There's a HowTo behind everything, including the astounding, just released 3-D Avatar. Reviews across the board agree with one thing: the film is visually breathtaking. PopSci explains the technology behind the filmmaking.
Our friends at Graffiti Research Lab were detained in Beijing over the weekend on charges of “upsetting public order”.
In late 2011, representative from China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan submitted a proposal called the International Code of Conduct for Information Security (ICCIS) to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that called for international consensus of a global set of rules and regulations that standardize information flow on the internet.
Just in the nick of time. The TSA has come under a lot of scrutiny lately as outrage grows around the country over goons in gloves touching the junk of everybody from toddlers to grandmas. Then there was a suspicious if not improbable al-Qaeda underwear bomber threat to get things back on track. Now we have a French woman with a “surgically implanted device” on transatlantic flight.
Created by the University of Pennsylvania, these bots would impress Q himself. This army of mini quad-copters are controlled with rhythmic precision, a truly awe-inspiring collaboration of music and technology. From playing a synthesizer to drums and cymbals, each robots is multi-talented. The tiny helicopters are equipped with reflectors, making it possible to plot their position using infrared lights and cameras positioned around the room. Check out the video!
Just as they promised, SightEra Technologies, creator of automatic video editor Magisto, has released an app for the iPhone.
I remember being a child and playing on my mother's typewriter—oh, how simple it all was! Nowadays, we've got our smartphones, laptops, iPads and various other gadgets to type out our documents and complete almost any other task at hand. Sometimes it's nice to get away from all the technology, load up a fresh ribbon, and type away on the typewriter!
I recently came across this amazing MIT media lab site, Kit-of-No-Parts. Though not directly related to the content Cory has been posting, it is an interesting "craft" approach to technology/science. The site was created as documentation of a student's thesis work in the High-Low Tech research group at the MIT Media Lab:
The HP Touchpad 64 GB is out in action with a robust processor and additional applications in the market. Using the best technology on earth, it is looking forward to give a tough fight to the Apple’s iPad 2. The 64 GB HP TouchPad sound more promising to its predecessors. The experts feel that the two device, HP TouchPad 64 and Apple’s iPad-2 is more or less the same. Let’s have a glance over the device by discussing the various features it encompasses.
Some cops already have the ability to extract data from your cell phone using handheld forensic devices, but soon police officers will have a new mobile data collection toy to play with—an Apple iPhone. Actually, it's an iPhone-based device that connects directly to the back of an iPhone, which is designed to give law enforcement an accurate and immediate identification of a suspect based on their facial features, fingerprints and even their eyes.
Always falling asleep behind the wheel? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that there are over 56,000 sleep-related accidents each year, resulting in 40,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths annually in the United States. Don't want to be a statistic? Then you may want to try out ASP Technology's mobile application which aims to keep you awake when you're fatigued on the road.
Speech recognition software made it easy to search Google on your smartphone, and Google Goggles made it easy to find answers from camera snapshots on your device. But now Google's bringing similar technology straight to your desktop, and with faster results—faster than Google Instant.
By John Timmer, Ars Technica How much information can the world transmit, process, and store? Estimating this sort of thing can be a nightmare, but the task can provide valuable information on trends that are changing our computing and broadcast infrastructure. So a pair of researchers have taken the job upon themselves and tracked the changes in 60 different analog and digital technologies, from newsprint to cellular data, for a period of over 20 years.
If the whale tail cookies and edible undies weren't naughty enough, you've still got about 24 hours left before Valentine's Day to whip up one of F.A.T. artist Randy Sarafan's step-by-step clap-off bras. Inspired by the electronic singing panties and remote-controlled bras of the secret underworld of Syrian lingerie, Sarafan made a mission to "fast-forward lingerie technology in the West".
First came the Rubik’s cube, a simple 3x3 puzzle. Then came Rubik’s Revenge, a 4x4 monstrosity. Eventually, the real whizzes attempted to conquer the V-Cube 6 and the V-Cube 7.
AR-media has made some great Augmented Reality software. You can check out their new AR-media™ Plugin for Autodesk® 3ds Max® OR their AR-media™ Plugin for Google™ SketchUp™. They use a marker based technology that allows you to create models in either 3ds Max or SketchUp, then export them as a ARmedia file type to be played by anyone who has the free ARmedia player.
What was your first experience with Kinect? Mine was through my friend Robert. (He's in the blue shirt above.) I was over at his place, and he and his girlfriend had just gotten a Kinect. After much futzing with the Kinect because it kept falling off their flatscreen TV, they finally got it to stay.
he Playstation controller coffee table is an Industrial Technology project made by Mark M.
11/13 @ 10:00pm Cinefamily's 100 Most Outrageous Kills
With the advent of 3D printers, advancements in the technology allow some truly amazing possibilities. Just a handful of examples include printable architecture, Anish Kapoor's sculptures; even Boeing uses some printed parts in the manufacturing of their airplanes.
Joseph L. Griffiths, an Australian artist who resides in Paris, has created a DIY bicycle-powered drawing machine. I'd like to see a video of the piece in action.
Have you ever been mesmerized by the Lindy Hop? It knocks me out. WonderHowTo has tutorials, but here's an interesting way to absorb the moves: watch in slow motion.
What if everything in life was controlled by augmented reality? Keiichi Matsuda imagines: "The architecture of the contemporary city is no longer simply about the physical space of buildings and landscape, more and more it is about the synthetic spaces created by the digital information that we collect, consume and organise; an immersive interface may become as much part of the world we inhabit as the buildings around us.
Here's another latest in robotics: researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) have developed a robot that flips pancakes. The most interesting aspect of the project is the use of kinesthetic teaching, in which the user "trains" the robot by example. The user grasps the robot's limb, and guides it through the motions the user would like it to adopt. This bot takes about 50 trials to get it, but in the end succeeds. Previously, I Want a Robo-Chef in My Kitchen.
We love it when everyday material is used in a new and unexpected application. Cardboard is something most of us take completely for granted. We need it when we're moving, and that's about it. When Frank Gehry created the cardboard chair in 1972, he blew the minds of both the furniture and the design world. So strong. So durable. So fluid.
Perhaps given the fact that a majority (73%) of the US population is now obese, we should think about ways to shrink ourselves. Think if everyone was shrunk down to a quarter of their normal size how much longer all the resources would last. Well, before we have the technology to do that, Artist Stéphanie Kilgast has spent the last 24 years miniaturizing food.
Jeremy Wood has turned the normally mundane task of lawn mowing into an art process. For the past nine years, Wood kept his mother's yard perfectly manicured, tracking every single motorized lawnmower ride with a GPS, and then converting the data into "maps".
Via WonderHowTo World, Zine Fiends: "Looking for a good source of information on how to pick a lock?
I'm somewhat of a skeptic when it comes to the "advantages" (the quotation marks should indicate the tone I'm taking) of a new ball. What's wrong with having a man made ball with slight imperfections and differences? So much of the game depends on the moment (of truth or shame) and everything leading up to it anyways, that to bring technology into different areas of the sport seems like tiny steps into that ever looming 5th referee and instant replays that will take the human factor out of th...
This video demonstrates the production process of the Jabulani ball that will make its debut at the World Cup this year.
This little bad boy is lots of fun, but I'm not sure I'd hold it up to my ear in public... especially wearing creator Junior Tan's menacing facial expression.
Alter Evo on Flickr has created this amazing starfighter and service unit vehicle. This is what he says about it:
F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) presents a project in celebration of F*ck Google Week, F.A.T.'s protest against Google's totalitarian rule of the web (read more). F.A.T. Lab built a fake Google Street View car and canvased the streets of Berlin, posed as Google.
Rescuing wounded soldiers in a war zone is extremely dangerous. Again, (previous entry, Futuristic Warefare), the Pentagon turns to scifi technology and robotics for the answer. The current solution is to develop robots that perform as "combat casualty extraction system[s].” And not just one robot to go in and save the day, but an "autonomous EMS crew, complete with an unmanned ambulance and robodocs, who can aid fallen troops 'with minimal intervention by medic or other first responder opera...
Remember, in the Terminator movies, when Arnold's field of vision is superimposed with all sorts of data? Sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge also described electronic contact lenses, technology that "projects" information right before the eyes.
Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to to create an armband that projects a touchscreen interface directly on to your skin. The best part? Skinput knows which part of the body you've tapped, based on the sound that's matched against skin, muscle or skeleton.
CNN has compiled a list of the best ten ideas presented at this year's TED conference.
16-year-old Alexander Kendrick has invented a low-frequency radio that allows for cave-texting, meaning deep underground cellular communication.
Fan speed determines the level of heat your CPU might get exposed to. In this tutorial, Sky Van Iderstine will tell you how to control the fan speed of your MacBook or MacBook Pro using a freeware program, iCyclone. iCyclone has an easy-to-use interface, and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Growl, Sparkle and the Keychain. Control the fan speed of a MacBook or MacBook Pro.
There has been a lot of comings and goings among senior engineers and research staff at a handful of companies with the pretensions of offering the technology that will underpin the driverless revolution.
