and competitive event. In PowerPoint Karaoke, contestants deliver PowerPoint [...]
In Which Tom attempts to bond two DSL lines into single home internet pipe of great power like Voltron
It really only did take about nine minutes to actually set up. Two DSL lines, one internet connection. Not counting a few later hours of mild swearing and voodoo rituals to get it to work right on all the computers in the house. And not counting the few days it took for the Bell tech [...]
Alternative energy thought of the day
Deep thought of the day: Say you were feeling green. Or lets say you’re just stuck with an unwieldy hydro bill every year and having exhausted any easy options for saving energy, you’re looking for other ways to offset what you draw from the grid. Why go to the trouble of putting solar panels [...]
The new economics of music publishing
My good friend Graeme recently started a new band with a bunch of his more musically talented friends called the Nobodies. Caught them live last night and they’re pretty awesome. The nobodies just had their first CD professionally produced and mixed.
The great thing, Graeme tells me, about starting a band with seven people [...]
Things you can learn from Google on how to redesign your industry for the web
Have you ever heard Google’s [VP of Product Design] Marissa Mayer talk about product design? Great stuff. From a recent interview with Michael Arrington at this year’s Le Web. Pay attention to this question (about 12min in) about google news and redesigning journalism.
If we invented news today as a delivery channel for journalism, through the [...]
Tom’s End of 2009 indie music mix
Just under the wire for 2009, I bring you my last of my 2009 music mixes. As always, this is a sort of autobiographical best-of mix featuring the songs that made the biggest rotation in my itunes since the last 6 months or so when I last published a mix. Some great tunes on here. [...]
Fax machines, and PDFs, kicking off the deadmedia watch for 2010
The fax machine was obsolete 15 years ago. When someone says “fax it to me,” I always feel like I’m being punk’d. A fax machine is nothing more than a printer, scanner and an obsolete analog mode that work together to waste time, money, paper and electricity. Documents that are faxed usually start out in [...]
It’s back! the 2009 Indie-punk-ass Christmas Mix
Long time readers will know what time of year it is. It’s indie-punk-ass music mix time of the year on thomaspurves.com!
Here you go kids, this year’s 2009 compilation. Enjoy =)
01
Stars
Fairytale Of New York
02
Barenaked Ladies
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
03
Sufjan Stevens
Get Behind Me, Santa!
04
Ramones
Merry [...]
Come discuss AR with me @ York Mobile Media Lab
Date: Monday Dec 7, 2009
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm
Where: Mobile Media Lab, York University
Technology Enhanced Learning Building
88 the Pond Road, Room Tel 2001
Link: Thomas Purves talk at Mobile Media Lab
Who knew that since I gave my first Augmented Reality talk back in April of this year that AR would become such a trending topic amongst marketers, geeks [...]
Twelve reasons to respect Windows7 or not
Let us not underestimate the monumental importance of a Microsoft Windows release.
We doyen of the internet are so often inclined to scoff, so blissfully ensconced we sometimes are in this perfect brushed metal and candy-coated RDF of a certain cult-ish maker of glowing fruit-themed technology. Macs are the opiate of the geekerati. The rest [...]
How to stream netflix in Canada
CRTC, want to fix something? fix this.
ps cablecos, broadcasters, crtc – a pox on all your houses
UPDATES: Speakerlist and New Venue for Lift Presentations @ Toronto 2009
NEW VENUE: The Canadian Corps Association Hall
201 Niagara Street, Toronto, ON [pics]
Got a couple of big update announcements for you regarding Lift@Home Toronto happening on Nov 17th. The first being that we have finalized our speakers list. We have an awesome roster future-minded designers who have bravely stepped up to impress you with [...]
What would the sport of racecar racing be like if the race cars were robots?
I was wondering today what it would be like for motorsports if you took the drives out of racecars. And made them remotely piloted or autonomous. We are on the cusp of this idea being technically possible. I bet those cars could go around the track even quicker if they didn’t have to haul around [...]
Announcing Lift@home Toronto and DemoCamp2019 [Location Updated]
ATTENTION NEW VENUE: Canadian Corps Association Hall 201 Niagara Street Toronto
Introducing Lift@Home Toronto and DemoCamp 2019 [ticket link]
LIFT Conference is an international tech conference based out of Geneva, with events in Switzerland, France and Korea. For the first time this year, Toronto has been invited to participate as part of the Lift@Home. Lift is not [...]
Thomas Purves
is a technology designer, futurist and sometimes entrepreneur living in the great city of Toronto. Thomas not currently available for hire (though you are always welcome to try).
