What can I say? Life can’t all be about work!

For my birthday this week I had the opportunity to join the Porsche club for a driver training day. This included a couple of joy rides in the passenger seat. The highlight being this awesome Porsche Panamera. For a 2 tonne, 4 door running as an automatic, it did very nicely topping 200kph on the short straights. All in leather appointed luxury.

Watch the video below to join me around the track. It looks quite civilised until you notice the vibration and the way the camera suddenly getting much closer to the front as we approached the corners.

A big thanks to Peter and the guys. I had a great time.

A few months ago I wrote about 2D or QR barcodes and how important they are in connecting the real and virtual worlds. This month I am going to give you a bit of insight in to what will come after using this technique...the answer is image search.

I’m not talking about searching for an image, like when you need that piece of clip art or photograph to insert in your document, perhaps this is best explained by an example.

Let’s say you are considering buying a new car; you have a rough idea of what you’re looking for and you’re walking down the street and see just the thing. It’s cute, the right colour, five seats, everything you’re looking for; you pull out your mobile phone, take a quick photograph of it and you are taken immediately to a website from the manufacturer giving you details on the model, features, performance and of course your local dealer.

That evening you go out to dinner with friends, you see what looks like and interesting restaurant. A quick photograph with your mobile of the shop front and Google returns a restaurant review, menu and pricelist. You enjoy an excellent dinner including a bottle of wine, a quick photograph of the label on the bottle and you are able to order yourself a case to be delivered to your home in minutes.

That weekend, you’re at the beach with the kids, you see a bit of drama unfold as the lifesavers pull a man from the surf and get him back on his feet. On the way back to the car, you walk past the watchtower, take a photo of the logo and are taken to their website so you can make a contribution to the great work they do.

While all this might sound a bit farfetched, it’s actually a lot closer than you realise. In fact Google has had an experimental project called Google Goggles running for some time now. While this feature is currently only available to those using Google’s Android powered smart phones it is only a matter of time before this sort of capability is rolled out to all phones.

Recent tests that I’ve seen have shown it being used on logos, shop fronts, products, barcodes, book covers, paintings and people.

Now I’m not suggesting that you run out and start changing your website to support this capability right now - widespread adoption of this sort of technology is still a little way off and a few of the shortcomings still need to be ironed out. The problem is these days you don’t know whether “the future” is still a few years off or just a matter of months.

2010 I believe is going to be an incredible year, there are a huge range of technologies that I have been watching for some time now that look like they are reaching maturity, widespread adoption or new levels of being combined with other technologies. The rate of change or our world in the last decade was pretty amazing but I suspect we are in for even greater changes in this decade.