My Magic+

Disney announced a new bracelet-based system for park-goers: My Magic+. Green, glowing bracelets equipped with RFID technology, will soon allow Disney World visitors to make payments, receive alerts and better navigate the massive park. It will also collect more data about the people wearing them — and undoubtedly raise questions about privacy and the ethics of data collection in the process.

via New York Times

Catalogue with digital extensions

The IKEA catalogue grows some digital limbs by using augmented reality.

Via Design Week.

Contributed by Jeremy Adirim.

ARART – Augmented Reality meets high art

The sleek application ARART uses augmented reality to amplify classic artwork.

via Design Boom

Jumboltron

People in LA recently gathered to create a giant, crowd-sourced Jumbotron with their iPads. Why? Why not?

Jumboltron reminds us of this fun project from MIT that used different kinds of devices to forge one big viewing screen: 

A Touch-based Weather Forecast

Touch this silver cube for a weather forecast. The Cryoscope uses a simple system with an Arduino controller to adjust heat or coolness levels to represent the temperature outside. Just enter your zip code in a webapp and feel tomorrow’s air temperature!

“Mapkins”

A clever use of Open Street Maps data to make custom fleece blankets – or “Mapkins” – of an area that means something to you.

Via Laughing Squid

Evernote Peek

Evernote’s Peek app is a great example of innovation based on functionality — in this case, the “smart case” cover of the iPad 2.

Nubot – A Video Chat Robot Doll

Nubot is a doll ready to host smartphone video chats via Skype.

The remote user can control the doll’s body gestures (wave, bow, turn) giving them more of a physical presence.

The folks at Nuuo that developed Nubot use it to have teleconferences between their offices.

We’ve seen a more mobile, albeit less cute, telepresence robot named Texai in the past.

Frisbee Rush – Mobile to Desktop/TV Game

Unit9 premiered a new gesture-based, multiplayer, mobile-to-desktop synced game called Frisbee Rush at a few weeks back and are now finishing the app to be released in the coming weeks. More details on vimeo.

Finding your way…

Two mobile apps for navigating the city in two very different ways:

Embark – maps plus some more hand-holding (i.e. alerts, underground access)

Via Laughing Squid

Serendipitor – maps plus simple instructions to follow along the way — for the more whimsical commuter