Over the summer I spent a few days in Chicago; I knew a little about the windy city by the lake, with the impressive architecture. What I didn’t know was that Chicago has a world-renowned collection of public art, which seems to abound particularly in downtown Millennium Park.

The park pretty much doubles as an outdoor gallery and concert hall with plenty of impressive stuff on display! Day or night the place was always crawling with visitors of all ages who came for concerts at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, to laugh and pose in front of the Cloud Gate sculpture, or gawk at the massive Crown Fountain glass block towers at each end of a shallow pool, while waiting expectantly for a burst of water to spout from the mouth of the Chicagoan up on the massive screen.

Granted, Crown Fountain is pretty fantastic as is, but I couldn’t help wondering how much more immersive it would be if there was a way of displaying the grinning faces of the folks actually looking on, in real-time. Ok, call me narcissistic but yes, I would’ve gotten a kick out of having my “mug” plastered on the giant glass block, and admit it, you probably would have too.

Time Magazine’s “Best Inventions of the Year” feature has some really interesting applications / gadgets:

Xerox’s self-erasing paper, on the Environment section, seems to go on a less ambitious direction than our own interactive paper R&D, but nonetheless it could be a very interesting application (I think my desk would be really appreciative if I could reuse the same paper over and over).

pink is the new white?

Very interesting things also on the Fashion inventions section (not talking about the models, erm), such as the Philips SKIN Dresses that we already know of, but are still quite impressive and good-loking (again, not talking about the models) while reflecting the user’s mood

‘Today I woke up feeling very bubbly’

or this augmented reality type of interactive mirror developed by IconNicholson (try to say it fast) for Bloomingdale’s store

from now on cross-dressing will never be as easy

Apparently there are also very important developments in the field of fiber-optics cables, and I’m just including it here because I really like the picture they use to illustrate it.

it looks like someone had his morning fiber

And in case you are wondering, the iPhone - yes, yes - grabbed both the Invention of the Year and the Gadget awards. Jump here for the full article.