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Last year was my first trip to CES and frankly, I was disappointed. Everything had to do with 3D. 3D TV’s, 3D video games, 3D without glasses, 3D energy conservation appliances. I found this development disappointing and surprising for three reasons.

1. Our brains and eyes aren’t built for 3D.
2. It’s not a new technology.
3. Three is a good amount of reasons to have.

This year was a different story. I was amazed at the amount of practical technology that was being presented. Sure, there were still massive 3D displays (LG) but it felt more like a showroom floor where the theme is “we’ll make life better” as opposed to “isn’t this neat?”

"Cut the Rope" as arcade game. File under "Neat!"

Of course there was some opportunity to fall into each category. For example, TCL developed Dual Screen Television Technology. From one TV screen people can watch two different shows by wearing different glasses. Anyone who is married or shares a studio apartment (ew, seriously, find your own place) knows how useful this is. Now my wife can watch “Bridget Jones’s Diary” while I watch “Bridget Jones’s Diary 2: The Edge of Reason” from the same TV! (high five)

It was with a heavy heart that I joined team iPhone this summer. As a self-appointed Apple h8r, I spent the previous 3 years of my mobile phone life with Android devices. As with any relationship, there were good and bad times but at the end I realized that we needed to test the waters with others. I was not the least bit enthusiastic about this decision but it felt necessary at the time. Now that I’ve had a few months to adjust, I can say it was the right decision if not for one main factor…Instagram.

It’s summer, the time of the year when we book our trips, tweet our vacation plans, and set up our auto-replies. In two weeks, I will be traveling to Russia, starting in St. Petersburg and cruising down the Volga River until I reach Moscow. Before I give off the wrong message, I’m not one of those epic explorers you see on TV shows, or busy consultants who travel intensely with suits and briefcases. I’m just a regular vacationer. As a kid, my parents would take me somewhere new every few months, and now it’s become a custom to travel.

Recently, I realized that aside from my favorite destinations, some of the places I’ve been to have begun to blur together. I needed a better way to keep track of travel memories.

There’s a lot of data out there about us. In fact, it’s easy to forget just how much information various companies and organizations (and the Internet in general) know about us. The first page of Reflecteur this week looks at the ways two separate sites used infographics to display a huge amount of information with very different results:

* Where Americans are Moving looks at 2008 IRS data to map county to county moves. It’s your one stop shop to US migratory information and it only takes a few minutes of playing with the maps to realize that there are a lot of stories hidden within this data. Just click on ‘Detroit’.
* Watch a Phone Company Stalk a Customer is, not surprisingly based on the title, far more disturbing. This site maps, via a video, all of the data a phone company in Germany gathered on one of their customers over 6 months. It seems more spy movie thriller than real life.

Travel over to Page 2 for a bit more fun:

Page one features 2 reinventions:

* In an interesting twist to the reimagining world theme we often discuss, Picture Cook takes the stuffy old recipe format and redesigns it with a focus on experimentation. Even if you’re more into the cut-and-dry recipe format, these flowchart-like versions of recipes will look great on your kitchen wall.

* Travel Time Tube reworks the classic London Tube map. A fixture in the design world, this site completely changes the focus of the map from relation to time. Put in two stations and watch it change forms based on routes that take the longest.

Page two looks at two captivating photo collections:

* Ghana- The Electronic Dumping Ground of the World highlights the dark side of technology and electronics. Perhaps the ‘new gadget smell’ isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be?

* Finally, we get a glimpse of a somewhat odd underworld in Taryn Smith’s Contraband. These images showcase 1,000 various items confiscated at JFK airport in New York. Some items make sense, but some…. well you just need to see them to believe it.

Download issue 80 of Reflecteur here!