NextFest 2007 Notes

Wired NextFest 2007 wrapped up this weekend.

Brian Lam's list of the best of the Fest is at Gizmodo; Molly Wood's video is at c|net news; Phuong-Cac Nguyen has a great summary of new gadgets at Cool Hunting; and Brian Heater has a running commentary at GearLog.

Oobjects and Gadgets

The recently launched Oobjects already has some interesting lists, like the 10 Biggest Product Failures, such as the Apple Newton, a personal organizer that required a personal assistant to carry it around for you, based on people mistaking sophisticated engineering for sophisticated design. They also list 21 Futuristic Interfaces, such as the swimming goggles with a heads up display.

Oobjects describes itself as "... like Billboard Chart for gadgets". Of course, viewers are invited to vote their selections up or down.

Google Gadget Ventures

Google just announced their entry into venture funding with Google Gadget Ventures.

They will provide grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets they’d like to see developed further, then $100,000 in seed investment to those developers who’d like to build a business around the Google gadgets platform. The FAQs include more detail.

Bloggers discussing this program include Matt Cutts. John Claburn's article in Information Week also provides links to related articles and white papers.

John Blyberg has an old, but nicely detailed, description of some Google gadgets he designed for library use. Niall Kennedy discussed Gadgets as an AdSense Unit last month.