Apple's iPhone is considered one of the best smartphones in the world. Many cell phone makers have tried to take down the juggernaut, with some Android-based devices coming close, but in order to become an actual iPhone killer, something revolutionary needs to happen in the mobile world. And Human Media Lab (HML) may be the ones to make it happen.
It's remarkable that a gaming device (from Microsoft, no less) designed for geeky gamers has incited broad innovation in medicine and robotics. But that Kinect has captured the imagination of hackers-with-MBAs-in-mind is downright amazing.
Calling all curious minds—scientists, anthropologists, relentless tourists: Saturday, April 9th, is International Obscura Day, the day to "explore hidden treasures in your hometown," or so says Atlas Obscura, a website dedicated to public curiosities and esoterica. If you're the kind of person who appreciates public oddities every day of the year, tomorrow is icing on the cake. Celebrate Obscura Day in one of hundreds of locales—from Los Angeles to Sydney, from Berlin to Manila.
The da Vinci robot has proven to be an endless source of amusement to surgeons everywhere; in Japan, it folds origami cranes, at the state of Washington's Swedish Medical Center, it flies paper airplanes and gives manicures. It's a battle of the hospitals—who can make their pricey pony perform the greatest trick?
There's no reason to waste a perfectly good Cheeto just because it dropped on the kitchen floor, right? The "5-second-rule" makes it fair game if you can swipe it up fast enough (this doesn't apply for liquids or foods with floor fuzz stuck to them.) But, is that errant piece of chocolate really safe after it's mixed with the bacteria-laden mud from your shoe?
Tired of getting calluses from incessantly strumming along to 'No Woman No Cry'? Just hook up to the brain-music system and use your brain power to play a tune instead. I'm not talking—humming along in your head. The machine, created by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, is composed of electrodes taped directly onto your skull that pick up tiny electrical impulses from neurons in your brain and translates them into musical rhythms on a co...
Not in the mood for a sappy ending? Well, strap in because "Emotional Response Cinema Technology" lets your own body physiology control the movie music, the special effects, and even the movie ending. A collaboration between BioControl Systems, Filmtrip, and the Sonic Arts Research Center at Queen's University Belfast, the technology was recently showcased at the SXSW film festival in Austin, TX, where the newly minted horror film Unsound interacted with the audience through wires connected t...
It's gigantic! It can handle over 100 simultaneous touch points! It has a curvature of 135 degrees! And best of all, it is not the newest, insanely expensive gadget to hit the market. Instead, this touchscreen was hacked together with a bunch of PCs, video cameras, projectors and cheap infrared illuminators at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. It works like this: "The cameras, illuminators and projectors are all placed behind a large, cylindrical screen (formally used as a 3D t...
IMAGINE you are an experienced martial arts referee. You are asked to score a number of taekwondo bouts, shown to you on video. In each bout, one combatant is wearing red, the other blue. Would clothing colour make any difference to your impartial, expert judgement? Of course it wouldn’t.
I am not trying to ruin anyones hopes and dreams...BUT... Look, say you go to Graduate school in fine art. You graduate 3 years later, $100,000 in dept. You go into a workforce which is so over saturated, you can't get a job making copies at kinkos.
A group of nano-scientists from the University of Glasgow have created the world's smallest Christmas card, measuring in at 200 micro-meters wide by 290 micro-meters tall. (BTW, a micro-metre is a millionth of a meter, and the width of a human hair is about 100 micro-meters.)
Think you're more green by going artificial? Think again. The New York Times reports that the most definitive study shows you would have to use your artificial tree for 20 years before it has less impact on the environment than a real tree.
Eric Abrahamson, a professor at Columbia University, writes in to Forbes on how to be the Michelangelo of work shirking. The article is intended to help managers better understand their team's lack of productivity, but it also provides 10 simple tactics for all the lazy asses out there. Introducing exhibit A, June, a total lazy ass who lasted almost a decade in her job before being laid off:
UPDATE: New York University photography professor Wafaa Bilal talked the talk, and now he's walked the walk with his recent camera implant. And guess what? It hurt. What a surprise.
Missions to Mars are far and few between because the fuel is so costly. Solution? A pair of scientists are proposing that elderly astronauts are sent on one-way missions to Mars, to boldly go... and not come back:
Dr. Elena Bodnar proposes a silly idea. Why not wear a bra that double as a gas mask? No point in being ill equipped (in the event of fires, terrorist attacks, dust storms or a swine flu outbreak). The instructions are simple: In the event of an emergency, remove bra.
Say hello to "Meet Eater," the world's most social garden. Seriously — say hello! Its life may depend on it:
What feature would we most like to see in the robots of tomorrow? Why, the ability to interact with human beings without crushing them to death, of course. Happily, thanks to a new pressure-sensitive synthetic skin technology, the dream is within reach:
Androgynous. Stumpy. Creepy. The horror movie robot, created by the notorious Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, is projected to be available for around $8,000 later this year.
We've seen extremely pricey, extremely artfully crafted sex dolls. Matt McMullen's dolls are so well crafted, in fact, that it is hard to imagine a superior alternative. Until now...
SOUR GRASS. Sourgrass is known to the scientific world as Oxalis pes-caprae.
If you're a believer in the power of logic, may as well skip the game tomorrow. Two math professors at the University of London have supposedly determined who will win the World Cup, and have displayed their findings as a sophisticated infographic:
Oscar the cat is one lucky feline. After losing his two hind legs in a combine harvester, his loving owners had Oscar outfitted with two prosthetic paws, or metallic pegs to be more specific. This revolutionary veterinary procedure is nothing to scoff at - biomedical engineering experts and a neuro-orthopedic surgeon were both called in to create the world's first bionic cat. Via BBC:
Love folk art but could do without the folk? Prepare to have your heart stolen by a self-folding origami automaton.
DARPA and Dallas's Southern Methodist University are collaborating on a super high tech camera, capable of scanning eyeballs in a moving crowd.
The newest fuel alternative on the horizon? Pee. U.S. researchers have been experimenting with using urine as a method of producing hydrogen. Not only could this virtually free and readily available resource possibly power automobiles, but it could also aid in the clean up of municipal wastewater.
Another example of outstanding resourcefulness and ingenuity in the medical community (see earlier this week: Blood Sucking Plunger Could Heal Millions).
The upcoming Shell Eco-Marathon promises to unveil vehicles that will blow current fuel economy standards way out of the water. California Polytechnic State University is one of the most promising contenders, with a vehicle that gets 13 times the 230 mpg General Motors promises the Chevrolet Volt will deliver (plus, the Cal Poly car doesn't even use batteries!).
Label Profile: Night-People [Night-People founder Shawn Reed, playing live in Montreal as Wet Hair]
A prominent artificial intelligence expert has urged that president Obama is setting a horrendous precedent by embracing drone technology as a means of covert warfare.
Holmes’ Psychiatrist Worked for Pentagon-
My name is Noah Hornberger. I'm a former Pixar artist (Wall-E, 2008) and Professor of Animation (DePaul University, Chicago), and I have recently invented a motion-activated musical toy called the Dub Cadet. One Substance TV blogger has called my light-up sphere that transforms motion into music, "Daft Punk [the electronic music duo] meets Simon [the handheld toy] in a ball."
Ivy League schools aren't just places for people to row and sip their drinks out of glasses normal people would never use (i.e. snifters). They also the place for trolling on a grand scale. Just take a look at these Trolls de la Resistance!
If you take two flat mirrors and place them front to back and look at them, you can see an infinite number of reflections. While this is a self-replicating pattern and can be somewhat mesmerizing, it isn't anywhere as interesting as looking at the chaotic scattering of light that can occur between 3 or 4 spheres.
University video game design programs have been spreading like wildfire around the world over the last ten years. They allow students, researchers and game developers to work on their craft in an academic environment away from the harsh realities of the market, and have led to some interesting products like Fl0w from USC and Ulitsa Dimitrova from Germany. Both games take on topics not often addressed in mainstream games and do so in simple, poignant ways that aim to influence the rest of the ...
Most kids who play video games will never become professional gamers. Those that do are part of a very select group— it's like being a professional actor or athlete. It's nice work if you can get it. For everyone else, the sad realization usually arrives sooner or later that time spent playing games might not have the practical rewards that homework or working hard at your job might deliver.
Mobile devices can do just about anything these days, thanks to third-party developers. iPhones and Android devices have been known to do some pretty wild things. Need a dupe key made? Scan and order one with your iPhone. Want to know if you're hotter than Justin Bieber? Compare your facial features. Are you a policeman who needs to ID a suspect? Scan their fingerprints and irides. Want to control your Canon DSLR remotely? Use your Android phone.
Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago, and is the latest in a stream of successful indie games to come out of collegiate video game design programs. In fact, it's so successful that a sequel is in the works.
With Microsoft's release of the Kinect SDK, things seem to have slowed down a bit in the world of Kinect development. Have developers exhausted the uses of Kinect already? No way! Four researchers at Cornell University have created an AI-based system on the Kinect that can recognize what you're doing, and maybe even who is doing it.
Were you horrified when Gwyneth Paltrow's head ended up in a box in Se7en? Do you share Harrison Ford's opinion that Han Solo should have died in Return of the Jedi? Think Kurt Russell could have handled aliens better in The Thing? Well, sorry—you're out of luck. There's nothing you can do to prevent William Wallace's beheading or Carrie's mayhem. But thanks to MyndPlay, controlling the plot to future films is totally possible.
