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Today marks the launch of Escapeer, a new activity booking platform beta testing in New York City with plans for global expansion.  The simple concept is consumers can go online and book a range of activities from one centralized place.  Over a year in development, the site went live with hundreds of regional partners and should quickly scale to other major cities.

From a back end and planning perspective Escapeer is an incredibly ambitious project to begin with the task of getting so many businesses on board, but now that it’s live the site has the potential to create and own an entire market.  It’s an impressive achievement that I predict will snowball as word of mouth spreads and should quickly prove out a business model that’s scalable for other cities.

We wish them the best of luck and are glad we now have one place to go every time we want to plan an activity or find something fun to do for our out of town guests.

People since the dawn of time have spoken about having a sixth sense, an intuitive understanding of the world and people around them that enabled them to draw conclusions seemingly impossible beyond the realm of the 5 senses.

Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry of the MIT Media Lab unveiled a new technology platform at TED that enables users to access information and gain insights into the world around them combining technologies already available for a cost of around $350.

A camera surveys the landscape and recognizes gestures commonly used by the owner, processes this information, and then projects feedback onto a nearby surface, which in turn can be engaged and manipulated similar to Microsoft’s Surface application (the difference being that there is no need for an interactive surface with the image recognition technology).

Users can get information on products and people, access reviews and databases, and a whole lot more.  Pattie Maes ended her talk with the hypothesis that in as short as a decade such technology might be implanted in people to integrate this information directly into one’s internal thought processes.

Watch the video, a short write-up really can’t do this game-changing technology justice.  It is truly remarkable, where Minority Report meets The Matrix.

Stephen Wolfram is undoubtedly one of the smartest and most innovative people alive, so when he goes into seclusion and comes out with a claim to have the next big thing, we should listen.  Check him out in Wikipedia here

Wolfram Alpha could be as significant as Google.  The story is everywhere among tech bloggers like Lindsay Lohan going into rehab is to paparazzi, so if you want to get an overview try visiting here at Information Week or this thread from the creator of Twine who spent 2 hours with Wolfram in a personal demo.

What the infamous Hal from 2001 evokes is the fear of a well-intentioned computer who havocs destruction with the goal of serving the needs of its creator.  The conquest and subjugation of the Americas, Africa, and Asian colonies by Western colonialism followed similar principles i.e. we’re here to help you because you’re somehow unfit to rule yourselves; missionaries attempt to convert and destroy indigenous cultures in the name of God; and even ex-lovers stalk and chase after old flames because they want things to work out.

I’m curious to know if it’s possible to disentangle the conversation about values and benevolent intentions from the recurring pattern of having a destructive impact on the intended subject, particularly as this might relate to the future of marketing communications down the road.  What type of implications will technology like Wolfram Alpha have for behavioral targeting on websites?  Will new ad networks somehow “know” what products people want to buy from using semantic web technologies?