starting off the Tuesday with the best invention since sliced bread. OK, maybe not, but it is still pretty cool
Introducing the Popinator, a popcorn distribution machine that is voice activated. Simply say Pop and it will shoot a single popped corn in your direction and you can “easily” catch it with your mouth.
The Popinator
A binaural microphone array on the machine’s front listens for a clear “pop” voice command, determines where the command came from and shoots.
See it in action in the video below
There is no word on if this machine will ever see the day of light for all of us to acquire, but this is what the creating company (Popcorn, Indiana) had to say:
“All we have to say is: it is a work in progress right now. We certainly hope that one day it will become a commercial project, but as of now there is no shipping date and no price tag. It is purely a fun internal project we are toying with here at Popcorn Indiana. Based on the very positive responses we are getting online, we think this is well worth looking into as a commercial product.”
I really hope it does and I will install one in the office next to my desk.
Trash cans haven’t really changed much in the past, but this Japanese genius just made all the wait worth it.
He has created the Smart Trashbox, a moving can which uses a Kinect to track airborne garbage and make sure you’ll never miss ever again.
Check out the video of it in action.
A lot of work went into this project and the creator (Modder FRP) states that there is still a lot of work to be done, but right now it is pretty impressive.
We have been playing around with new ways of interaction for a while and touch and Natural user interfaces always played a big role in it.
Some of the work we can done can be found on our blog here and here, on the razorfish emerging experiences blog here and there is plenty more as well.
So we are always interested when this kind of technology and innovation makes it into the real world. Yesterday the Audi City in London opened up and is showing off how you will buy your next Audi by using touch, Kinect and RDID.
Audi at the moment sells 36 different new cars and with all of the customization you can do there are something like 200 million possible iterations of those and obviously you can’t have that many cars in the show room.
So what if you could customize your new car the way you want and then see if life size drive past you on a 210 inch screen – awesome, yes!
Audi City has multiple levels, with the upstairs level having 4 of those floor to ceiling screens. Check out their vision in the video below:
2 of the screens have kinect sensors connected to them so you can interact with it with gestures, a directional sound system makes sure you are not disturbed by other potential buyers on the other screen (or vice versa) and it lets you experience the engine sound and the sounds of closing doors.
A touch screen then takes over where you can easily customize every single aspect of your new car, down to the colour of your gear stick. Spin it, turn it, zoom it – all of that is possible with high resolution imagery and the touch panel.
Paint, leather and cloth samples on RFID-enabled swatches can be grabbed from the wall and placed next to the 32in touch screen, automatically updating your vehicle with the choice you’ve made.
Once you’re happy with your choices it generates a mood board with hi-res snaps and videos of your chosen car, which can be shared on Facebook and Twitter, emailed to a friend, or stored on a USB key.
Audi plans to roll the 3M multitouch screens out to dealerships all over the world, and to create 20 Audi Cities by 2015. I for one can’t wait for the one in Australia to be opened.
GPS is great and has helped nearly everyone at one stage or another to find their way.
The problem is that it doesn’t work indoors and all the mapping companies are working hard on finding a solution so you can find your way around the shopping mall or the supermarket.
Now there is a new kid on the block called IndoorAtlas.
Developed by a team at Finland’s University of Oulu, their method relies on identifying the unique geomagnetic field of every location on Earth to get positioning through a mobile device.
It is very accurate, to less than 6.6 feet, and it can work without triangulations of wireless signals and at any location. IndoorAtlas has already conducted tests in a mine 4,593 feet deep.
Geomagnetic location-finding is already available through an Android API, so hopefully there will be plenty of apps coming our way soon.
Check out the video below for a brief explanation.
The rumours have been around for a while but Google finally unveiled Project glass.
Google X – the secret Google lab that focuses on technology that should reach the masses. They worked on this project to deliver a technology that should work for you, to be there when you need it and get out of your way when you don’t. Augmented reality puts information in your field of view with information about your surroundings, answers to questions you asked and waypoints on maps if you want directions. It can also take picture that you can instantly share with your Google+ circles.
check out the video below to get an idea of what it is capable off.
The glasses are in Beta testing at the moment and Google hasn’t released and dates or prices for it yet.
It is fair to assume that Google will release the technology and glasses manufacturers will be able to implement it into their creations.
Most touch panels and controllers today suffer from about a 100ms delay and while most people got used to it, I still find it really annoying.
And so does Microsoft as they are putting money into the task of getting rid of that lag. Microsoft Research has figured out a way to get the delay down to 1 ms.
check out the video below to see the difference.
Pretty awesome and I can’t wait to see this technology going mainstream and into all kinds of touch devices.
How do those 2 fit together you ask? Microsoft has teamed up with Lionsgate to show off the latest HTML5 techniques (movie-like effect: stream, lens flare and video projections) and to promote IE9.
I had some issues getting onto the page, but I think it is because it is making the rounds in the internet and everybody is checking it out.
Nevertheless it is a pretty nifty and beautiful site and you have the ability to connect it to your facebook and your friends appear on billboards and screens.
The site also gives you some exclusive movie content and there are 2 easter eggs that reveal 2 never before seen clips.
1. In the Control Room you can type in “ivolunteer” on your keyboard after clicking on the map section
2. In the Avenue of Tributes you can click on Katniss and then Peeta to reveal a clip from the training center
I can’t wait for the movie to come out as it looks great and it looks like HTML5 is being pushed to its boundaries on this site.
is still ugly and it reminds me of those VR systems in gaming arcades that somehow died out.
Forth Dimension Displays, a company that produces high resolution near-to-eye microdisplays that are used in microscopes, film cameras erc., want to take their displays to get to the next milestone of gaming.
Last week they demonstrated Half-Life 2 with their head-mounted, motion-sensing, high-definition displays, a vest loaded down with two large drive electronics kits and a modded PlayStation Move gun.
Simple – you cover it with a bunch of LEDs and make it disappear.
Mercedes Benz wanted to show that their new F-Cell model is good for the environment because it has 0.0 emissions. So they made it invisible.
Or at least from one point of view. One side of the new car was covered in LEDs and the other side had a Canon 5D Mark II attached to it so the video shot by the Canon was than shown on the other side making the car disappear.
We all know this moment where you are focusing on your friend while taking the perfect picture only to find out later that there is some tourist in the background, some weird looking stranger bombing himself into our perfect shot.
Now there seems to be a solution on the horizon, Scalado announced a technology called Remove that will make it very easy to remove unwanted photobombers from your holiday shots. Simply select and remove.
Don’t believe it? Check out the video:
So how do they do it? The technology takes a series of photos in quick succession and then pinpoints moving objects in the collection, giving you the option to remove them with a click.
Right now it isn’t commercially available, but I can’t wait to have this on my phone soon.
What is WiGig you are asking? WiGig is an alliance that completed a multi-gigabit 60Ghz wireless specification.
It means that WiGig enables wireless transfer rates more than ten times faster than today’s fastest wireless LAN, and it’s completely backward compatible with existing WiFi devices.
Panasonic is now in the process of jamming the functionality into SD cards set to arrive next year and they already have a working prototype that they showed off at DigInfo.
Photos and videos were effortlessly send to secondary displays and played without any glitches. According to them a whole DVD can be transferred in under a minute.
But check it out in action here and be surprised by how much it looks like Amnesia Connect
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.
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)
We have seen bendable displays in the past from Samsung, LG and Toshiba, but none of them have really put it into a functional prototype.
Now Nokia had their Nokia World in London and Tapani Jokinen, Head of Design at Nokia showed off their bendable phone and how it would react when you bend it different ways.
The user will control this flexible Nokia Kinetic phone by bending, twisting and even squeezing it. Different bends will result in different functions on the phone and he had a good point when he said that it makes it much easier to use in the cold winters in Finland when you are wearing gloves.
cLast week it went around all the blogs and I don’t know how many times I watched the video below. If I had a cool $650000 dollars laying around I would buy one myself.
here is the teaser we saw last week
And then the gadget show aired a few days ago in the UK, but unfortunately if you are not in the UK you can’t use their streaming and catch-up services. Luckily they uploaded it to Youtube so if you have a cool 17 1/2 min to spare check out how the best FPS simulator was build
Microsoft Research has given us some coolstuff in the past and they don’t seem to be stopping any time soon.
Today its the HoloDesk, a tool that lets you manipulate virtual 3D objects with your bare hands. Looking through a transparent display, the objects react nearly instantly, rolling from a sheet of real paper into a real cup and falling into shadow if you block the virtual light-source.
Check out the super cool video of it in action:
If you haven’t guessed it, there is a Kinect sensor at its heart. Super awesome.
having worked in IT before and now working on lots of cool emerging technologies and experiences, I always seem to have multiple PCs on my desk that I am simultaneously working on.
At some stage I had 4 keyboards and 4 mice on my desk and no more space for my lunch. So I am constantly looking for solutions for that and I have played around with software and hardware KVMs. Most of them are buggy and the hardware ones just add too many cables to my desk.
Today I came across a little tool build by a developer in the Microsoft Garage project called Mouse without borders.
Simply put it is a software kvm that can connect 4 of your PCs that are on the same network and you can use your 1 keyboard and mouse for all of them.
A simple installer and setup process and you are up and running. It works quite seamlessly and you can easily configure the location of your physical machine – just drive your mouse out of the screen towards the next and it will appear there.
Other feature are copy and paste, drag files across
I finally had the time to read about this “little” screen at SIGGRAPH, the article has been open in my browser for about 6 days.
And it was well worth the wait.
A projected capacitive display is nothing new, multiple smartphones, including the iPhone has one, but having an 82 inch one is something very special.
check out the video below and dream about having one of these puppies in your living room some day.
Right now this kind of screen is still really expensive ($120 000) and even the CEO said that consumers will see this in the market as soon as it is more affordable.
We all remember the original 8bit Outrun Game from 1986. I remember playing it until my fingers were bleeding.
So what would it be like if you could have this in real life? That is what the people at the University of California Irvine ask themselves and they created a system that, with the help of cameras and some customized software, looks in front of the vehicle and reproduces a map of what lies ahead of you onto the screen in 8bit rendering just like Outrun.
All you have to do now is follow the route. Simply awesome.
Posted by stephanlange 
Amnesia Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.