Orbotix: the robotic ball you control from your smartphone or tablet (and it just keeps getting better).

Shapeways: a 3D printing marketplace and community.

Flomio: NFC for your iPhone or iPad.

Organic Motion: marker-less motion capture.

Ideum: a 55″ LED/LCD multi-touch table.

Makerbot: 3D printing with the Replicator 2.

InteraXon: thought-controlled computing.

QFO Labs: high-tech, gaming quadcopters.

Printrbot: 3D printing with Printrbot Plus.

Sensus by Canopy: the first touch sensitive case for your iPHone.

Zugara: augmented reality software.

Just click through and check those things out. Now imagine all of it in one room, throw in some drinks and appetizers, and have at it.

side note: a big thanks to our non-physical presence sponsors Occipital and the Kauffman Foundation.

If you’re not coming to Blur yet, and you’d like to join us, use the code “bifr12″ to get in for $318 bucks (that includes all sessions, meals, open bar reception AND access to all of this *cool* stuff).

A robotic ball, controlled by your smartphone (oh, and we’re having a race track/obstacle course brought in).

A service that allows you to 3D print your life.

Technology that allows you to “tap” your phone and cause all kinds of things to happen.

Markerless motion capture that’s got some serious military applications.

A 55″ multi-touch table.

One sweet looking 3D printer.

A thought-controlled computer (yes, really).

Serious augmented reality.

A capacitive accessory that turns your entire phone (back, sides) into a touch surface.

And who knows what other surprises we might have up our sleeves? Come join us (use “bifr12″ to take 60% off of the price; good only for the next 20 tickets).

If you’re not familiar with the scholarship program, these are full passes to the Blur conference (November 15-16th) that include meals, the reception, all sessions, etc. The passes do not include travel or hotel expenses for the event. And the passes do not encompass Defrag.

That said, the scholarship passes are a tremendous opportunity for students. At Blur, we’ll be discussing everything from 3D printing to robots to the internet of things to thought-controlled computing to the next generation of interfaces. Blur showcases companies like Oblong, Orbotix, Organic Motion, InteraXon, Shapeways, Flomio, ModRobotics and Makerbot.

If you’re like to be considered for the Blur scholarship, please email me directly (enorlin AT mac.com) with the following:

1. Name.

2. Name of School you’re attending (a valid student ID will be required to claim your scholarship).

3. One paragraph as to why you’d like to attend Blur, and what you think you can contribute to the conversation.

(note: I’m conflating UI/UX a bit here. Please forgive.)

This weekend, I had occasion to watch “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” Once I made it past those nasty things Ricardo Montalban puts in people’s ears (yea, that always freaked me out a bit), the thing that struck me was what the user interface (and accompanying UX) for all of the computers looked like.

The movie was made in 1982, but the computers are supposed to be from the 23rd century, so it’s kind of useful to see how we’d imagine UI’s to be 300 years from now. It’s almost comical: flashing lights that resemble vacuum tubes, graphics that are still pretty green screen, and the height of all user interfaces: voice control. Oh, by the way, all computers are HUGE and take up a ton of space (at one point, there was a reference to memory banks being full – and a gesture to a wall of giant machines).
All of this got me thinking, so I turned on one of the Star Trek Next Generation movies (made in the 90s). I found that the size of computers had dropped, that voice was still prominent, and that the dominant model of usage was….the tablet. In other words, three to four hundred years from now, according the vision of Star Trek, we haven’t really advanced our UI/UX from where it is today.

I’m not trying to be unfair to Star Trek here, but rather, I think it’s instructive to see just HOW HARD it is to imagine the future of user interaction. We, literally, can’t get far enough outside of our own heads to do it effectively. In fact, it may be that “inability to think outside of the box” that had so many people oohing and ahhing over the UI presented in “Minority Report.” Gesutres, data manipulation without keyboards — this felt….futuristic.

My point is this: In 10, 20, 50, 100 years, the keyboard and mouse will not be the dominant mode of user interaction (hell, you could argue they’re not today), and my suspicion is that whatever that dominant mode is, it will be directly tied to the cycle of enterprise innovation that we’re going through today. But imagining that, and further, creating it, is just insanely hard. Hard because of our own constraints. Hard because the physicality of the interfaces we use make it almost unreasonable (in our own heads) to think of how else we’d use something. In short, insanely hard.

And insanely necessary.

Obviously, the mobile device will play a large role, and gesture-based computing is really coming on board fast. But what is just beyond that horizon’s edge that we can’t quite see yet? That’s what we’ll be discussing at Blur…and the good news is that if you’re attending Defrag, you can stay an extra day and explore it with us. As Defrag turns into Blur on November 15th, we’ll have Kwin Kramer (from Oblong — “Minority Report” fame), Bre Pettis (the 3D printing revolution) and Andrew Tschesnok (of Organic Motion) to help start getting you oriented for the coming UI change.

First up, is Ariel Garten, CEO of Interaxon, a “thought-controlled computing” company. Yes, you read that correctly. If you haven’t yet begun to notice a theme with Blur speakers, it’s this: it’s all out of this world, borderline-science fiction stuff. Ariel will be joining us to explore the already existent future where you control computers with your thoughts.

Second, I’ve confirmed John Fillwalk, Director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, to come and speak about an initiative that he’s and his team are building for public release this coming fall. The project is a complete design of a new museum – it focuses on 3D space, interactive virtual environments that are driven by art, spatial computing, and the use of things like Kinect.

As we continue to roll out keynotes, we’ll be doing a major update to the Blur agenda shortly. Stay tuned.

3D printing is also one HOT research area. Imagine: what happens when I don’t go buy a cellphone, I just print one? What about when I can print bone? or Organs? or Dental Crowns? How about food?

Here’s the shocking thing: those last four — bone, organs, dental crowns and food — have all actually happened.

Professor Mark Ganter runs the University of Washington’s Solheim Rapid Prototyping/Rapid Manufacturing Lab, and he pushes his “printistas” to work with some outrageous materials in 3D printing. So far, they’ve done 50 materials (including printing a pineapple). Mark wants to get to 1000. He wants to experiment with 3D printing and mashed potatoes.

Yes. Really.

And it is in that context of sheer amazing-ness that I’m incredibly pleased to announce that Professor Ganter will be coming to Blur to deliver a keynote about the incredible future of 3D printing.

I hope you’ll join us.

It is in this context that one should view the launch of Kinect for Windows. With this move, Microsoft is essentially blessing the Kinect as a platform for development outside of the world of the Xbox. Kinect for Windows includes Windows 7 and 8 developer previews, and support for Windows-embedded devices. This, again, opens up a whole new vista (pun intended) for NUI developers.

I hope that developers, students, researches, and startups everywhere take advantage of this – because it’s big.

A big hat tip for Microsoft for realizing the importance of encouraging the Kinect as a platform for development. I’ve already heard of several startups (medical, business, mobile) that are building apps and businesses around the Kinect. I can’t wait to see where we are in another 24 months.

The “Kinect Effect” is real, and it’s here to stay.

If you head to the registration page, you’ll find a bunch of “packages.” The baseline package is the “full conference pass.” This includes food, beverages, coffee, wifi, open bar at night — all of the stuff you’d expect from a non-expo type of event (i.e., you show up and you’re taken care of). Once you move above that baseline, you’ll see three different package options: one with one night hotel included, one with two nights of hotel included and one with three nights of hotel included. As you move “up” the packages (add more hotel room nights), the discount you’re effectively receiving on those hotel room nights increase — until we hit a 60% discount for a 3-night stay.

All of this (which isn’t typical for a tech conference) begs the question: Why are they doing this?

Most non-conference organizers don’t realize that maybe the largest single financial commitment a conference makes when it starts up is called its “room block.” This is the number of rooms that we commit to buying, whether they’re booked or not, in order to secure the space at the hotel over a number of days. It’s an unavoidable term if you want to be in a hotel (there’s also a required food and beverage commitment, but that’s another story).

The Omni at Champions Gate is an *extremely* nice hotel (5-star), and suits our needs very nicely for Blur (i.e,, it sets the level of service that we want for our attendees). But, of course, we realize that a lot of startups and price-sensitive folks might find the room rates to be a bit steep. The *problem* is that there aren’t really any good options that are close to the Omni – so if you end up staying elsewhere, you spend so much on cabs, that…well, you get the point.

What we’re trying to do here is off-load the cost of those rooms on to our backs to encourage everyone to stay at the Omni. So, if you look at it — the 3 night package, for example, essentially takes your effective “cost of a hotel room” down to as cheap or cheaper than you can find at *any* other hotel in Orlando (not just a comparable one). And, we’re happy to do that because it helps us make our room block AND provides a better conference experience because everyone is in a central location.

Bottom-line: it’s a win-win.

So, don’t think we’re running some weird scam – we’re not. We’re literally trying to provide our attendees with a price that gets them in as cheaply as possible to where everyone is staying, while still meeting our commitments so that we can keep growing Blur on a year over year basis.

How it works: you register for the package you want, we’ll contact you via email and get you booked into our “master block” of rooms. When you show up, you’ll only need a credit card for any incidentals you rack up in the room. Clean, simple, easy.

I hope you’ll join us.

In that context, I’ve been sketching out a mission for Blur: building bridges over that chasm.

I think we begin to do that in several ways: One, which I highlighted yesterday, is via vehicles like the Kinect Accelerator, that helps to give students and entrepreneurs a jump-start into forming a company. Second, is through engaging areas of development that are being led by developers and hackers (Kinect, 3D printing, Do-It-Yourself Robotics, etc) – because these “hobbyists” and “amateurs” (quotes for sarcasm) tend to focus much more on brining something “to market” (i.e, releasing something usable), than the work going on in labs (which focuses much more on engineering perfection; btw, that’s not a knock on labs or research – just an observation). Lastly, I think you want to highlight actual commercial installations.

By going through those three phases (startups, developers, commercial installations), you can begin to help folks on both sides of the research-commercialization gap see how they cross (and it is bi-directional).

And so, in that context, I’m very pleased to announce Blur’s first two keynotes.

Joong Han Lee is the founder of Studio Homunculus, and he is doing work that is head-turning. I first saw Joon’s work around “haptic intelligentsia” a few months ago, and I’m very pleased that he’s agreed to come to Blur to speak.

I’ll do an incredibly bad job of explaining haptic intelligentsia — it is a project seeking to bring tactile experience to virtual objects via rapid prototyping — so, it’s really just easier if you check out the video yourself.

The second confirmed keynote is by Scott Snibbe. Scott has been implementing some incredibly interesting interactive mass media experiences for people like Bjork and James Cameron’s Avatar museum exhibit. Scott’s keynote is entitled, “Exploring the Universe through Interactive Mass Media,” and here’s how he describes the talk:

“Scott Snibbe will present selections from twenty years of interactive exhibits, interactive art, and interactive music. He will show many experiences that draw inspiration from science to create unabashedly emotional, social, and physical entertainment, including recent work creating the first app album with Björk: Biophilia; and the recent interactive exhibits for James Cameron’s movie Avatar. He will discuss the educational and societal benefits of interactivity; and the joys, challenges, and research involved in the creation and distribution of interactive media. As part of the lecture, the audience is invited to critically discuss the intersection of the arts and entertainment with science.”

Two bricks in the bridge across the gap. I really hope that you’ll come glimpse the future at Blur.

The release of the Kinect opened up a whole new landscape of hacking in HCI. Pre-Kinect, working on next-gen user interfaces required a) a research lab or b) lots of money. Post-Kinect, hackers everywhere were opening up ideas, lowering the barrier to entry, and shaking things up.

Last year, Microsoft was largely silent on the hacking of Kinect. This year, they’re embracing the Kinect community. So much so that they’ve launched the Kinect Accelerator (powered by TechStars).

The Kinect Accelerator is run by the good folks from TechStars and backed by Microsoft. If you get accepted into the program you get 20k, office space, a TON of Microsoft resources, Kinect/Xbox SDKs, mentorship — and it all ends with a demo day, where you’ll pitch angels and VC’s to get your Kinect startup funded!

This is, in short, AWESOME for the HCI community. In my short time exploring this area of research, I’ve quickly noticed how large the gap is between academia and commercialization. If next-gen HCI is going to achieve it’s full potential, it must get OUT of the lab and into the hands of users and buyers. The Kinect Accelerator is a MASSIVE opportunity for hackers and engineers working in this area to jump start their startup.

I can personally vouch for the folks at TechStars — they’re friends, awesome people, and some of the smartest people in the startup world. If you are fortunate enough to get into the Kinect Accelerator, you will come out realizing tremendous benefits.

So, spread the word, apply yourself, get folks involved.