The is the second time in three years I’ve seen a type of remote research that had nothing to do with interface design, but is totally inspiring and teh awesome. Coincidentally they both had something to do with Harvard. The first was the “track your happiness” project, and this time it’s from a joint MIT / Harvard project, and it’s a freaking CARDIOCAM that “measures a subject’s heart rate by sensing subtle shifts in facial coloring caused by the variation in blood flow.”

And below is a video showing it in action. This represents a use of webcams to process and analyze imagery that is totally insane by our standards today. Obviously it’s a ways away, but it does spark some interesting idea for other kinds of advanced remote research: