Ask Again Later...

Can't decide what to do for lunch? Let the Internet decide for you! The wheel of food takes a zip code and creates a random pinwheel populated with restaurants nearby. I guess technically it can be the wheel of whatever since you specify the query, but I'm constantly up against the "I don't care what I eat" rock and "I really should get something" hard place. Take it for a spin, you've got enough decisions to make today.

• Wheel of Food
  
• Via LifeHacker

Hello, [reader name], Nice Day To Read Blags, Isn't It?

This is kinda funny.  If you're not creeped out about surveillance and tracking and whatnot.  Mini owners (the car, not small persons who hold property) in major cities that enroll in a program will see personalized messages displayed on Mini billboards as they drive by.  The system works by retrieving data wirelessly from the key fob in the car and generates a message based on survey information the user has filled out.  (Like telling Kate that its a nice day for her convertible)  Kind of neat but also kind of weird that people volunteer to be advertised to about a product they've obviously already bought.

I could see someone striking up a deal with EZpass to do much the same thing; of course it'd have to be an opt-in situation or risk massive privacy invasion.

• Autopia: Talking Billboards Get Personal With Mini Cooper Drivers

Robot Valets Before Robot Butlers?

Check out this swank parking garage in New York.  Its clean and well lit and for robots only.  Cause lets face it, you let people into a parking garage and they're just going to gunk it up with chewing gum and urine.  Basically you let this robotic car jukebox park you car for you instead of screeching around corners looking for a spot before that soccer mom can get to it.  The space in this particular case went from a 24 spot mini lot to a 67 car sardine can that would make an aircraft carrier jealous.  (if you've never been on an aircraft carrier, trust me, its a tight fit.)  But its the all mechanical attendants that keep people from wasting space by parking with enough room to actually get out the door.

The only humans on hand will be collecting cash, because you just can't trust those robot bastards with money.

Heh, robot bastards always shorting the till.  This sounds pretty good (aside from the reports of dropped and stuck cars) as a second option if I can't have my George Jetson car that folds into a briefcase.

• Jalopnik: Take It Down To Chinatown

I Don't Wanna Model It By Hand.

While I'm thinking of automation and recognition, Google should hop on the interpreted 3d model bandwagon. You know about Google Earth. You know about SketchUp. Both of which are really cool, and when you combine the two into the 3D Warehouse and have an open community populating a global structure database things get wild. But lets say that Google were to buy and present a program that takes several pictures of a building and, after designating a few key regions, will make a textured 3D model all by itself. That sounds , dare I say it, even easier than making things in SketchUp. And its not as far fetched as you might think. There are several different projects on creating spatially referenced data from images.

• ArchitectureWeek - Tools - Developing 3D Models from Photos - 2002.0123

Update
Oh, by the way, Blogger beta is getting to be a pain in my ass. See, beta runs on your Google account, which at this point is unassociated with your Blogger account. So when I hit up Blogger it automatically signs me in because I'm using Gmail and Gcal and Gmaps and Writely and Spreadsheets and Analytics and Page creator and Picasa web albums. But that account has never heard of Daily Placebo before and I have to sign out and back in with my old Blogger account. And to complicate things, its the SAME USER NAME as my google account, just a different password. And since forefox saves and auto completes my passwords, I never know which screen I'm going to get. Confusing I know. Sorry, I'm just getting a little frayed. So all you Google guys who read this, could you hurry and fix me up? Don't worry about a massive account update; I'm all about make-you-feel-special exclusiveness.