What is "chillout"?

While listening to radio on winamp, i happened to discover chillout genre. It is very relaxing and easy to listen at work place. You will find one example below and more explanation at http://www.reference.com/search?r=13&q=Chill%20Out:

Chill out musicWikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source
Chill out (sometimes chillout or Chill), a term derived from a slang injunction to relax, emerged in the early and mid-1990s as a catch-all term for various styles of relatively mellow, slow-tempo music made by contemporary producers in the electronic music scene. The term "Chill out music", as well as the genre itself, originated in chill rooms that were set up by DJs off to the edge of club dance floors to give patrons a chance to take a break from the hectic dance vibe and chill out with this style of music. In these rooms, visitors would find couches, comfy pillows, psychedelic light shows projecting trippy images and music that was decidedly downtempo, especially when compared to what was going on a few feet away on the dance floor. Its history began in the UK, with new wave band The Durutti Column being an abstract influence on the genre in the '80s. Higher Intelligence Agency (the HIA) helped move the chill room concept from sideshow to main event with their Oscillate chill party events in Birmingham and elsewhere in the early to mid nineties. Their first releases came out on the now defunct Beyond record label and soon thereafter in the U.S. on the Waveform label - who describes the music as 'exotic electronica.'

Eleven Events, Trends and Developments that Will Change Your Life

While I was reviewing futurist.com, I just came across a brief, useful summary.. I just put the chapter headings and you can see the full chapters at
http://www.futurist.com/articles/future-trends/eleven-events-trends-and-developments-that-will-change-your-life/

The future is a paradox. Many things change, many things stay about the same. Changes take longer than expected, changes come in a rush.
Which events, trends, and developments are going to rock our world, and change our way of life in coming years?

• The Global Climate Crisis



• The End of Cheap and Easy Oil, Just In Time



• Nanotechnology



• Nano-Solar Cells



• Biotechnology, Genomics and Systems Biology Extends Life Spans



• Obesity Decreases Life Spans



• Invisible Computing



• Constant Communication



• An Older Future



• A Shrinking Future



• Continued Emergence of China and India

What is 3G?

As everybody is speaking about 3G, it is good to learn what is going on and going to be soon. I remember a sentence that says Internet age is over and mobile era starts, which becomes a fact every day...
I found a good page informing about 3G and to follow the developments. Link is here
http://www.3gnewsroom.com/html/feedback/index.shtml




Mobile telephony allowed us to talk on the move. The internet turned raw data into helpful services that people found easy to use. Now, these two technologies are converging to create third generation mobile services.
In simple terms, third generation (3G) services combine high speed mobile access with Internet Protocol (IP)-based services. But this doesn’t just mean fast mobile connection to the world wide web. Rather, whole new ways to communicate, access information, conduct business, learn and be entertained - liberated from slow, cumbersome equipment and immovable points of access.

What will 3G mean to users?

With access to any service anywhere, anytime, from one terminal, the old boundaries between communication, information, media and entertainment will disappear. Services will truly converge.
"Mobility" will be offered with many services that we currently regard as "fixed" – indeed, Mobile operators believes that mobility will become the norm for many communication services. We’ll be able to make video calls to the office and surf the internet, or play interactive games with friends at home - wherever we may be.

Kraftwerk: From Dusseldorf to the Future (With Love)

I am visiting Düsseldorf next week. Although the city is well known for fashion and exhibition, I found an interesting book about it in the realm of music.. Especially for people like me who dont know and can't follow what music is going which direction....

Book Description from Amazon.com

The future of modern music began in Dsseldorf in1970, when an avant-garde German band, the Organisation, re-invented themselves as Kraftwerk. In so doing, they set in motion a train of events that has inspired and informed every musical shift over the last20 years. Yet Kraftwerk remain the most enigmatic force in modern music. Fiercely private and notoriously reclusive, their internal operations have long been carefully shielded. Now Tim Barr traces the development of Kraftwerk's unique vision--from their roots in Germany's avant-garde in the late60s, through the triumphs of their "Trans-Europe Express" and "Man Machine" albums in the70s, to their current position, three decades later, as one of the most influential pop groups of our time.

Drawing on exclusive interviews, Barr examines Kraftwerk's crucial role in shaping a new kind of urban music: one that propelled us all into the world of rap, electro, house, techno, and their myriad hybrids. Tim Barr's work appears in The Face, URB, Replay, and Detour.

Telepresence - From economist.com

Here is a good article at economist.com about telepresence, a better form of videoconferencing. Link is here http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9687655

"FOR most of the 23 years Kenneth Crangle has spent at Hewlett-Packard, a big computer and printer company, he was a typical road warrior, constantly travelling for business. He was usually miserable. He hated the jet lag. Then came 9/11, shoe bombers, SARS and bird flu. His daughter became sick, exacerbating his reluctance to travel. There must be a better way to meet and do business, Mr Crangle recalls thinking. So he started work on an alternative.

The result is something called “telepresence”, which HP and other technology firms are just beginning to sell. It is basically a spruced-up version of videoconferencing, but its creators insist that the technology is so improved as to be unrecognisable. Users still communicate via live audio and video feeds, but the speed and quality of transmission have increased, and the screens have grown and multiplied, in order to create the illusion that the two parties to a conversation are not continents apart but at opposite ends of the same table (as in the picture above). The aim, telepresence's boosters say, is to get participants in such meetings to forget, or at least stop caring, that they are not in the same room..."

Institute for the future IFTF

" The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is an independent nonprofit research group. We work with organizations of all kinds to help them make better, more informed decisions about the future. We provide the foresight to create insights that lead to action. "

Check their website http://www.iftf.org/ and weblog http://future.iftf.org/ and you can find some interesting insights...

1910 predictions of 2000 in French art - From boingboing.net

Again i find it very interesting what people in past imagined about our present.. Link is here: http://expositions.bnf.fr/utopie/feuill/index.htm. Here you may find an example for an early imagination of skype or video chat below....

1966 prediction of home computer in 1999 - From boingboing.net

It is very interesting how people predicted pc to be in our time... See Google video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4796674762025998102