The Samsung Freestyle Projector

Samsung just made the TV disappear — from protocol.com by Janko Roettgers
Samsung’s Freestyle projector is a smart TV. And not a TV at all. And a smart speaker. And … a lamp?

Excerpt:

Samsung’s TV R&D team seemingly never runs out of ideas: After giving the world a TV the size of a wall, a TV that looked like a giant phone and a TV that doubles as art, at this year’s CES, the company debuted a TV that’s capable of turning anything and everything into a screen.

The new Samsung Freestyle is a portable projector capable of projecting video from 30 inches to 100 inches. It offers access to the very same UI and apps as any of the company’s other 2022 smart TVs, but that’s pretty much where the similarities to a traditional TV end.

 

This is a Screen — And It Could be the Biggest Product Launch at CES 2022 — from interestingengineering.com by Grant Currin
Samsung is letting users re-imagine what their spaces can be.

Excerpt:

The new hyperflexible, hyperportable, hypercustomizable, hyperpersonalizable projector is all about what it can be for the individual user. Unconstrained by cables or presets, the Freestyle is marketed as an anything-you-want-it-to-be machine. Samsung says it will ship in the next few months.

 

Samsung Electronics Launches The Freestyle, a Portable Screen for Entertainment Wherever You Are — from news.samsung.com

  • First-of-its-kind technology delivers optimal viewing and entertainment in a compact form factor
  • Features auto-level, auto-focus and auto-keystone capabilities for perfect picture every time

The Samsung Freestyle Projector

 

 

Nvidia expands its GeForce Now game streaming ecosystem — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

At CES, Nvidia today put a strong emphasis on its GeForce Now game streaming service, its competitor to the likes of Google’s Stadia (that’s still around, right?), Amazon’s Luna and Microsoft’s increasingly popular Xbox Cloud Gaming service. All of these use a different business model, with GeForce Now making it easy for players to bring games they bought elsewhere to the service, with Nvidia offering a restricted free tier and then charging a membership fee for access to its servers, starting…

Nvidia launches the $249 GeForce RTX 3050 — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

You can now add another set of Nvidia-based graphics cards to the graphics cards you probably won’t be able to buy anytime soon, as the company today launched the GeForce RTX 3050 for desktops. Starting at $249, the budget-friendly card — assuming Nvidia and its partners can produce enough to keep prices from escalating — will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory and promises to be able to run the latest games at over 60 frames in a 1440p resolution with ray-tracing enabled. Like its more powerful …

Nvidia expands its Omniverse — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

Omniverse is Nvidia’s platform for allowing creators, designers and engineers to collaboratively build virtual worlds. Until now, Omniverse and the various Nvidia tools that support it were in beta, but at CES today, the company took off the beta label and made Omniverse generally available to creators. The company says Omniverse has already been downloaded by almost 100,000 creators and with today’s update, it is bringing a number of new features to the platform, too.

Nvidia embraces the metaverse with new software, marketplace deals — from reuters.com by Stephen Nellis

Excerpt:

Jan 3 (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) on Tuesday said that it would give away software for free to artists and other creators building virtual worlds for the metaverse and that it has made technology deals with several marketplaces where artists sell the three-dimensional content they create.

 

From DSC:
Below are some items that offer potential future scenarios, predictions, trends, forecasts. and upcoming lawsuits for 2022. These resources provide some interesting fodder for reflection.


10 Forecasts For The Near Future Of Tech & Life As We Know It — from digest.scottbelsky.com by Scott Belsky

The next generation of top talent will have “Polygamous Careers,” transforming the corporate world as we know it. The traditional job market, tax forms, college, and healthcare are all geared for an old world that fails to engage our modern brains…

The rise of immersive experiences will mainstream 3D creation. All this metaverse hype will fall completely flat unless such experiences are filled with rich, engaging, 3D, interactive, and personalized content. 3D content creation will become 100x more accessible.

Here’s our cheat sheet for 2022’s tech lawsuits — from protocol.com by Ben Brody
Your guide to a bunch of the Google antitrust cases, where the FTC is with Facebook, what could happen next with Sec. 230 and more.

How fifth graders see the world in 20 years — from hechingerreport.org by Lillian Mongeau, Christina Samuels, Kathryn Palmer, and Chelsea Sheasley
Flying cars, houses on Mars — and hopefully no more Covid or racism

7 higher education trends to watch in 2022 — from highereddive.com by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Politics bleeding into college operations, new regulatory action, continued expansion of online ed and more are stories we’ll be following in 2022.

Can ed tech providers build on their momentum?
The last two years have been a massive boon to MOOC platforms. The number of people registered on Coursera, one of the most well-known MOOC providers, swelled to around 92 million in September, up from 77 million in 2020 and 46 million the prior year. Likewise, demand for competitor Udemy surged during the pandemic.

6 Essential educational trends to look out for in 2022 — from blog.neolms.com by Andreea Mihaly

5 gaming trends to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com

What comes next for enterprise tech in 2022 — from protocol.com

After a period of great disruption and rapid modernization, 2022 will be a year during which enterprise companies take a breath and a closer look at the software and cloud services they snapped up like holiday season COVID-19 tests over the last two years. The products and trends that survive that scrutiny will set the priorities for the rest of the decade.

The tech IPOs to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com by Biz Carson and Michelle Ma
Some have filed. Some have hired the right people. And some are just on investors’ wishlists.

The bigger-picture view of the industry is that gaming is on the precipice of major shake-ups to its core business and distribution models, as well as shifts many years in the making around game monetization and developer work culture.

Bitcoin could reach $100,000—and other predictions for 2022 — from fortune.com by Joanna Ossinger

“The race is on to be the app store for crypto,” said Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, in an email. “A major lesson of Web 2.0 was that consumers love platforms, and I don’t think that is going to change for Web 3.0. Currently there is no crypto platform that owns the customer relationship and aggregates suppliers. I predict that in 2022, many companies will race to build this platform…”

AWS will buy a SaaS company, and other 2022 enterprise predictions — from techcrunch.com by Ron Miller

______________

Addendum on 1/7/22:

 

From DSC:
As with many emerging technologies, there appear to be some significant pros and cons re: the use of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)

The question I wonder about is: How can the legal realm help address the massive impacts of the exponential pace of technological change in our society these days? For examples:

Technicians, network engineers, data center specialists, computer scientists, and others also need to be asking themselves how they can help out in these areas as well.

Emphasis below is mine.


NFTs Are Hot. So Is Their Effect on the Earth’s Climate — from wired.com by Gregory Barber
The sale of a piece of crypto art consumed as much energy as the studio uses in two years. Now the artist is campaigning to reduce the medium’s carbon emissions.

Excerpt:

The works were placed for auction on a website called Nifty Gateway, where they sold out in 10 seconds for thousands of dollars. The sale also consumed 8.7 megawatt-hours of energy, as he later learned from a website called Cryptoart.WTF.

NFTs And Their Role In The “Metaverse” — from 101blockchains.com by Georgia Weston

Many people would perceive NFTs as mere images of digital artworks or collectibles which they can sell for massive prices. However, the frenzy surrounding digital art in present times has pointed out many new possibilities with NFTs. For example, the NFT metaverse connection undoubtedly presents a promising use case for NFTs. The road for the future of NFTs brings many new opportunities for investors, enterprises, and hobbyists, which can shape up NFT usage and adoption in the long term. 

NFTs or non-fungible tokens are a new class of digital assets, which are unique, indivisible, and immutable. They help in representing the ownership of digital and physical assets on the blockchain. Starting from digital artwork to the gaming industry, NFTs are making a huge impact everywhere.

The decentralized nature of the blockchain offers the prospects for unlimited business opportunities and social interaction. Metaverse offers extremely versatile, scalable, and interoperable digital environments. Most important of all, the metaverse blends innovative technologies with models of interaction between participants from individual and enterprise perspectives. 

From DSC:
How might the developments occurring with NFTs and the Metaverse impact a next-gen learning platform?

—–

Artist shuts down because people keep their work to make NFTs — from futurism.com by Victor Tangermann
NFT theft is a huge problem

Someone is selling NFTs of Olive Garden locations that they do not own — from futurism.com by
And you can mint a breadstick NFT — for free, of course

 

hoopla digital streaming service -- borrow books, music, movies, and more. Very cool service.

hoopla digital is a digital streaming service for library users to access eBooks, eAudiobooks, music, movies, and TV shows using portable devices like smartphones and tablets.

From DSC:
I downloaded this app yesterday and borrowed a classical Christmas album on the spot. Our local library gives us 10 items per month:

  • Books are available for 21 days
  • Videos are available for 72 hours
  • Music titles are available for 7 days

NOTE: hoopla is available on desktops, phones, tablets, Alexa devices, Rokus, Apple TVs, Fire TVs, and Android TVs.

 

See the Appvent calendar from ICT Evangelist

Excerpt from this posting:

Welcome to day 21 of the 2021 Appvent Calendar. It’s been so much fun sharing all of these amazing tools each day across the month so far. With Google featuring twice already on the calendar, it’s great to share again the awe and wonder of human history in the arts and within our cultures with the sharing of this amazing free app. Thanks to Gustavo Calderón De Anda for suggesting it!

Also see:

  • 14 measurement apps for teaching math & science — from teachthought and Glenda Stewart-Smith
    Glenda Stewart-Smith of Surrey School District #36 in Canada, along with TeachThought staff, helped put together this collection of iPhone and iPad apps that offer all of these measuring abilities and more.
 

Web 3.0 vs Metaverse: What’s the difference? — from homo-digitalis.net by Fabian Schmidt

Excerpt:

So what is Web 3.0?

On Twitter, a user asked if someone could explain the term in baby talk. I thought one answer was good:

    • Web 1.0 = Read
    • Web 2.0 = Read/Write
    • Web 3.0 = Read/Write/Own

This is a sufficient simplification to gain an initial understanding. Yet a bit more information is still important.

Let’s get one thing straight right away. As with all things in the making, there is not yet a clear-cut definition of Web 3.0. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the classic web, thinks of the semantic web as the next big step.

Since 2020/2021, there is another idea of Web3, and it is inspired by a new form of technology: Blockchains. At its core is a new wave of decentralization.

Besides decentralization, other key topics related to Web 3.0 include Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Non-fungible-tokens (NFT), and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

The metaverse is a digital world that is meant to feel as real as possible and can represent all concerns of human existence. From leisure to work.

Fabian Schmidt, Homo Digitalis, 2021


Bill Gates: Most Work Meetings Will Happen In The Metaverse In 3 Years — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt:

“Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids—which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although I know that probably dates me—to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” said Gates in the post. “Both Facebook and Microsoft recently unveiled their visions for this, which gave most people their first view of what it will look like”.


Adidas to enter the metaverse with first NFT products — from dezeen.com by Rima Sabina Aouf

Excerpt:

Adidas has announced its next collection will be a mix of digital and physical items, and will be sold as NFTs produced with collaborators such as Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Titled Into the Metaverse, the collection will comprise virtual wearables that buyers can use in online platforms, but also the physical clothing to match.

It is Adidas’ first collection of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens – essentially, digital collectibles with proven authenticity. NFTs act as a blockchain-based certificate of ownership, allowing pieces to be authenticated, bought and collected.


How Coinbase thinks about the Metaverse — from blog.coinbase.com by Brian Armstrong & Alex Reeve

Excerpt:

Primitive Metaverse platforms are selling virtual land for millions of dollars. Billions more are being invested in Metaverse startups. And Mark Zuckerberg recently renamed his entire company to reflect a focus on building the Metaverse.

Recently, our team put together an internal presentation about the Metaverse, who’s working on it, and how crypto will help make it real. I thought the presentation was well done, so I’m sharing most of the slides here.

Like Matt[hew Ball], we define the Metaverse as:

The future of the internet: A massively-scaled, persistent, interactive, and interoperable real-time platform comprised of interconnected virtual worlds where people can socialize, work, transact, play, and create.

The Metaverse is the distant evolution of Web3. In its most complete form, it will be a series of decentralized, interconnected virtual worlds with a fully functioning economy where people can do just about anything they can do in the physical world.

Who is building the Metaverse today?

 
 

VRJAM -- the metaverse platform for music

The VRJAM metaverse platform is coming to transform the world of live entertainment 

VRJAM, the UK’s leading creator of live music experiences in virtual reality, today teased the launch of the VRJAM platform, a revolutionary new metaverse events platform and NFT creation solution. 

To bring the VRJAM metaverse platform to life, VRJAM has partnered with market leading NFT software developer Enjin.io to launch a rich virtual reality world that offers a host of new solutions for artists to render and monetize their music and live shows in amazing new ways using NFT’s, blockchain and immersive technology.  

The VRJAM platform promises to open up completely new ways for both fans and artist to experience live music events and represents the next step in the evolution of live music. 

Ownership of this virtual world will be shared by a guild of globally recognised artists and record labels who will cooperate to create value and define new possibilities for music inside the metaverse. 

VRJAM’s metaverse platform offers solutions for true live performance using technology that is years ahead of other similar platforms. It provides unsurpassed user experience and offers fans, artists and labels an array of unique features:

VRJAM's metaverse -- a vivid virtual world built for music

At the heart of the VRJAM metaverse platform is a blockchain based trading and finance system, VRJAM Coin. This revolutionary new cryptocurrency will create ways for both artists and fans to earn money inside the metaverse and promises to create entirely new business models for artists, venues and labels at a time when their traditional ways of making money have been turned upside down by the Covid 19 pandemic. 

The VRJAM cryptocurrency is backed by investment from 5 of the world’s leading blockchain specialist investment and venture capital firms, demonstrating the exciting potential of VRJAM’s tech.

The VRJAM platform is scheduled to go live in early 2022, follow on social media to stay up to date.


From DSC:
Hmmmmm….might this type of thing spill over into the worlds of teaching and learning? More direct-to-consumer (learner) types of offerings? Will this open up the doors for new methods of earning a living or for  those interested in building a teaching & learning-based brand?

Alternatively, will this impact what actors, actresses, and comedians will be able to do?


Addendum on 12/2/21:


 

What Team-Building Games Can Be Used For Remote Teaching And Online Learning?

50 digital team-building games (for students of all ages)

Excerpt:

At TeachThought, we believe that learning is inherently social, and we see a virtual or online learning structure as an opportunity to stretch ourselves and try new strategies. We’ve curated 50 of the most fun, engaging, and easy-to-implement digital team-building games for students of all ages, arranged by category.

 

 

Make Room for Creativity in Learning from Early Design Stage — from learningsolutionsmag.com by Bill Brandon

Excerpt:

Change the paradigm: Invite learners to create
Learning leaders can change this by encouraging their teams to add creative activities for the learners to participate in. Here are some examples of what participants in a learning program can create:

  • Stories from their own workplace or from the work they aspire to do
  • Presentations with diagrams showing new processes that can be put in place based on what was learned
  • Vision boards made from collages showing their hopes for an improved environment
  • Zoom improvs portraying interpersonal relationships in a playful way
  • Answers to a question from the facilitator in a chatroom
 
 
 

50 Sites & Apps for K-12 Education Games — from techlearning.com by Diana Restifo and David Kapuler
Game-based learning is a great way to integrate technology into the classroom while engaging kids with real learning.

Excerpt:

Game-based learning turns potentially tedious study time into an adventurous knowledge quest, complete with catchy soundtracks and digital rewards. It helps keep kids engaged with the subject matter and motivated to pursue greater expertise. Best of all, web- or app-based gameplay integrates easily into both online and in-person classes.

With the demise of Flash at the end of 2020, many favorite educational game sites went under. That’s why we decided to update our popular list below to include the latest and best sites and apps for K-12 education games. Many are free (or offer free basic accounts) and some provide progress tracking and analysis tools for teachers. All will help kids enjoy learning.

Also relevant/see the following resource and excerpt from Goldie Blumenstyk’s The Edge (from the Chronicle of Higher Education)

Creative Acts for Curious People: How to Think, Create, and Lead in Unconventional Ways — by Sarah Stein Greenberg

Excerpt:

Greenberg also makes a compelling case for the “playful and joyous” approaches the d.school has been championing, like the secret handshake or building several prototypes of an ideal chair using tools like cardboard, pipe cleaners, and chewing gum and toothpicks. After so many months of loss and social deprivation, she told me last week, “those elements are more important than ever.”

 

3 Tips for Making Passion-Based Learning Work Successfully — from thejournal.com by Dennis Pierce

Excerpt:

Passion-based learning, a form of self-directed learning in which students pursue projects of interest to them, is becoming more popular in schools — and for good reason: Educators who have set aside time for passion-based learning have discovered that students become highly engaged and motivated when learning about topics that intrigue them, while taking their learning much deeper than they would in a traditional lesson.

Passion-based learning initiatives include Genius Hour and 20time, both inspired by Google’s program that lets employees spend 20% of their time on projects of their choosing to spark innovation.

Giving all students the option to explore their interests can be challenging on a large scale. To overcome this hurdle and make the process easier for teachers, Sonora Elementary uses a new peer-to-peer learning platform called Tract, which is a collection of video content organized into self-directed learning paths.

tract.app allows students to be creative and practice their storytelling and multimedia skills

From DSC:
I love the type of tool/app like Tract — as students can work on a variety of skills:

  • multimedia development
  • music
  • acting
  • writing/composing
  • digital storytelling
  • …and more

Such projects/tools can unleash a great deal of creativity, engagement, and positive energy. Learning becomes more relevant, enjoyable, and interesting when we can provide more choice and control to our students.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian