PUSH your imagination to the limit

Last night I came back from PUSHN900 event in London. Once I've received an invitation few days ago, frankly I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I went there with pretty much clear mind about this. However, what I've seen there was absolutely amazing and I was stunned by the ideas that people in teams from around the world have put up together.


Naked neighbour

Imagine a kite and a photo camera attached to the rope underneath that kite, so you can take aerial photos. Now imagine that photo camera is actually Nokia N900 with camera lens opened, facing-down and all of that is enclosed in a sturdy, metallic, battery-powered case which can spin around horizontally and vertically.

So the idea is that you fly the kite, with N900 underneath acting as a camera so you can take cool aerial pictures of next door neighbour sunbathing naked in the garden. Sounds tempting, but how do you control all of that?

This is where quite cool PUSHN900 idea from one of the teams comes into play. N900 on the kite is controlled via... another N900 on the ground, so you can actually see the live aerial view from N900-air remotely on N900-ground! Moreover, you can tilt N900-ground forwards/backwards and right/left in hands so these movements are reflected up there and N900-air spins around and you could take another shoot without even moving the kite itself. Pretty exciting, actually!

Wearable sat-nav

Say you have to get somewhere but you don't know where exactly that is and how to get there plus your map reading capabilities are far from perfect. Fear not, another PUSHN900 team has a solution just for that.

All you have to do is to get a geotagged picture of the place (ie. from a friend) where you're trying to get to and then wear the "magic" belt. Belt is a belt, however what is "magic" about it is that it's armed with electronic compass, bluetooth module and whole set of little vibrators around it.

So the idea is that application on N900 reads GPS coordinates from geotagged photo and sends it via bluetooth to the magic belt. Belt then uses current readings from N900's GPS module and electronic compass, and triggers vibration in the belt accordingly to the direction which owner should take. Say you start feeling pleasure from belt on the right side of your body, so that means you have to turn right. Belt vibrates on the left, turn left - and so on. The whole process quietly and without much need for lurking on the device itself leads you gradually to the destination. Sounds cool? Hell yeah!

Home-made old-school photo prints

Remember those etch-a-sketch toys back then, when you've been ~7 years old and got frustrated that you couldn't draw a circle on it? Like these:

So, another crazy PUSHN900 idea is to hook-up these toys with device that controls both knobs at the same time. You should learn by now that device is controlled by nothing else than Nokia N900. Basically, you take a picture with N900, specifically written app crops it and converts into black&white image and then transmits over bluetooth to etch-a-sketch controller, which turns that b&w picture into beautiful 300dpi print-out. Like this:

How wacky and incredible at the same time is that?!

This is just a short overview of three out of five teams in total presenting their projects during the event, so if you fancy to see more, go over to PUSHN900 blog for pics and videos from teams, as they have pretty good coverage out there.

Push the ideas

What amazes me the most in the whole thing are actual ideas these people had! These projects are wacky and some of them probably aren't very useful in real life (however that belt-nav seem to have some sort of future) but... who cares? People behind these projects are extremely smart and have helluva lot of imagination, which I could only be jealous of. All in all, I reckon that whole PUSHN900 project isn't really much about Nokia N900 itself, but about giving opportunity for smart people around the world to implement their incredible ideas and possibly shape their future life too, with only "little" help of Nokia and their uber-device. And that's even more cool than Nokia N900 itself about the PUSHN900 initiative. Genuinely great!

Could you fall in love with robot?

One of the highlights of the evening were pole-dancing robots, which were allegedly controlled by N900 too, however I didn't find any proof of that, actually. Nonetheless they were also very cool. I've taken some pics and a video of these robots during the event (using my N900, of course), so head on to my Flickr photo stream and enjoy.