I heard on CNN’s American Morning today and at CrunchGear that there will be three (3) NFL games broadcast in 3D at select theaters in three US Cities next weekend.  This is really interesting news…we’ve seen so much in the movies and on TV about the future of entertainment and TV viewing, especially when it comes to sports.   I find it interesting that it really does take a long time before these ideas actually become viable products and are available.

I remember watching the first 3D movies when I was a kid with those crazy glasses you picked up at the local convenience store (this was pretty weak and barely worked for me).  Then watching Jaws in 3D was also a neat experience as are the multitude of 3D videos and exhibits and theme parks and museums.

I’m really interested to see how this works on the weekend and what people think of the NFL in 3D.  In reality, TV has become slightly more interactive and picture quality has definitely taken a leap forward with the advent of High Definition Programming, but essentially I still look at the same old box (well flat-panel now) on the wall showing the same old two dimensional output.

On websites, we’ve tried for years to incorporate designs and interactivity that is more 3D…yet are always challenged by the fact that we have to make these designs and systems work on the good old 2D flat screen.  I wonder how far away we are from websites and web applications that have a bit more depth?  Will we shed the confines of the flat 2D screen anytime soon?

It looks like there are already some examples of real-world implementations of this as you can see here:

After reading the story this week that NASA and Google are working on a way to extend the Internet beyond the confines of our planet was intriguing.  Of course I love hearing about anything that has to do with space exploration, and the concept of extending the Internet into space is interesting and strange at the same time.  Of course, if that first manned mission to Mars ever does happen, the journey is no doubt going to be a long one (several months at least), being able to browse the Internet would be nice .

Now…according to the article in the Ottawa Citizen about this, it will take nearly three minutes for the signal to travel from the earth to the source.  I guess instant messaging and real time communication are somehow out of the question.

What was interesting, is that the key technological hurdle needing to be overcome is the ability for a signal to be smart and be able to deal with disruptions and connection problems.  The new concept is called “Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN.  If a signal is blocked, the server can sense this, can save the content and send it on when the way is clear.”   We are constantly building web applications that rely on communication with other systems, sometimes asynchronously.  While there are mechanisms that can deal with disruption to a certain extent, this concept is interesting in that one could be sure that a transmission would arrive eventually, even if the system accepting the message isn’t available immediately.

I’ll be interested to see if this is one of those space program advances that actually helps us on earth, or if its just a cool idea that doesn’t yield any practical application.

Just in case you were worried whether spammers could still make a buck these days, a new study has found that even a response rate of 1 in 12,500,000 can produce a healthy income — potentially $7,000 a day. Now all we have to do is track down the 2 or 3 Canadians who are buying herbal libido enhancers and take away their email accounts…

This post is a commentary on the article that appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on August 16th of this year (a popular source of information for my posts in this blog, and yes the paper was still on my desk at the time I wrote this) in response to Mark Bauerlein’s book “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30″.

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