Momos are a delicious Tibetan dumpling that I enjoyed when a friend of a friend visited Boston for roflcon. Google search offered a terrific survey of the nearby Tibetan restaurants offering momo and even a ground level view of Rangzen (see Figure 1) at 14 Pearl Street, Cambridge.

Figure 1: Google Street View

Incidentally, I recently met Mok Oh (a graduate alum), founder of Everyscape, who pushes a visionary service debuted hours before Google Street View. Everyscape presents a vision of painting the world and allows people to visit every corner of both public and private space. Check out the interpolation between public and private space of the Cheers restaurant in Boston (Figure 2). Everyscape not only offers the ease of searching for momos in the area, but also the virtual experience of indoor dining. Although it’s still a small company in Beta testing, Everyscape has some neat demos and is striving to be a serious competitor.

Figure 2: Everyscape’s Complete Virtual Experience

Of course, all this reminded me and others of a piece of work done in 1978 here at MIT (OK fine, it was done in the research group I worked in) known as the Aspen Project. The Aspen Project won the “Golden Fleece Award”, an award presented to those projects which waste an obscene amount of government money and deemed completely useless. Luckily, that viewpoint has since changed. See Figure 3.

Figure 3: The Aspen Project