Breakfast Links: Skateboarders v. Cops, MizPee & Virtual Hands
It’s a tale as old as time - Skaters and the Cops. Apparently June 21st was Go Skateboarding Day, which is what a few teens did in Hot Springs, Arkansas. A cop seems to have taken exception to their activities (which it seems to me that they often do) and started arresting and manhandling them all out of proportion to what the kids were doing. Unfortunately for the cop these kids were armed with a video camera (as well as camera phones) and caught almost the whole event for the YouTubes. The video’s pretty worth watching, I like the end when the two arrested kids, one cuffed and sitting on a chair the other face down on the sidewalk wish each other a happy Go Skateboarding Day. That’s what I’m talking about.
You know up until Web2.0 if you’re walking around NYC with Number2.0 your best bet was to find the nearest Starbucks or Barnes and Noble, unless you carried around a copy of Where to Go in NYC (which I can’t seem to find on the interwebs right now, but it exists…). Now there’s MizPee.com a mobile based system that tells you the nearest restrooms. It would be Web2.0 without both user ratings on the cleanliness of the place and user comments as well. I wonder if they’re going to add social networking to this bad boy! In beta now.
For long time readers of this wonderful blog it is well established that part of my future clearly involves the scene from Johnny Mnemonic where he does the whole VR gloves thing. Well it isn’t just Microsoft looking to make that happen, it’s the Japanese too! And they’re going with a much more direct route - building a tactile glove - you feel motion and contact in the glove and it knows how your hand moves for on-screen representation. In the immortal words of Mitch Taylor, “This is it!”
And just in case you didn’t see Johnny Mnemonic (gasp!) here’s the video of the future. It happens around the 30 second mark. 707 datagloves, indeed!
June 28th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Vindigo (remember before PDAs were merged into phones?) had a world cities restroom finder with ratings some time ago. Considering I haven’t powered on my Clie in at least 2 years, it must’ve been since a long while ago.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
[...] Another tale of a cop mishandling you skaters (see the other tale). Here we have the youtube showing this cop just losing it. Apparently being called [...]