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Usually when we think about human-machine interaction, we imagine robots acting like regular people but without any emotions. Science fiction has tried to define what the future of these machines that might one day replace humanity will be, but that event doesn’t actually seem possible in the next few years. But one industry could be very interesting for the future of human-machine interactions: video games.

We had the example of the Wii, released in 2006, which captures your movements with controllers and reproduces them on screen. What Microsoft revealed at last year’s E3, the Natal Project, is simply a game changer: with some basic hardware (sensors with infrared signals, HD video camera and microphone), users no longer need controllers to play videogames. What is the trick? As Scientific American revealed a few days ago, there are algorithms developed by Microsoft research in Cambridge, England, that can recognize gestures “by extrapolating from experience” like a human being. The article offers very good insight into the technological challenges of the project. The Natal release is planned for the 2010 holidays and will be the big event for the entire industry. But not only that.

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My dad is a hardcore gamer. Before it was common for games to start off with tutorials, each time he got a new game (always an FPS, preferably one set in WWII), somewhere within the first fifteen minutes we’d have this inevitable conversation:

Dad: What do I do?

Me: Did you read the instructions?

Dad: Guys don’t read instructions.

Apparently he’s right. Please inform my mother of this fascinating development.

Maybe not reading the manual is part of the Y chromosome that makes us males. According to customer statistics from Gadget Helpline, 64 percent of men who called the subscription service for help with their gadget had not read the instructions, while only 24 percent of female callers had not.

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Behavioral marketing is one of the cornerstones of Web advertising, but most Americans do not like it, a joint study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center and UC Berkeley’s Center for Law and Technology finds (PDF).

Sixty-six percent of Americans do not want advertising that is geared towards their perceived interests and generated by captured information.

The amount of public distrust of behavioral marketing is so high that 63 percent of Americans believe that advertisers should be required by law to immediately delete user information.

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Good news and something I don’t get !

All the big conferences have to have their prizes (Nobel Prize and so on). The Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference gives three prizes every year, and asks each recipient to make a wish. “Wishes big enough to save the world,” proclaims TED. Ambitious. You will discover here (www.tedprize.org) the prizes of this year, their wishes, and the prizes of the previous years.

The prize session has been very emotional this year. And a bit disappointing, at least to me, for one of the winners. Jill Tarter, from the Seti Institute, who has been doing research on extra terrestrial signs of life for a while now, received the first prize. And honestly, I do not really see how this is going to save the planet! Her speech was very inspired - almost ideological. I do not see the science there, and all this is not hot news. Yes, we have to consider ourselves as the resident of a Small Planet in a corner of the Milky Way, as she puts it. This could change our perspective. Is it enough to spend millions to look for other signs of life out there, while we are killing our own planet? Honestly, I do not buy it. But I may be wrong. What do you think?

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I just arrived at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference (http://conferences.ted.com/TED2009/). I’m so excited ! This is supposed to be the Davos of Innovation. And, actually, a lot of the attendees were in Davos last week. Don’t they have a regular job? Just being difficult…The program is so exiting : Tim Berners Lee (the dad of the web), Bill Gates (the dad of the PC), Chris Anderson (the dad of the Long Tail), Al Gore (the dad of the Planet), among others. Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his project, “6 Billion Others.”

I have decided to do the lightest coverage one could do: just share a few feelings and thoughts with you, and see what’s going on. And I know a lot is going on. You are going to be frustrated.

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Starting Friday, consumers in Japan can rent a robot suit that increases human strength by up to 10 times. The Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) attaches to the legs and reads electrical signals from the brain to provide limb assistance. The invention will be extremely beneficial for disabled and elderly persons who have difficulty walking.

HAL works by detecting faint bioelectrical signals on the surface of the skin that result from the brain’s communication with the leg muscles. The signals are subsequently calibrated by a computer that is attached at the waist. The result is a hybrid of human and robot movements, also known as a cyborg. Cyberdyne, the company behind the invention (but with no relation to the Terminator movies), plans to widely produce HAL for the global public.

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On Thursday, September 25, Yahoo.com began implementing what it has called the Content Optimization Knowledge Engine. The engine draws on personalization technology to provide the user with a combination of articles and Web sites that have been specifically screened and interpreted from the user’s previous activity. The move is considered an overhaul of the Yahoo Site, which currently is the highest visited Web site on the Internet at 82 million visits per day.

In essence, the new Yahoo portal is a combination of editorially picked and self-selected articles or Web pages. Such a strategy provides the user with links of sites she most-commonly visited, in addition to related links that she may not yet know about, but will likely be interested in. This information is in a sidebar located on the left side of the Yahoo home page. The user can also create customizable pages by creating a new tab and dragging and dropping applications. The tab can be named, which is good for organizing themed pages.

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Mobilize, “the next generation mobile conference” presented by the GigaOM team, takes place today in San Francisco. Selected coverage follows below from this morning’s speakers.

Hyperconnectivity, Wideband and Innovation
Om Malik spoke with John Roese, chief technology officer of Nortel Networks on the issues of developing high capability networks. The saturation of the Western European market (112 percent mobile users), including Italy (147 percent) makes an overwhelming argument about the importance of system robustness. The US trails sadly behind other countries in terms of the quality of the 3G network and market consistancy.

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As a technology becomes more mainstream, a reasonable concomitant is to offer the device in increasingly lighter, sleeker, and smaller designs. This has generally not been the case for single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras, which have continued to be large and awkward to carry and move. On October 31, Panasonic—Matsushita until October 1—will release the Lumix G series, which is a step in the right direction.

Weighing in at less than 14 ounces (385 grams), the Lumix brand will be the first of its size to offer the SLR technology with interchangeable lenses. SLR viewfinders are special because they display the exact image that the photographer captured, whereas the display of non-SLR camera viewfinders can be substantially different from what the photographer actually captured. The LCD viewfinders in cheaper digital cameras also cannot match the high-end performance of SLR devices.

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In the wake of Microsoft and NBC’s partnership to provide free streaming multi-media content via Silverlight for the Beijing Olympics, anti-trust criticisms have mounted against Microsoft, reminiscent of legal actions brought during the 1990s. The International Herald Tribune, also known as the global edition of the New York Times, highlighted concerns in an August 11 article.

The issue is whether Silverlight standards should compete with other proprietary systems, or should complement them. Brian Goldfarb, a Microsoft executive, has stated that only Microsoft will produce the development software of Silverlight’s content. He has also implied that PlayReady, the digital-rights management technology of Silverlight, will only be accessible on Microsoft servers. Critics argue that these decisions are an abuse of monopoly power, stifling competition and innovation.

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