The key lay in using a fan to create a sheet of air that would reflect light projected at a given angle by the micromirror system. Dyner won't be too specific since his patents haven't yet been issued. But his first prototype made images from a computer hover in midair, something like a two-dimensional hologram. The nifty part: Sensors built into the box can tell when a user's hand (or an object used as a pointer) "touches" the image, allowing a finger to serve as a mouse.
Dyner formed IO2 Technology to develop his invention, dubbed the Heliodisplay. "What people respond to is that [the Heliodisplay] allows for digital information to coexist spatially with the real world," Dyner says. "You can imagine it being used as a heads-up display for doctors doing surgery, for videoconferencing, or for commanding a submarine." Not to mention video games. After seeing a demo of the Heliodisplay, a member of Disney's Imagineering group had one question: "How many can you build by May?"
IO2 is considering licensing the technology to other display manufacturers but may build the product itself. The price, at least initially, will be about the same as a plasma-screen TV--several thousand dollars.
Meanwhile, a team of contractors is working on producing a prototype capable of creating a 42-inch image. "I like the idea that an image can now be anywhere--it doesn't have to be confined in a box or stuck on a screen," he says. And Dyner is already onto something that could be another big idea. Now at MIT's Media Lab, the inventor is working to develop an intelligent material--call it "digital clay"--that can change form, texture, and color in response to user input.
Bill Bass is wearing a landmark pair of blue jeans. He has spent the morning packing boxes in a distribution center, something he does a few times a year as the senior vice president for e-commerce at Lands' End. And so he's dressed casually. The denim pants that he's wearing were one of the first prototypes produced by a customized clothing system that the company introduced in 2001.
Customized clothing is a back-to-the-future innovation in the world of online retail, using smart software and new manufacturing equipment to produce the kind of clothing that used to require a skilled tailor and scads of money. Online customization, Bass says, is allowing Lands' End to make clothes the way Dell makes computers. Items are cut to order, so the company doesn't have to keep inventory sitting around. The approach could free the company from forecasting sales or guessing whether customers will prefer pleats this season, because customers will tell Lands' End exactly what they want to buy.
Of course, an online tailor can't reach out and measure your inseam. Lands' End relies on a list of simple questions that don't require the shopper to break out the measuring tape--such things as shoe size, sport-coat size, height, and weight. Software uses those answers to calculate how weight is distributed around a customer's body.
Lands' End put custom chinos up for sale in 2001 and is now rapidly expanding the number of its custom products. "This is the beginning of a wave hitting the apparel industry," Bass says. "And it's taking off for the same reason the Internet took off: convenience and price."
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