The entries are in for the Personal Cloud Contest, the judges have considered them carefully, and the winner of the 2013 SXSW Gold Badge is… Carlos Ovalle! Read on for all the entries.
His entry:
Given what I’m working on with my dissertation, here’s how I’d use the cloud.
Use Project Gutenberg, Amazon, Google Books and other service providers to find digitized material in the public domain, and use the cloud to store the books and metadata.
My current project (which I’m already working on): Find a process/algorithm to determine if already-digitized but restricted books *should be* in the public domain, since the aforementioned groups are by necessity conservative with their determinations.
My use: Make the books that should be in the public domain but are currently unavailable freely available.
– Carlos Ovalle
And the other entries, in no particular order:
My idea is to be at an event with a wireless HD video camera that is linked to a live streaming encoder. That encoder is in-turn streaming the live feed up to Akamai or some live streaming CDN. The program is then streamed back down to mobile devices that people in the audience (or half way around the world for that matter) naturally will have with them, and can tune into. This could sort of take the place of, or augment the video jumbotron, whereby people could see the closeup of a performer or speaker, but right in the palm of their hand. It is really a weird feeling to see a live event on a personal device while you are right there. All can be archived for later viewing, as well. Could/ would potentially create a “swarm” effect around the wireless mobile camera if I-Mag-ed and live-streamed simultaneously at a rave or like type of event (dancers/DJs/performers/etc).
– Dave Newman
Near real time location tracking on your phone that is aggregated into a heat map. You could then share this heat map across a social graph like Facebook friends, co-workers, family etc. Great for planning get together, planning parties, and just running into people. Could also be used to recommend local businesses in primary areas.
– Joseph Filip
Innovative that’s for you to say, but we have three kids and two adults super active and on the go, through idevices and laptops we have our children load/scan homework, get emailed assignments from teachers, textbooks as possible. Then as we move from one “soccer mom” activity to another the kids can always have work available to them, be it project, worksheet, or paper to write. The results can be printed or emailed to destination of choice and always have backup nor be forgotten at home or left in car- catastrophic data loss is less common than dogs eating homework! 😉
– Jonathan Spear
I know many sole-proprietor photographers. I have often seen posters lamenting the theft of the only copy of someone’s wedding photos (normally on CF cards or hard disks). Digital post-processing of may multi-GB raw images can take time.
My idea is a cloud-based digital photographic studio that uploaded the raw-uncompressed digital pictures through a 4G connection and then provided in-the-cloud manipulation tools to generate thumbnails, apply color correction, metadata, etc. to them in parallel. This would let photographers avoid the dreaded lots-only-copy and have some of the drudge-work done while they travel between locations (or sleep.)
– Richard Letts
Having a cheat sheet for peers and acquitances that would quickly load relevant personal information. Such as their birthday, family members name (spouse and kids), current occupation and any know volunteer/social affiliations in a condensed format.
All this information is avaliable on social networks such as /twitter/linked in the goal would just be to have it streamed to one place instead of having to search multiple screen. Ideally this cheat would help you if you bumped into them or were going to see them later at a party. That way the conversation is more relevant instead of playing catchup.
Another side allure would be for this information to rotate, maybe feed 5 or so individuals to you daily so you could get a quick update on folks you may have fallen out of touch with and attempt to reconnect.
Turn your life into a game.
By tracking movement with your phone you can beat objectives and deadest monsters using the phone. Possibly even using the phones movement sensor as a sword.
Not sure if utilizing AR glasses as part of my idea is cheating or not, but since this is a forward-looking contest (and I can enter more than once), I thought I’d give it a shot…
I, for one, am great at remembering faces, but terrible at remembering names. Evernote Labs released an interesting “Evernote Hello” app that takes a stab at helping you remember folks, but it requires you handing over your phone and letting your acquaintance take a picture of themselves. I would prefer something more seamless.
I’m envisioning a system that utilizes facial recognition to detect faces in my field of vision (perhaps only when I’m speaking) and then checks the faces against a database of faces compiled from photos/avatars of my friends on various social networks – a database that would be sourced from and stored in the cloud, naturally. The system could then overlay the person’s name and any relevant facts I’ve chosen to highlight about them, preventing those awkward, “How ya been, guy?” moments, and making me out to be a much more socially apt person that I actually am. And that’s what technology should be doing for me anyway, right?
Thanks, everyone, for your great ideas, and thanks to our judges, Jon Lebkowsky and Matt Sanders for their careful consideration.