Start-up Lytro Aims to Sharpen Focus of Entire Camera Industry

A Mountain View start-up is promising that its camera, due later this year, will bring the biggest change to photography since the transition from film to digital. Ordinarily, I’m turned off by such hyperbole, but after having seen a demo from Lytro, that statement seems downright reasonable. The breakthrough is a different type of sensor that captures what are known as light fields, basically all the light that is moving in all directions in the view of the camera. That offers several advantages over traditional photography, the most revolutionary of which is that photos no longer need to be focused before they are taken.

Go with the Flow (by Filippo Cuttica)

Go with the Flow is a new way to visualize email. Built of tubes and wires, the contraption filters your incoming emails into three cylinders – work, family, and friends – and colours them accordingly. That’s kind of neat on its own, but here’s where it gets interesting: you actually haven’t received any emails yet. They’re just backed up and chillin’. To receive emails, you operate valves beneath each tube, allowing water to trickle down into a physical inbox. Depending on how far you’ve opened a valve, you’ll receive a proportional amount of emails from that category.