Researchers in Germany, Canada and the US may have come up with an elegant solution that can work with any smartphone and an external display: virtual projection.
The system works by using a central server that constantly takes screenshots of the external display and compares them with the images from the phone’s camera to track its location.
It then replicates what’s on the handset’s screen, while allowing you to add multiple image windows and position and rotate them.
Additionally, multiple users can collaborate and virtually project pictures or videos onscreen at the same time.
Personally I think your battery life will suffer the most, but in general it is a cool idea.
German Photographer Marcus Reugels takes pictures of water droplets refracting an image behind them, making them each appear to contain a world or Batman or Spiderman.
How he says on his website, every droplet is a unique piece of art. Pretty amazing
Check out his other work, which he says was not manipulated with Photoshop at all.
Being a gamer myself there is always that point where I could go and do exercise or I could finish that next level and then usually I end up not going to the gym.
Now there is a solution for my first world problem. BitGym has created a control system for playing iOS games while you are on your favourite exercise equipment. Right now it is a racer (that looks a lot like Outrun) and you control the cars steering with you head and your acceleration is based on your exercise rate.
Check out the video:
nifty little tool, but I am not sure if the movements you have to do to get through the game are good for your posture
CES in Las Vegas is on and like every year I am jealous of everybody who can go to it.
But nevertheless I still get to see all the cool new gadgets and while I have seen prototypes of this before, but this seems to be ready to be installed in my house.
The Samsung Smart Window – a transparent display that is touch enabled and a one sided pane which means people on the outside can’t see what you are seeing.
here are some videos of it in action:
I love the blinds, also word on the street is that mass production is starting in the next few month, but no word on price yet.
I am very excited about the forthcoming Windows 8 and I have been playing around with it since the Developer Preview was released.
We have a big touchscreen in the office here so it is perfect for the Metro UI, but I have to say that the mouse interaction on a laptop without a touchscreen is very average.
Along came Tobii and at first you think it is just another gimmick, but everybody on the net who has actually tried it is blown away by it.
Tobii comes with an eye control device, a rectangular glass obilisk that is attached to the hinge of the laptop. It requires a personal calibration and off you go. It also controls all the swipe gestures available in Windows 8.
We have seen some cool stuff in the past that could bring us closer to the Star Trek HoloDeck, e.g. the HoloDesk
And now Microsoft Research has pushed a little further and gives us a 3D hologram that is floating in mid air at 15 frames per second and is viewable from 192 different points at a time.
reminds me of Star Wars
Of course Kinect is involved here and the depth sensor makes it possible to interact with the hologram – you can basically touch it.
It is still a long way off from 3D hologram telephony or a full size HoloDeck, but for now this is pretty cool.
Over the years of development time on a number of small and big projects, I personally have always found myself in a position of asking myself “Do I use DTO’s?”.
I wrote this article to share a blog post from SamsCode.com
For those that are not tech-heads or geeks and are not sure what a DTO is; A DTO is the acronym for Data Transfer Objects, and they aid in making a web or software experience lighter, faster and easier to implement new features straight from your Database storage model.
So when Microsoft brought out the new paradigm of Database to -> Object & Object to -> Database mapping techniques called LINQtoSQL and LINQtoEntities a lot of people stopped creating DTO’s and started using the direct Entity Database object straight from your Data Access Layer….
Over time myself and other users have realised that this is a BAD! BAD! BAD!, Yes BAD! way of moving data around, due highly to these little boxes of data being transferred around your Web applications or Software applications and clogging up your memory allocation.
What made me ask myself the question of using DTO’s again was in Development of a project on the ASP.NET MVC With Entity Framework 4.1 platform was being stuck with the dreaded Error Exception of “Unable to serialize and object, as there is a circular reference“.
What Entity Framework does is it maps out your Database Structure tables and creates a persistent class for each table and the constraints and associations each table has from each other.
For example in a database you might have a Table called “Employee” and you then have another table called “JobRole” and there is a linke between these two tables to show that an Employee can have multiple Job Roles. Entity Framework in .NET will create an object called Employee and create a Property on Employee with the name JobRoles, and this for each record in the Employee list will state an Employees Job Roles list.
So as I am personally a passionate .NET Developer, and I also love the idea of some automation, when used correctly if stumbled across maybe one of the best articles of the past 3 years in Database Object Mapping.
In this article from SamsCode.com he gives you some amazing and time saving approached to Entity Framework Templates & object classes to automate your whole Data Transfer Object Model directly from your Entity Framework Model. But more importantly his concepts are “Real World” and there is not one template that he talks about that won’t help you out with making your Data Layer & Business Layers of Web Applications and Software clean and nice.
Vodafone Ireland have launched a creative and innovative campaign this year in conjunction with the Christmas Season. The campaign looks to combine social media, projection mapping and street art, in an attempt to take the brand’s Facebook community offline and onto the streets.
The campaign is a nice extension and ties in nicely with Vodafone’s social voice this year which is all about encouraging their community to ‘Make someone happy’ with Random acts of kindness.
Local Irish artists, took to the streets, creating light displays from messages submitted to the Vodafone Playgroup Facebook wall. Using new laser graffiti technology, these were showcased on the sides of buildings in three cities across Ireland.
Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year to all back in Ireland
1. How many hours of video were uploaded to YouTube in 2010?
2. What percentage of smartphone owners, use their device while shopping?
3. What Australian state most frequently searches for the weather forecast?
As a planner, I’m always chasing that one research tool to bring them all together, and while Think Insights with Google attempts to do just that, it does fall short in a few areas. It’s missing the core search functionality that is the cornerstone of Google’s business. After all, the nirvana of a planner research tool would provide just that, a simple way to intelligently search and prioritise, facts, stats and behavioural trends based on a simple question, such as: ‘How many Australian’s use their laptop in the kitchen while cooking?’
On the flip side, this is a good resource if you are looking for general information on search and mobile related topics, particularly for Google brand related products. And, it does include over 100 custom reports, so you can certainly pop it on the list of go-to resources for all things digital.
My personal favourite resources on the site are: Our Mobile Planet tool (though the data is a little shady for the emerging markets such as India and China) and the Research Library finder.
Ultimately, Think Insights with Google is the perfect tool for media planners, and a useful resource for digital strategists too. Despite it’s downfalls it is one of the best free resources that I have found.
We have seen a lot of different uses for Kinect and more and more useful things have slowly come around (e.g. this mobile armchair )
Now there is another way of using Kinect – this time to track your customers in a retail environment. It’s called Shopper Tracker.
The sensor sits on top of the shelf and tracks the shopping behavior of the customers underneath. It then creates a heat map of the shelf so you can tell what your best selling items are. As far as I can tell it is not commercially available yet and no price has been announced, but that might change soon.
As a massive fan of the DJ deadmau5 and an ex-Londoner this footage of the recent Nokia product launch was always going to excite me.
That said you certainly don’t have to be a supporter of either to appreciate the sheer awesomeness of this video. Well executed and totally awe inspiring. Nokia successfully bring together the world’s most advanced 4D technology with great music to create an amazing free light show at Millbank Tower in London.
What happened?
“Each of the 120 metre high building’s 800 windows were covered with vinyl as 16 powerful projectors, stationed 300 metres away on the other side of the river, beamed 3D images onto the structure. Huge butterflies flew across the London skyline and the tower was twisted, pulsated and even fell down. Billed as the “future of live events” the spectacular show was accompanied by music from super producer deadmau5, who created exclusive remixes for the performance — adding the 4th dimension.”
Prepare yourself this is a light show like never before!
or in the case of the French bottled water company Contrex a fun ad campaign using a Neon Male Stripper.
This ad was broadcasted in October and it features pink exercise bikes in front of a, what seems to be, historic building in Paris and when some curious ladies start pedalling Neon lights come to life and reveal a male stripper starting to undress.
At the end the girls are told that they just burnt 2000 calories which falls in line with Contrex “My Contrexperience” digital campaign which says that we all would lose more weight if the process was funnier and these ladies definitely look like they had a good time.
Interestingly there are a few rumours online that claim that this is fake as nobody recognizes the building and citizens of Paris claim they never heard of it.
I think it is still a great campaign – tell me what you think in the comments.
Not sure if this a PR effort to promote the Sony Xperia play or the new album of Kasabian, but nevertheless it is a pretty awesome execution and a lot of effort would have gone into it.
2 “users” control real life football players by selecting commands on their Sony handsets that are then send to the players who are wearing ear pieces.
I like how the headband lights up when a player gets selected!
It seems a bit lagging at times, but it is a pretty impressive attempt
Since the announcement of Kinect for Windows at the start of November, many have asked if there will be PC-specific Kinect hardware coming. Microsoft confirmed today that there will indeed be a new Kinect device for Windows PCs.
Simple changes include shortening the USB cable to ensure reliability across a broad range of computers and the inclusion of a small dongle to improve coexistence with other USB peripherals. Of particular interest to developers will be the new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 centimeters. “Near Mode” will enable a whole new class of “close up” applications, beyond the living room scenarios for Kinect for Xbox 360.
The full press release contains more details including the announcement of new support and mentoring programs for Kinect development.
The Lexus LFA is the new limited edition supercar that came to Australia just a few month ago and was showcased at the Lexus stand at the Melbourne International Motor show 2011.
George P. Johnson came to us to create an interactive way to showcase the car that you can’t touch.
Straight away a few ideas popped into our heads and after presenting to the client we went with this:
The idea was simple:
We gave out a see through brochure to visitors of the motor show that will generate intrigue and drive them to Lexus stand to see what the completely clear brochure was all about. The brochure then came to life when it was placed on the Microsoft Surface table, launching an app that gave them an interactive way to learn about and experience this amazing $750 000 car without actually touching it.
Lexus was the only stand at the motor show with a Microsoft Surface table and people from all over Australia got to experience the app and were blown away by it. On the app itself you could explore Images of the car, videos of it in action, a time line of its development and a section where you could “drive” a virtual LFA yourself. The competition gave everyone the chance to win a once of a life time experience where 1 lucky winner could drive in the LFA with a professional race driver.
Additionally we incorporated a separate section called “The Extraordinary Way” where Lexus showed off their way of developing cars to show that all the effort and research that went into the LFA is also used in all their other cars.
Check out our video below:
The results speak for themselves:
1502 people took the brochure to the table 4312 unique content views 1487 went to the competition the virtual LFA was driven 1972.6km (that is 1472.6km more than the real LFA at that time)
So we revealed the short film we made for the Christmas party yesterday and thanks to Nikki Sulentics editing we had some good laughs!
Thanks to everyone who took their time to stay back and get involved! Stephan especially, his performance of the grinch reminded me of a young Brando, I suggest jumping back into that Darlinghurst theatre and sharpening that sword.
Amnesia Razorfish has a new Creative Director – meet Jay Morgan.
This much we know: Jay was formerly National Digital Creative Director at Southern Cross Austereo, he roasts his own coffee beans and (perhaps surprisingly considering point two) is a really nice guy.
You can read some more about Jay’s appointment on AdNews or follow him on Twitter.
Amnesia is always happy to support local talent and we are proud to show you a concept from one of our Interns, David Montero
David has been helping us with one of our Kinect internal projects while he was working hard on his own university project called dOh
Ever had a doh! moment?, that moment when the door slams behind you and you slap your forehead realising you left the house without taking the keys with you?
dOh will help you remember your keys, wallet, phone or anything else you could possibly forget.
All you have to do is “tag” your items and when you try to leave your apartment your doorknob will tell you, by flashing a coloured light at you, that you forgot a tagged item.
A really nice idea and I am sure it will help people in the future not to forget their things anymore. It could potentially even tell you that you lost your phone when you come back to your home
Posted by stephanlange 
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