SXSW 2015: Five Standout Moments in Technology
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AeroMobil(AUSTIN, Texas) –After five days of fun, the interactive portion of South by Southwest has come to an end.
As the barbecue and beer bender winds down for techies at SXSW, here’s a look back at five standout moments from the interactive portion of this year’s festival in Austin, Texas:
Google’s Biggest Mistake with Glass
Astro Teller, the scientist who has the real-life title of “Captain of Moonshots” at the secretive Google X laboratory, was candid in a keynote address on Tuesday about what went wrong with Google Glass.
“We allowed and sometimes even encouraged too much attention for the program,” Teller said. “What we wanted was to say to the world this is an early prototype.”
Launching the Google Glass Explorer program to get the devices out into the real world for immediate feedback was an important first step for Teller’s team.
“We learned a lot on the technology front,” he said. “Many things like the battery were big obstacles. [Also] to understand how to talk about these things in the real world and figure out how new social norms could be built.”
Google ended its Explorer program earlier this year and is back at it working on a second prototype.
Flying Car
Flying cars could one day be a reality. AeroMobil showed off its prototype, which the company hopes will be hitting the road and the skies as early as 2017.
The vehicle — which looks a lot like something the Jetsons would have — tops off at 99 mph on the road and around 124 mph in the sky, according to the AeroMobil website.
Not surprisingly, the vehicle won’t come cheap. While an exact price hasn’t been set, the company said buyers can expect to pay somewhere in the six figures for the first edition.
Ex Machina
Ex Machina was the film everyone was talking about at SXSW, thanks in part to a brilliant stunt involving Tinder.
Alicia Vikander, an actress who plays a beautiful robot in the film, was turned into a Tinder bot at the start of the festival where plenty of unsuspecting men swiped right on the actress.
After having a conversation with the bot, they were directed to her Instagram where the only two posts are advertisements for the film.
The stunt drew plenty of attention to the film, which stars Oscar Isaac and opens on April 10.
Meerkat
Two weeks after its launch, the live video streaming app took SXSW by storm as festival attendees used it to broadcast their experiences from Austin live to their Twitter followers.
What makes Meerkat so attractive is the easy way users can leverage their existing social networks with just a smartphone.
After downloading the app and logging in via Twitter, users can schedule a live stream or begin one with the push of a button. A tweet is then sent out from the user’s account, inviting people to click the link to watch the live stream.
When the person is done broadcasting, the users can save their stream or choose for it to disappear — offering the same ephemeral content that has turned Snapchat into a success.
Your Brain on Barbecue
It wouldn’t be SXSW without some awesome Texas barbecue. GE paired delicious food with science at their Barbecue Research Center, showing diners how their brains react to barbecue, coleslaw, banana pudding and other dishes.
Diners strapped on brain wave reading head bands while screens next to their picnic tables showed the variance in their brain waves.
The hypothesis is that the more the composite brain waves zig-zag on the screen, the more likely it is the person was tasting the variance in their food.
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