SixthSense-- how cool is this?

Photo credit: MIT; CNET news

A few weeks ago a good friend sent me this link about an innovative gesture-driven computer platform called SixthSense. I was (and still am) quite intrigued by the many prospects this new system offers in the field of information management-- if adopted as mainstream. However, after speaking to a few "regular" people (as opposed to super tech nerds), I've found that most are concerened with how this new platform will impact the privacy debate-- if it goes mainstream. I tried to explain to them that they wouldn't HAVE to check their e-mails on a blank wall in the airport OR check their bank account balance on a crowded subway platform if they didn't feel comfortable. Furthermore, I explained that this system seems to to be one build upon the already existing system of the internet. Thus, most privacy issues that may arise would be pre-existing problems, and not new ones created by SixthSense.

O.k., enough with the boring stuff already! Do you remember Tom Cruise in Monority Report? Yes, that's exactly what I thought when I first saw heard about sixthsense-- the computer Tom Cruise was using. Take a peek and tell me what you think:


Video

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Swurl

Swurl was an aggrigator of all one's web content, a life stream if will, of all one's activity on the interweb. Then one day it was no more. Just like that. Gone.

Certain blogs have made mention of some sort of "goodby note" that was left by the creators of swurl.com that read:

"We built Swurl as two guys doing something we love in our spare time. Unfortunately, due to the pressures of our day jobs and other distractions, we can no longer support or maintain the service at the level that we think our users deserve."

I for one never saw that note since (as you might have noticed) swurl.com now takes you to some ebay page, so I cannot verify this. Good news is, since swurl was an aggregator, no user content was lost. However, the fact that swurl just shut its doors and dissappeard raises an intersting question and and sounds a distinct alarm: in this world where everything is quickly going "paperless", and massive amounts of information are being digitalized and stored on the net (in some cases ONLY on the net), what safeguards have been built to make sure that information published online don't just disappear when the platform it was published on does?

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