It’s an interesting time in both media and hardware. On the hardware front we have exciting new options like the Ouya gaming console – powered by Android, the size of a Rubik’s cube, and designed so that you can enjoy game playing on your TV set. There’s also shiny new hardware like the Oculus Rift that whispers promises of affordable but quality augmented reality in the living room.
Gaming, though, is just one of the many avenues that improved hardware and software interaction might allow us to explore. There’s also the matter of simply keeping up with the lives of our friends and family. Social media is increasingly used to see what friends are recommending, which games they’re playing, which movies they recommend, which books aren’t worthy of the hype.
Progress on the hardware and social software frontier isn’t restricted to plucky engineers with a strong Kickstarter profile, though. Large, trusted, brands like LG are active too. In fact, LG has a 3D studio dedicated to working out good uses for the technology.
It may just be that watching movies in 3D isn’t an experience that everyone enjoys. Could 3D be helpful elsewhere? If you’re a math geek you might well be a fan of making sense of large abouts of data by building cubes, pivots or investigating other angles and dimensions. That’s what I thought of when I first saw this demo video of LG’s 3D representation of Facebook’s news feed.
The newsfeed can be very busy if you’ve a lot of friends (or people you know on Facebook). I’ve one friend who has more than 1,000 friends in Facebook and he actually makes time for them all. It must be quite a challenge.
With this 3D presentation of the news feed isn’t just a waterfall of data falling down the screen. It appears as blocks on a grid. You’re able to visualise the feed very differently and, of course, the large screen makes this possible.
I’m glad brands like LG are experimenting with the possibilities around 3D in the house because I don’t think anyone’s found the Holy Grail yet. It’s certainly interesting to note who are currently looking for it.
Disclosure: This video was sponsored by LG Electronics.
