And as it turns out, Google’s Android operating system is much further along the path of being able to establish “context” than has previously been published. Specifically, during a project to get Android running on a laptop, it was noticed that that OS supports different product policies, which can be used to vary the way the OS behaves depending on the device that’s currently in use.

Presumably, these different policies for “phone” and “mid” (mobile internet device; e.g., a laptop) are currently only applicable during compile time, and couldn’t be employed to switch between different device formats in real-time. But, it shows that there are programmers out there that are starting to design OSes that are able to support multiple devices with a single code base - which would be a big step towards the sort of portable computer described at the opening of this thread.

The paneling used is called “Pacific Knotty Cedar” - it’s pretty thin and the knots aren’t entirely smooth, so I’m not sure that it’s intended for flooring, but probably would work just fine in a closet (assuming you don’t walk around in your closet a lot).

A jackalope mount would be pretty funny. Other suggestions have included parquet flooring, a throw rug, a corner electric fireplace, and a sheet of poly to drape over the top of the cube and turn it in to a sauna. So we’ll have to see, maybe somewhere down the line there will be other additions. :-)

(Hindsight: it would have been really funny if I had done all this to someone _else’s_ cube!)

You’ve almost got a hunting lodge theme going on. Got any game trophies to put on the wall? Since it’s a small lodge, you should have appropriately small trophies… like a few perch or a jackalope. Also, you could give your desktop a wood grain look with some contact paper.

Back to the main post though: as it turns out, while CNN might not be able to do much with the 360-degree image they’re able to capture, CISCO certainly is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfNC_x0VvE

…so I guess true holograms are quite a bit closer than originally thought! (Thanks to Todd for providing this link in a separate thread.)

I was simply impressed by their site A) staying up & responsive and B) having a relatively robust feature set. TechCrunch says that they got a 5x boost in traffic last night.

I can’t wait until live TV becomes interactive (or at least interactive on your side of the screen). It would be fun to drop power-ups on the field during a football game. A player running over the power-up flashes, turns into the hulk and starts throwing other players around. Or you could slap around actors in an advertisement. Use Tivo to record your mischief and share it with others on YouTube.

…from: http://finnegansfamily.org/

But there are workarounds for those (current) shortcomings. For instance, a while back it was argued that the Mac Mini had the necessary components to act as a dock for your iPod/iPhone. So, there you go: rather than putting your iPhone in a passive dock when you get home, you dock it to something like the Mini that provides you with the extra hardware needed to run your full-blown OS and applications, and to store your additional documents.

One could also design a “Mini” in the shape of a laptop. So, if you were on the go with your iPhone but wanted to be able to use a slightly larger screen, keyboard, and additional OS features, all you’d have to do is slide your iPhone into the side of a laptop-like device and you’re off to the races.

The biggest trick to going the “dock” route? - creating an interface between the device and the dock that allows real-time transfer of running threads from one processor and memory context to another. Now that sounds like a fun project! ;-)