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NYT Working On 'Magic Mirror' For Bathroom Surfing
MrSeb writes "If the New York Times Research & Development Lab has its wicked way, you will soon be able to stop taking your mobile computer of choice into the bathroom — and use a 'magic mirror' instead. On average we spend an hour in the bathroom every day, and the magic mirror — which is built from a 'data-bearing' mirror, Microsoft Kinect, and a healthy dollop of ingenuity — is designed to capitalize on that time by letting you surf the web and increase the New York Times' advertising revenue."
More traffic for chatroulette.com :)
I can surf the web AND still look at myself?!?!? Shit, that will sell *really* well in L.A.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow, they invented glossy screens! Not like we had these in laptops since forever.
Was it not just a few months ago that the New York Times was complaining about how they had to protect their revenue stream and start enforcing a pay wall? Where did they get the money for such a pointless project?
Palm trees and 8
How many of us have a mirror positioned to watch us use the toilet?
Is there some reason to think that gay men don't also spend 10~ minutes showering, 2~ minutes brushing their teeth, 5~ minutes shaving and 5~ minutes taking a dump? I didn't realize that sexual orientation determined how long those things take...
Palm trees and 8
...so he's always found women suspiciously effeminate.
Shake it more than three times and Clippy pops up. "Looks like you could use some help with that. Shall I find you some good porn?"
Have gnu, will travel.
I wonder if this will work like other games, where the kinect will by default opt in to taking random pictures of you and posting it to your Xboxlive profile.
That was precisely my thought. While my cumulative time spent in the bathroom may reach an hour per day, I would estimate that less than five minutes of that is spent "in front of" the mirror, and the time spent *looking* at the mirror is some fraction of even that.
And I would guess that those people who *do* spend a lot of time looking at the mirror already have something holding their attention--themselves.
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Why does this idea of putting computers in public restrooms keep surfacing? Perhaps we should flush twice.
Hell yes an hour. At least! What better way to take a break from work and not be docked lunch time or break time?
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I stayed in an upscale hotel in Europe once where the TVs were disguised as fancy mirrors (with frame and all). When the screen was off it was a perfectly usable mirror and you could only tell the difference if you looked carefully.
To me, this seems about as useful as those "internet on your refrigerator!" things that Bestbuy carries. Who wants to surf the web in the bathroom?
I read the internet for the articles.
You'll understand as you get older and your personal plumbing doesn't work like it used to.
Hell yes an hour. At least!
I'd expect no less from you, Stenchwarrior.
Simple. We've been assaulted with so much advertising in our lifetimes that we've become numb to it. It's white noise. The billions companies are spending to get our attention is going down the toilet (pun intended). What they're looking for now is a "captive" audience. Someplace where we can't ignore them or quickly get away from them. Where do we go everyday, multiple times a day, that we can't skip or go someplace else... the bathroom. They know it and they're trying to find a way in that won't be automatically rejected or cost so much that they can't get a return on their investment. Right now they have the static posters but, they want Flash ads... with sound... and preferably vibration (wait, maybe not a good idea)... you get the point.
The arms race for our attention continues. There's a reason that the younger generations have the attention span of a gnat.
Yea, yea... get off my lawn.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I got a delicious body (seriously, I'd wank to it every day if I was gay) and a couple of minutes at most goes to enjoying it in the mirror.
Do you have any idea which web site you're posting on?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
In the movies there exist this amazing invention, perfect AI. This perfect AI will give you your tasks of the day as you are shaving in an easy to digest manner that requires no user interaction with shaving foam covered fingers (for the ladies) or make up (for the men) (Yes I am from Amsterdam, how did you know).
In reality, what will be displayed is your gmail account and that ain't easy to navigate at the best of times let alone when you are hung over and can't handle any light at all let alone your own reflection.
Same with tablet, in the movies they just swipe and voila, what they want appears in large enough text you can read it over their shoulders. In reality? Finicky settings, wifi or 3g that isn't in range and touchscreens that seem designed for people with smaller fingers then I have.
It is the idea of the cue-cat again, that people are so organized that they can even be bothered to go through all this hassle even if they were motivated to do so. Like QR codes. What do they expect, I am going to stop my car, search for my phone, install an app, try to get a picture of the code, wait for it to look it up, wait for the page over 3g and .... I LOST INTEREST!
Every futuristic sci-fi movie tends to have a scene where the hero wakes up and has an intelligent house that makes the process go smooth, reads the news, shows the mail and orders a new carton of milk... in reality? The only tech in my house itself that people didn't have a hundred years ago is the light-switch and that is just because only rich people had them but cleaning staff would still have seen them in the houses they worked at.
Oh yes, I got a computer but they are not part of the house are they now? How smart is your house? Really?
How smart could you make it, with todays tech in a way that is actually helpfull? For instance, get a weather report? Detailed enough to be usefull but not annoying to hear everyday even if you got a day off?
The idea is that shaving and such are wasted moment, a rich director would have his secretary to fill him in, it is sci-fi to have a computer/robot do it. It looks great in every movie I have seen. In reality? Do you want to blue screen your mirror? Have to wait for an essential update before you can flush your toilet?
No? Me neither. My fridge is dumb, my washing machine is dumb, my lights are dumb. Maybe that makes me dumb but it works for me.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A stack of books next to the shitter is common, and a computer can serve the same function. The crapper is renowned as a good place to think.
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