Final push on getting together this belated report on the Dagstuhl seminar Computational Creativity: An Interdisciplinary Approach I attended a couple of months ago. Features such diagrammatic gems as the attached, depicting ongoing interactions in group improvisation.

In another of those episodes that makes you wonder when exactly the Future chose to creep up on you unannounced, Oakland-based startup Livescribe last year launched a device called the Smartpen. It's essentially a ball-point pen, turbocharged with an IR camera in the tip and a microphone, together capable of recording penstrokes and audio -- which can then be collectively transferred to computer via a USB cradle. Entire pages of drawings and text are then accessible onscreen, searchable via OCR and with replayable audio linked to the time of writing. Insane.

Something they don't make such a song and dance over is the fact that its accompanying "3D headset" is equipped with binaural microphones; I imagine it only records in sufficient quality for oral note-taking, but it's still an appealing prospect to have such a compact multifunctional binaural recorder...

"Soon Roy Orbison is completely wrapped in cling-film. He is like a big black beetle wrapped in a silvery cocoon. The satisfaction is unparalleled by anything in my previous existence."

-- Ulrich Haarbürste, Roy in Clingfilm Story 1