Researcher Johnny Lee became a YouTube star with his demo of Wii Remote hacks -- bending the low-cost game piece to power an interactive whiteboard, a multitouch surface, a head-mounted display ...
Why you should listen to him:
To understand Johnny Lee, just take a look at his personal Projects page. Aside from his Wii Remote hacks -- voted the #1 tech demo of all time by Digg -- you can see all the other places his mind has turned: typography, photography, urban renewal ... to say nothing of his interesting sideline in Little Great Ideas, like the hypnotic "___ will ___ you."
When he's not hacking Wiimotes, Lee is a graduate student in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
"This guy deserves a medal."Cmdr Taco, Slashdot
Blog Posts on TED
-
Wii Remote hacks: Johnny Lee on TED.com – April 11, 2008
Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, bending the $40 game part so it powers a digital whiteboard, a multitouch display and a head-mounted 3-D viewer. A multi-ovation demo from TED2008. (Recorded March 2008 in Monterey, California. Duration: 05:40.)
Watch Johnny Lee's demo on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances.
Read more about Johnny Lee on TED.com.
Embed this video: Use this code to run the video on your own site:
-
Mash-ups, from the Model T to Johnny Lee – July 27, 2008
The New York Times has a thoughtful piece today on Model T hacking -- which kicked off the modern sport of customizing, bending, modding and otherwise repurposing a commercial item for unintended-by-the-manufacturer uses. As Steve Lohr writes:
The early Model T hackers were really pioneers in a realm of creative activity that academics call “user innovation.” It has become subject of systematic study only in the last few years, as researchers examine how this kind of individual endeavor works and try to assess its economic impact.
The approach is a break with the tradition of looking at companies, either large ones or start-up ventures, as the main engines of innovation in the economy.
In Charles Leadbeater's TEDTalk, learn more about the power of user-driven creativity -- then watch Johnny Lee's TEDTalk on Wii Remore hacks or Joshua Klein's demo of crow hacks and get inspired to do your own. Photo: Henry Ford Museum / New York Times
-
Wii Remote + wheelchair: Digital Wheel Art – June 6, 2008
Cross the Wii hacking of Johnny Lee with the creativity tools of Tod Machover, and you get Digital Wheel Art -- a wheelchair that uses a hacked Wii Remote to help disabled people make paintings. As Gizmodo reports, inventor YoungHyun Chung showed off the device at the Maker Faire in NYC last night. Watch the video from Chung's thesis site:
Digital Wheel Art from YoungHyun Chung on Vimeo. -
Counting down the Top 10 TEDTalks – June 26, 2008
With 50 million views since we debuted online two years ago, TED talks have become a powerful cultural force.
To celebrate this milestone, we're releasing a never-before-seen list: the Top 10 TED talks of all time, as of June 2008.
With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global health expert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideas behind TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea can reach -- and move -- a global audience. Links to all 10 talks are found below -- or browse through our Top 10 TED Talks Theme. Even if you've seen all the talks, the highlights video is darn fun.
Embed this video: Use this code to run the video on your own site:
Download the Top 10 TED Talks highlights video:
Video to iTunes (MP4)
Video to desktop (Zipped MP4)
Hi-def video (480p)Top 10 TED Talks of all time
1. Jill Bolte Taylor: My stroke of insight
2. Jeff Han: Touchscreen demo foreshadows the iPhone
3. David Gallo: Underwater astonishments
4. Blaise Aguera y Arcas: Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo
5. Arthur Benjamin: Lightning calculation and other "Mathemagic"
6. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
7. Hans Rosling: The best stats you've ever seen
8. Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better
9. Al Gore: 15 ways to avert a climate crisis
10. Johnny Lee: Creating tech marvels out of a $40 Wii Remote -
Johnny Lee on the power of video demos – October 26, 2008
In today's New York Times, Johnny Lee talks about his clever Wii hacks -- and how he shared them with the world via viral video. Johnny Lee's TEDTalk, in which he shows how to make an interactive whiteboard from a $40 game controller, is a perpetual Top 10 talk on TED.com. Lee's amazing YouTube videos and his TEDTalk have helped to spread this cheap-but-effective educational tool around the world. From the story: Some 700,000 people, many of them teachers, have downloaded the software, Mr. Lee says. Much more expensive whiteboards may offer more features and better image resolution, but Mr. Lee’s version is adequate for most classroom applications. For more video demos from TED, check out: Hod Lipson's "self-aware" robots >> Dean Kamen's moving demo of a robotic arm >> Blaise Aguera y Arcas' demo of Seadragon and Photosynth >>
