Wikipedia defines the Uncanny Valley as: “a hypothesis that when robots and other facsimiles of humans look and act almost, but not entirely, like actual humans, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a function of a robot’s lifelikeness.”

Why am I bringing this up?  I don’t know, really just to link you to this site I found today that does more than freak me out.  Clearly I drove my car straight off the cliff and dove headfirst into the Uncanny Valley with this website visit, and I wanted you to as well.  In relation to technology, what does it all mean?  Simple really, it means we’re heading into a world where EVERYTHING is going to advance, Everything.  Already we are seeing new fuel opportunities arise, new ways of communicating, mice that fit INSIDE your computer and charge there…you name it, it’s either here, or on the way.

Head over, get properly freaked out, then head back to see how you can dip your baby toe into the future without all the “response of revulsion,” by getting your hands on one of your own aforementioned MoGo Mice.  How uncanny is your valley?  I guess time will tell.

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I really rely on my iPod (and my iTunes on my laptop) when I’m on the road. Probably another reason I’m so eagerly awaiting MoGo’s headset!

Here are some fun iPod tricks for those of you also on the go:

1) Listen to Wikipedia articles via your iPod. I recently refreshed my memory on the King Henry’s wives via Wikipedia.  There’s a service called Pediaphon that will automatically convert any Wiki article into a robotic podcast - which is actually way cooler than it sounds.

2) Catch up on NPR. My family has a strange addiction to Car Talk. You know, Click and Clack - the Tappit brothers? No? Oh, well you GOT to try them out. A lot of the shows are available only for a week after broadcast, which is a shame because Terry Gross’ interview with Gene Simmons was legendary.

3) Download YouTube to your iPod (or, even easier, use Vixy).  Although this takes longer than watching in a livestream from the site, some of these videos become as favorite as songs and are definitely worth having along to provide a well needed chuckle while on the road.

4) Catch up on your favorite blogs (like this one!).  If you have a corporate laptop and are concerned about loading it up with personal data - like the RSS feeds from the blogs you follow, never fear: there’s a way to actually bring those feeds into your video iPod.

5)  Catch up on your favorite authors or learn a new language. As much as I’m not one to endorse a commercial site, I recently got addicted to ‘Books on Tape’, by which I mean ‘AudioBooks on my iPod’ - a growing selection of which is now available at iTunes. My significant other, meanwhile, has been brushing up on his trigonometry while on the treadmill.

Either way? It’s all good.

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