As part of the monthly igloo Pitsop we often like to throw interesting physical and mental challenges at the eskimos. This months challenge is a great collaborative exercise, that was developed at TED and is called the Marshmallow Challenge. The challenge works like this. Teams of 4 are given the following items:

20 strands of spaghetti
1 metre of string
1 metre of masking tape
1 marshmallow

Using these ingredients the team then have 18 minutes to build the highest freestanding structure that can support a marshmallow.

So how did they go?…

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It’s pretty rare for me to get excited about much on the internet these days but coming from a mapping background this Ted talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ blew me away. Like everyone else, I was amazed when Google Street View came to Australia as it really changed the way we consume maps online and on our mobile). Now, it looks like Microsoft is going to use their photosynth technology (which is super cool as well if you want to check it out) to allow you to not only go to street-view level, but then explore inside buildings using crowd-sourced images from sites like Flickr. This I can see could be useful, but they then demonstrate a live video overlay which, kudos to them is pretty cool technology-wise- I’m just at a loss as to how I would use it.

There was something voyeuristic about Google street-view with countries like Germany actually taking a stand and banning it, but this development goes far beyond that. I think we may see other countries joining Germany, but for me… I think it’s awesome.