Tag: Conference

Bill Gates unleashes horde of mosquitos into packed conference hall

gates-mosquitos.jpg

Screaming “Not only poor people should experience this!”, last night Bill Gates released a swarm of mosquitoes into the audience at TED – a technology conference in California. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Gates, whose foundation spends millions of dollars on combating malaria, was making a point that rich countries don’t pay the disease enough attention because it doesn’t really impact their citizenry. Still, hell of a PR stunt!

The Twittersphere reported the swarm as it was release, with eBay founder and Twitter CEO Pierre Omidyar providing the best commentary.

(via Switched)

More insanity: Canon doesn’t make vacuum cleaners | Google blacklists ENTIRE INTERNET

Duncan Geere Weirdness

CES 2008: LG announces plethora of LCD and Plasma screens, wheels out Mark Levinson

mark-levinson.jpgIt wasn’t all grim at LG however, admittedly. There was a bit of a ‘sleb cameo (for audiophiles, anyway), with Mark Levinson (pictured), founder of Mark Levinson Audio Systems, who specialise in ultra high-end digital audio processors, amps and sources.

Plus, as you’d expect with any consumer tech show, they announced a bunch of new LCD and Plasma TVs, with all 1080p flat panel screens being ISF-ready, and most being THX certified.

There’ll be four new product series and eight new models in terms of Plasmas alone, with six of the models walloping us with full 1080p viewing. Beautiful.

The PG 70 series will be this year’s flagship series, with full HD and free of wires. The PG 60 will apparently have a ‘vanishing edge’ design…

Katherine Hannaford CES 2008

CES 2008: LG conference's big announcement? MPH, Mobile TV

howard-l-lance.jpgIt’s true. We sat through half an hour of statistics and sales hype, all expecting the third gen Super Blu player or something as exciting (or even an indication on what direction they feel their multi-format players are going, after the possible death of HD DVD). But no. Perhaps they canned their big next fence sittin’ multi-player and had to fill the hour with drivel about mobile TV.

But us Brits have seen mobile TV on our handsets for a few years now, with network providers offering it for awhile, albeit…

Katherine Hannaford CES 2008

VWFE: Live-blogging 'the future is blurred: social networking meets virtual worlds'

holding-hands.jpgNow this is the panel we’ve all been waiting for! Featuring Meg Pickard from The Guardian, Corey Bridges the Co-founder of The Multiverse Network, Aleks Krotoski from The Guardian Games Blog, Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing, and Giff Constable from the software business unit at the Electric Sheep company.

First question out of the gate is whether social networking sites are any different to virtual worlds. Meg Pickard claims that it’s pretty much the same thing, “they’re exploring, they’re creating, they’re dominating or trying to succeed”, and above all, engaging with other users or friends.

Aleks Krotoski, who is also doing a PhD in virtual worlds, also agrees with Meg, but says the only real difference is that social networking sites generally connects people who know each other already offline, whereas…

Katherine Hannaford Virtual Reality