I’m a little bullsh*t about virtual reality.  Seriously.  I mean, come on, it’s been like 20 years.  Where is my VR mansion?  My virtual trip in an X-Wing?  Why aren’t I sleeping with virtual people that are way out of my virtual league?

Yeah, I’m bullsh*t about VR.

Technology moves too slowly; Who’d have thought the most exciting development in the last five years would basically be a stylish pocket protector that makes phone calls and tells you which Britney Spears song you’re listening to on the radio.

PS, I don’t know what it says about modern-day songwriting that you need a decoder device to figure out the name of the song you’re listening.

Anyway, that’s why I got so excited when I found out the next BIG step in virtual reality is happening right here in Bingo.

And it’s not the giant hamster ball it looks like.

It’s a helluvalot more.

The VirtuSphere, or as I prefer to think of it, your next birthday gift to me, is a Virtual Reality interface that can allow you to immerse yourself in just about any environment you can think of.

It’s a bit like Star Trek’s Holodeck.  Only significantly less likely to malfunction, develop an artificial intelligence, and try and kill you.

What makes VirtuSphere DIFFERENT from the VR tech you’ve already seen is that you can actually walk in the thing.  Like, put one foot in front of the other.  You know, like people in big cities used to do before they had Segways.

OK, that may not SEEM like that big a deal, but when Nintendo Wii’s single-biggest selling point has become that it’ll make your kids be a little less fat and lazy, a VR environment that requires honest-to-God locomotion seems like a good idea.

And it IS exercise.  Or at least, it can be if you try hard enough.  Jim DiMascio, Virtusphere’s COO, demonstrated that with a little practice, you can run your ass off in the thing.  After 2 or 3 minutes, he had to stop, a bit breathless, and grab a glass of water.

The applications are pretty much limitless.  Jim and his partners see a military use; Units could be trained in a virtual Afghanistan so they have a sense of what it’s like to move around a real Middle Eastern city before they head overseas.  Army doctors could use a virtual re-enactment of psychologically scaring events to treat Post Traumatic Stress.  The VirtuSphere folks are teaming up with third-party software developers to make all that happen.  It’s pretty fantastic that the effort is being led right here in Binghamton.

Plus, I got to use it to play a Russian video game that involved blowing up killer pumpkins from outer space.  Or they might have been mutant radioactive pumpkins from a nuclear waste site.  Or they might have been killer mutant radioactive pumpkins from a nuclear waste site in outer space.

I’m not entirely certain.  But pumpkins were involved.

And there’s something that’s just more exciting about being able to use your entire body to move around in a game.  For the first few moments, I stood in place blasting pumpkins.  But after a little while, I started running after them.  And the game was somehow immediately more… fun.  Can’t explain why; it just was.
 
That’s not to say moving inside VirtuSphere isn’t a bit disconcerting in the beginning—like the first time you pick up a 37-button PlayStation controller.  There’s an adjustment period.  Just to practice, Jim asked me to walk in the sphere without the headset.  It’s pretty weird to be walking and not actually moving anyplace.  It got better when I put the head gear on.  As I took steps inside the sphere, it rotated around me, moving me through the virtual world in my headset.  Very cool.

Stopping took some getting used to as well.  When I stop in real life, the ground tends to stop at pretty much the same time.  But the momentum of the sphere creates a delay when you stop moving in VirtuSphere—the ball continues for a second on its own.  You learn to slow down first.

So after getting my first little taste of Binghamton-born Virtual Reality, I wanted to know when the masses would get a shot.  Jim DiMascio and I sat down for a serious chat about exploding radioactive pumpkins…

We’ve been promised cool virtual reality tech for soooooooooooo long; why isn’t it really here yet and when will we all have it in our houses?

Virtual Reality simulation is here and Virtusphere is a locomotion interface that allows users to become an avatar and play INSIDE a video game. One of the renown professors of Virtual Reality, Dr. Thomas Furness of the University of Washington was quoted, “Virtusphere comes closer than most to the Holodeck of Star Trek fame”. We are currently marketing Virtusphere to the entertainment market which include major theme parks, Las Vegas hotels & resorts, malls and other related entertainment centers globally.  Virtusphere can also provide combat simulation training for the US Army and Marines infantry soldiers, we would never send a pilot into combat without simulation training and we now have the first locomotion simulator for the soldiers on the ground. It will be a few more years but it our goal to eventually make Virtusphere affordable for home use.
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Some robots like to morph into a human form and shoot you (like in T2).  Some robots like to take over your spacecraft and shoot you (like in Battlestar Galactica.)  Some robots like to have identical evil twin brothers that shoot you with phasers (Star Trek).  And still some other robots will terminate your life functions while you lie helpless in suspended animation (2001).

If sci-fi has taught us nothing else, it’s that your robot will kill you one day.  (It’s good to see that the US military is putting this lesson to good use in Pakistan; I can’t imagine any way THAT little technology could go awry.)

So that’s why it’s probably appealing that somebody has created a robot too dumb to kill anybody.  It’s called the tweenbot.  Which in some obscure language must translate to “brown paper lunch bag with smiley face drawn on it”.

And that’s exactly what the Tweenbot looks like.  It was a research project for NYU ITP student Kacie Kinzer.  If you’ve never heard of the NYU “ITP” grad program—I hadn’t—it describes itself as the “Center for the Recently Possible”.  You know how the Sharper Image sells a whole bunch of crap that uses fiber optics and lasers to look really cool but not function in any useful way?  The NYU ITP center does kinda the same thing—except it probably costs $40,000 a year instead of 99.99 (which is what everything at the Sharper Image costs, until it goes on clearance at TJ Maxx for 5.99).

Kinzer created the Tweenbot to answer one simple question:  Are New Yorkers really @ssholes?

The answer?  Surprisingly not.

Here’s how it works:  Build a stupid robot that’s too cute for words and is only capable of going forward.  No sensors. No artificial intelligence.  No weapons.  No fun.  Then attach a sign to it that’s drawn by the same girl who drew hearts, flowers, and teddy bears all over your high school yearbook.  The sign should say (in happy bubble letters with appropriately ridiculous flourishes) “HELP ME. I need to get to the Southwest corner of Washington Square Park.”  Then take it to the Northeast corner and let it loose.

42 minutes and 29 pedestrian helpers later, the robot will arrive at its goal.

Kinzer believes that this says something about the Washington Square Park crowd; that it says something about New Yorkers; that it says something about human nature itself.

I think that it says something about the power of cute.

And makes me want to hurl just a little bit.

Look, I wasn’t alive when machines took over manufacturing; but I think that I would have been OK with it.  I’m pretty friggin’ lazy.  When computers learned how to spell for me, I was actually damn glad—even if I do have to click undo every time my cell phone auto-corrects “Binghamton” to “Birmingham”.  I was EVEN OK with it when they invented a robot to replace fashion models; feminists, doctors (and anybody else with a brain) have been saying for years that no human being should force themselves to be that skinny—and apparently some robotics geek in the IT department took them literally.

But robots writing my porn?

A line must be drawn in the sand, people.  I’m telling you: robotic strippers aren’t far behind.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  This all started when I heard about The Bookseller’s Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.  Anything that trivial and still well-publicized seemed like a worthy feature for BingPop.

But then I learned of this year’s “controversy”.  *GASP* Among nominees such as “Curbside Consultation of the Colon” (appetizing!), “Strip and Knit with Style” (titillating!), and “Baboon Metaphysics” (um, stupid), was a title that was COMPUTER GENERATED.  “The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais” was “written by” Prof Philip M Parker.

(PS, Fromage Frais is a French diary product not often found in the US.  And yes, I had to look that up on Wikipedia.  Don’t judge.)

Now it’s probably true that most great inventions in the world stem from one form of laziness or another—but Parker takes the cake; he wanted to be a best-selling author without actually bothering to write a book.  Instead, he invented a computer algorithm to do the writing for him.  On just about any topic he plugs into the machine.  The algorithm searches the Internet for all available info, organizes it, creates a few pretty charts, and voila: Parker’s now got over 200,000 books listed on Amazon.  Which has got to make him very popular with the ladies.  Who like books.  Sexy librarians?

Anyway, what he’s working on next will definitely make him popular… with somebody; computer-generated romance novels.  Or what I like to call “pornography for sexually repressed women”.

Parker: “I’ve already set it up.  There are only so many body parts.”

Ya know; I’m not sure, but I’m beginning to remember hearing about something similar… a device for piecing together random bits of memory and placing it in a new context… some sort of “internal creative device” if you will…

Oh right, your f&$king imagination.

God, we’re lazy.

PS, one of next year’s potential nominees for the "Oddest Book Title" award is about to be released: "Soft Drink and Fruit Juice Problems Solved" from Woodhead Publishing.  And that little nugget of weird came from the brain of a real live human being.  How quaint.

You remember Wikipedia.  It’s that web site that helped you write all your college term papers without actually doing any of the necessary research.  Wikipedia is a “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit”.  Therefore, just about EVERYTHING that has ever existed in the world is listed on it.  Seriously, it’s true: the Internet HAS made us all stupid, fat and lazy; by knowing everything for us; and frankly, I like it.

I, for instance, have no need to learn how to spell.  Oh, look! There!  I just misspelled the word “spell”.  And you never knew.  Know why?  Spell-check.  Turns out "sqpell" doesn’t have a silent ‘q’ at all!

It is in that spirit (stupid, fat, lazy) that I call your attention to BingWiki—a new web site from local web guru Douglas Camin.  Why go out and actually explore the streets of Binghamton when you can let other people do it for you and revel in their collected works.  BingWiki is just like Wikipedia, except everything on it is local to greater Binghamton.

Want to know about spiedies?  Click here.  Curious what it’s got to say about J Michaels Restaurant?  That entry’s here.  But right now; it’s just a shell.  Waiting for your extraordinary wisdom.  Would you please grace it?

I asked Douglas to take a moment away from working with 1’s and 0’s to answer a few questions about his new Wiki…

First thing’s first: Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable.  What’s to stop BingWiki from being full of made-up facts?  OR, turning into a war of: “Dillingers has the best drinks in town.”  “No, Dillingers has the crappiest drinks in town.”  “No, it has the best!”  “Yeah, well, you smell bad.”
One of the most interesting things about a Wiki is that once a community is established for it, it becomes self-policing. Anonymous posters are not allowed, you must register to post information. A Wiki-based site is very easy to change in the event that some sort of bad information appears. With three clicks any user can "revert" bad information back to good. In most traditional sites, you worry about getting the content right the first time because it can be hard to change it if it’s incorrect. On a Wiki, the whole idea is that the information is alive and evolving - all the time, by many people - so you encourage everyone to voice their opinions and share their stories and if something incorrect or wrong comes through it is ridiculously simple to fix it.

As far as made-up stuff, if something doesn’t pass the smell test about truthfulness, someone will edit the information away. We plan on allowing people to comment on things like a restaurant or business - good or bad - to bring a sense of dynamism to the site. It’s called the People’s Guide to Greater Binghamton, so people need to put their thoughts and opinions on there as well.

Ironically, statistically speaking Wikipedia has been found to be more accurate that print encyclopedias. It is a myth that the content is notoriously wrong. The Wikipedia community is so fast at correcting either mistakes or vandalism of articles that it’s really a non-issue.

I bet you have some favorite businesses in town that you’re gonna write the entries for personally.  Which ones?
Well, I have been a downtown resident for the last six years, so a lot of things I write about focus on downtown. I’ve been particularly pleased with Sake Tumi, and also like a little restaurant on Washingston Street called Despina’s Mediterranean Taste. The fun of a project like this is that everyone shares information they know a lot about - in my case, I know a lot about downtown Binghamton.

What exactly was the inspiration for BingWiki?
About a month ago I was asked to help out a class at Binghamton University that focused on things that could be done to improve the community. One of the things that came out of those discussions from students was to have a Wiki set up to share information. I talked with a lot of friends in Southern Tier Young Professionals as well who helped out, and with my company (Avant IT Consulting) we were able to quickly put all the pieces together. A little bit of research revealed some other cities had some really awesome Wiki sites - particularly Rochester (rocwiki.org) and Ann Arbor (arborwiki.org) and that became the inspiration for modeling how BingWiki is set up.

Personally, I want BingWiki to be something that helps enhance the community. Having been president of groups like STYP in the past I learned that one of the issues the community faces isn’t that there is nothing to do (as some people try to say), it’s that finding what IS going on can be a challenge. Our community has been stable for years, so we are not "geared" towards making sure newcomers can find information and get acclimated to the city quickly - we are a city of people that "know" what is happening already. If you want to like Binghamton, you have to be willing to invest in liking it, and a site like this should help make finding information to like the area easier.

If somebody’s never written for a “Wiki” before, what are three things they should know going in?
Easy:
1. The Wiki is everyone’s property. Everyone is welcome to post information and add content about things they know and love - your neighborhood, street, or favorite eatery.
2. If there is an article you want to add something to or change something on, go right ahead - it’s EASY. If you can type, you can create a Wiki entry.
3. Be respectful of others when writing. Bad articles or blatantly problematic entries will almost certainly be removed by others.

There seems to be something of a new trend towards Binghamton info websites—between 607 Magazine, BingWiki, and BingPop.  Being that your background’s in web sites, if someone wanted to go out and build an addition the Binghamton online culture, what would you like it to be?
Well, I think right now each of those sites is filling a unique niche - BingPop does a lot of great "latest things around town" coverage, 607 is devoted to expanding and covering the music scene, and BingWiki is sort of the catch-all repository of information both functional, useless, and fun. Whatever someone’s idea, it is important to leverage the tools that already exist - social networks like Facebook and other entities really devoted to (like BingPop, 607 and BingWiki) to getting the "info" out about the community.

What things do you want to see people add to BingWiki?
The Wiki is perpetual - so it can capture information about history as well as what’s happening currently. Rochester’s Wiki has a number of pages devoted to the oddities and crazy things that have happened recently and in the past in town, or just cool things people did not know about (like the old abandoned subway system.) I’d love for people to contribute interesting historical information about the area to the site. My girlfriend and I are both architectural buffs (she is an architect), so there are also pages being created to catalog and document the buildings that exist in the community, especially the historic ones. Would it be great to have an article on the torn-down Ross building so we won’t forget how it looked?

I want to point out that BingWiki is not a "news" or "blog" - it is a repository and guide. Think of it as Binghamton’s Encyclopedia. If done right, 20 years from now someone will be able to look back and know that there was a business doing baked goods in 2008 on Court Street downtown. BingWiki is based on the same software that runs Wikipedia, so keeping the site "up and running" for many years won’t be a problem.

You may have noticed that I really sucked at updating BingPop last week.  Turns out I was on vacation.  In Montreal.  Yes, Montreal!  Montreal: City of… um, that big Olympic Stadium where the roof keeps collapsing in on itself. I bet I would have seen more of the city if I had spent less time seeing it’s less reputable bars.  But let me just tell you the first reason Montreal sucks more than the Bing.

1. It’s friggin cold in Montreal.
You think it’s cold outside right now, right?  Go step out on Court Street and stand there for 8 hours…  I’ll wait.

Still waiting.

Not dead yet?  I’m surprised.  THAT’S how cold you get after standing outside in Montreal for about 4 minutes.

2. Montreal is KNOWN for having free wi-fi, but Binghamton’s got better coverage.
Now I’m sure that there’s a lot more to do on the Internet that just play Worlds of Warcraft, update your Facebook status, and away-message stalk your ex’s.  I’m just not sure what that is.  Or if I care.
 
But there were a ridiculous number of times in Montreal that I COULDN’T update my Facebook status, because I couldn’t get a wi-fi signal.  Well Binghamton just made another move in their mission to ensure that every corner of the city radiates with Internet love.

They’ve expanded coverage, adding a bunch more “nodes” to the network.  And they’ve plugged in the South Side, baby.  That’s right: you go munch on some whole-wheat, whole-grain, all-organic free-range vegan veggie-burgers at Whole in the Wall while you cruise the PETA web site.
 
Checck out the new node intersection locations:
Hawley & Washington Streets
Court, Exchange & Chenango Streets
Main & Front Streets

FYI, here’s a copy of the OLD coverage map—pre-new-nodes.

AAAAAND they’ve also employed yours truly to redesign the Welcome page so that visiting business folk will be blown away by how high tech Spiedie-ville has become.  It’s just another phase in the BingPop quest to take over the world.

So there you have it; more signal, better signal, and more places that you can play Worlds of Warcraft.

3. Oh, um, the third reason I like Bing better than Montreal.  I speak like 4 words in French.  Useless.

Binghamton does not have a lame party scene.  It’s just that it’s way way waaaaaaaaaay friggin way underground.

At least that’s the theory behind the new 607Magazine.com.

Which, BTW, isn’t a magazine at all.  It’s just a very sleek, very cool web site designed by the boys at 607 Media.  It’s just called a “magazine” to give you that glossy, colorful, expensive “we’ve got so much extra cash we can afford to give away cologne samples on the inside cover” vibe.

By day, the folks at 607 Media are hip, information-age web gurus with a Broome-based biz.  And by night, they are cataloguers of all things Bing & booze.

The heart of the site is its consummate nightlife events listing—but it’s also got original articles about area bars and lifestyle tips.

I Facebook poked 607 founder Scott Fineout and asked for a quick interview with the man—to find out if this whole magazine deal was really just a plot to get with area girls.  I’m onto him.

So you’ve got this lifestyle/nightlife mag for twenty-somethings in the Southern Tier. IS there nightlife for 20-somethings in the Southern Tier? If so, where?
"What is there to do?" It might seem like a normal question to most, but for those who grew up in this area I’d have to say it ranks as the most frequently asked question of all time. I can remember sitting around with my friends, tossing a few beverages back and asking that question all the time. I think younger adults around this area need more of an outlet then just drinking or smoking to be quite honest. An answer to your question is yes there is stuff to do. I don’t think that has ever been the real problem. The real problem to me is that all the options have been played out for some time now and people are growing tired of the same old options. We have stuff to do every night in our calendar, and even have bar specials. I think it should help people save some scratch and realize there is a lot more to do in this area then once thought. I think blogs and alternative media is something this area has needed for a long time.

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Ever seen someone swerving down Main Street in Johnson City at 2 AM and thought: is it actually POSSIBLE he doesn’t know how incredibly drunk he is?

Thank God, it’s the new IPod add-on for your favorite alchy friend:  “The IBreath”.  Here’s how it works: you’re stumbling out of the Rat at 1 in the morning, and you think to yourself, “Goodness me, is it possible I might be too inebriated to operate a motor vehicle?”

Then, you pull out the “retractable IBreath wand” and exhale into it.  If your BAC is over .08, you immediately inform the nearest good samaritan who gives you a ride home.

OK, maybe not.  But we can hope you at least call a cab.  Because I’ve definitely seen too much swerving on Main Street at 2 AM.

MADD is freaked that the IBreath will cause MORE drinking; they say that college kids will play drinking games to see if they can blow OVER the thing’s maximum read of .20.  OK, I get it, but isn’t that a little like arguing we shouldn’t have gun safeties because idiots might play Russian roulette to test the safety?

I just don’t understand who takes their IPod to State Street in the middle of the night.