The BiDi Screen is an example of a new type of thin I/O device that possesses the ability both to capture images and display them. Scene depth can be derived from BiDi Screen imagery, allowing for 3D gestural and 2D multi-touch interfaces. This bidirectional screen extends the latest trend in LCD devices, which has seen the incorporation of photo-transistors into every display pixel. Using a novel optical masking technique developed at the Media Lab, the BiDi Screen can capture light field-like quantities, unlocking a wide array of applications from 3D gesture and touch interaction with CE devices, to seamless video communication.

We investigate a protocol that allows people to form dynamic groups focused on topics that emerge serendipitously during everyday life and perhaps flower only for a short time. Group examples include people interested in buying the same product, with similar expertise, in the same location, or any intersection of these examples. We termed this the Human Discovery Protocol (HDP). Similar to how computers follow well-established protocols like DNS in order to find other computers that carry desired information, HDP presents an open protocol for people to announce bits of information about themselves, and have them aggregated and returned back in the form of a group of people that match against the user’s specified criteria. We experiment with a web-based implementation (brin.gy) that allows users to join and communicate with groups of people based on their location, profile information, and items they may want to buy or sell.

CommenTV is a social commenting system for audiovisual content. CommenTV is able to take and display texts, images, and related videos as social comments.

Dual-Space Drawing supports creative drawing and reflective learning experiences using dual layers: a screen display and a transparent display. Dual-Space Drawing users can reflect themselves and embody their ideas while designing scenes and drawing objects.

Ego presents an agent-based, user-centered architecture for storing, discovering, and sharing information about an expandable set of applications, such as location, reviews, or buying and selling goods. Users can fluidly create agents that hold information relevant to their intentions. For example, for buying or selling, users could announce a product they are interested in, then the system creates a group of users interested in the same product, allowing direct discovery and analysis. Tradeoffs between factors such as reputation and physical location are considered. We demonstrate an interactive, tabletop visualization of different urban scenarios involving 1,000 agents that discover each other in the context of some personal interest.

Using your personal fabratory, explore a world in which 3D printers cost as little as today's inkjets and are found in every home. We've developed several sub-$100 machines that demonstrate the practicality of this future, and greatly expand the range of items that can be created on your desktop. These new capabilities have far-reaching implications for personalization of products, direct-to-consumer production, and the creation of "information objects."

What if a building could sense what was happening inside of it, and tell the world? This project explores the concept of automated micro blogging–automatically generating and triggering short messages about what is going on in a particular context. The current platform is built around a modular sensor network which combines proximity, temperature, light, and sound values to make guesses about an environment and put those guesses to words.

MatchMaker is an automated collaborative filtering system that recommends friends to people on Facebook by analyzing and matching people's online profiles with the profiles of TV characters. The goal of MatchMaker is to produce friend recommendations with rich contextual information through collaborative filtering in the existing social network. Using relationships in TV programs as a parallel comparison matrix, MatchMaker projects these relationships into reality to help people find friends whose personality and characteristics have been voted to suit them well by their social network. MatchMaker also encourages more TV content viewing by using the social network context and connections to provoke people's curiosity of TV characters whom they have been matched with in their social network.

MindRider is a helmet that translates electroencephalogram (EEG) feedback into an embedded LED display. For the wearer, green lights indicate a focused, active mental state, while red lights indicate drowsiness, anxiety, and other states not conducive to operating a bike or vehicle. Flashing red lights indicate extreme anxiety (panic). As many people return to cycling as a primary means of transportation, MindRider can support safety by adding visibility and increased awareness to the cyclist/motorist interaction process. In future versions, MindRider may be outfitted with an expanded set of EEG contacts, proximity sensors, non-helmet wearable visualization, and other features that will increase the cyclist's awareness of self and environment. These features may also allow for hands-free control of cycle function. A networked set of MindRiders may be useful for tracking, trauma, and disaster situations.

PalimPost is a converged system for storing, searching, and sharing digital and physical world information using sticky notes and mobile devices. PalimPost extracts contextual cues from a user’s physical environment and activities, connects them to the user’s digital world research, and subsequently presents to the user systematically categorized, relevant, and JIT information. Whether a user is writing down a shopping list on a sticky note after surfing the internet at home, or checking out hundreds of products at hand in a physical store, whether a user is preparing a list of dinner ingredients in the kitchen or buying food outside in the market, PalimPost integrates information from different time and location to form a seamlessly connected experiences for the user.

The quality of communication, in all its various forms, is heavily dependent on the appropriate medium, timing, and level of trust between parties. Protocol is a tool that helps you, and society at large, understand and share preferences–personal or professional protocol–to communicate more effectively. Protocol is a dynamic and syndicated contact sheet, seen most often as an email signature or status update; it also functions as an independent site. More specifically, we see it as a preference page to share how and where you want to be contacted. Soon you will be able to embed your protocol in your site of choice (hey about.me, flavours.me, linkedin.com and wordpress.com).

Qooqle allows people to reshape their interactions with computing and reorganize the world’s information through their casual conversations and habitual gestures. Qooqle combines mobile, cloud, and social media to draw people closer to computing and make computers more invisible. The multi-modal user interface of Qooqle allows people to engage with one another and the information world more naturally.

Recently, multi-view display hardware has made compelling progress in graphics. Soundaround is a multi-viewer interactive audio system, designed to be integrated into unencumbered multi-view display systems, presenting localized audio/video channels with no need for glasses or headphones. Our technical work describes a framework for the design of multi-viewer interactive audio systems that is general and supports optimization of the system for multiple observation planes and room responses.

Takeover TV heralds a new era of bar patronage where you and your like-minded friends are in charge of the screens. When you check in at a location, your likes and dislikes automatically influence what is being shown on local displays. If you want more control, start a vote to pick a new show using your beer glass—or your iPhone. Create season-premiere nights for your favorite shows, or work with friends to define the types of shows that play at your local bars. Sick of watching sports? Assemble enough fans of your favorite show at the local pub and take over the TV.

This project builds a social, place-based information window into the Media Lab using 30 touch-sensitive screens strategically placed throughout the physical complex and at sponsor sites. The idea is get people to talk among themselves about the work that they jointly explore in a public place. We present Lab projects as dynamically connected sets of "charms" that visitors can save, trade, and explore. The GI demonstrates a framework for an open, integrated IT system and shows new uses for it.

Truth Goggles attempts to decrease the polarizing effect of perceived media bias by forcing people to question all sources equally by invoking fact -checking services at the point of media consumption. Readers will approach even their most trusted sources with a more critical mentality by viewing content through various "lenses" of truth.