Remembering Ed Roberts

Ed Roberts passed away today:

Bill Gates – What I’m Thinking – Remembering Ed Roberts – The Gates Notes.

Introducing Gravity

Signed up for Gravity yesterday; had heard about this on TechCrunch a while back but they were in closed beta. Well, they just opened up and it’s great.

Gravity might draw some initial comparisons to Twitter, but it really doesn’t go for the same space.  Gravity is more about conversations, and creating and discovering great threads.  Groups of conversations revolve around “Worlds”, and you subscribe to people, worlds, or conversations by “Orbiting” them.  I like the analogy, and the site is well executed.

From a basic angle, it looks like the folks at Gravity took a look at microblogging, blogging, message boards, Google groups, and took what was best about all of them and created something new.  But this is one of those cases where the whole might be greater than the parts; there’s something really compelling about the site that makes it way more attractive than Google Groups, for example.

They do have an API, though I have not had a chance to dig into it yet.  Off the top I don’t see any messaging features besides email notifications on posts, orbits, etc., though I have a feeling those would be integrated at some point.

From a couple different posts I read it seems like each user is allowed to create one world, but unlimited conversations and comments.

Check out their introduction video – it’s to the point and does a great job explaining the basic premise. Thinking of the proposition they are offering, again I’m reminded that all these different elements have been done before. But sometimes it’s really how they are put together that creates a great site.

Microsoft Tablet: Courier

Watching this demo, some of the actions remind me of Surface (funny spoof here).

Multi-touch has been around for a while, though Apple did receive a patent recently. I am no expert on IP but it’s hard to think of things as non-intuitive when they have been around in movies and demos for years.  I wonder how Microsoft will fare with the multi-touch features in this demo in light of Apple’s suit against HTC.

Project Natal

Kids are home sick so I’ve had some time to catch up on some browsing. Project Natal seems pretty awesome.  I’ve seen some press releases here and there but took some time to look through their YouTube channel.

Eye-tracking reading companion

Another cool tech development. Must see: