Oftentimes when people become unemployed, they fall prey to feelings of helplessness. Not Christopher Albeluhn, an unemployed game designer who recently created an incredibly cool app that allows you to explore the solar system and constellations in 3D.
via Venture Beat
… Read More → "Unemployed game designer creates mind-blowing solar system explorer app"
The next time you see someone doing the dance “The robot,” it might not be accurate in the world of modern robotics. Scientists at the University of Sussex, the University of Belgrade, and the Artificial Intelligence Lab of the University of Zurich have been working on a new humanoid robot that has muscles … Read More → "Scientists build robot with muscles and joints"
… Read More → "How Sony fell behind in the tech parade"Sony once wowed the world with the Walkman and the Trinitron TV. But its fortunes have taken a sharp turn amid disruptive new technologies and unforeseen rivals.
via New York Times
A few months ago we launched a graphing functionality right in search to help students and math lovers plot functions in an easy, simple way. In addition to calculating something simple like dividing up a restaurant bill or graphing more difficult math functions using the search box, people have also been plotting some really unique& … Read More → "Graphing on Google.com – now in 3D"
Solar panels normally come in two different types. Photovoltaic panels that turn the sun’s rays into electrical power, and thermal collectors that heat water using the sun then use it to heat a building or to provide hot water. Now those two technologies are coming together, in a hybrid solar tube that provides the best of both worlds.
The Virtu Tube from Britain’s Naked Energy puts the … Read More → "Hybrid solar tubes generate both electricity and hot water"
Developer/producer Chris Vik explains a new work, Carpe Zythum, in which he uses aMicrosoft Kinect to conduct a MIDI performance:
I’ve created my own software “Kinectar“, which allows the use of the Kinect to control MIDI devices, ie. playing notes through simple gestures and motion.
The Melbourne Town Hall Organ got a referb in the late 90s adding the ability of MIDI messages to active the notes… and so, this happened.
via Read More → "Controlling a 4-story pipe organ wIth the Kinect"
Japan’s Tokyoflash has made a name for itself with numerous weird and wonderful – or maybe baffling – ways to tell the time. Now, bringing to mind Homer Simpson’s quote of, “From now on Honey, we’ll be spelling everything with letters,” when Marge is impressed by a house that has its street number spelled out with letters, German design agency Biegert & Funk is … Read More → "Time goes hands-free with QLOCKTWO W watch"
Did you know you can make a simple computer out of a swarm of soldier crabs? I sure didn’t, and I’ll bet you a fresh seafood dinner that the crabs themselves had no idea either. But some enterprising researchers from Japan have shown that it is possible to make a crabputer. Practical? Maybe not so much.
… Read More → "Did you know you can make a simple computer out of a swarm of soldier crabs?"
Microsoft wants so very much to be open that it’s created a brand new subsidiary to shoulder the work.
Called Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., the company will be run by a longtime Microsoft standards player, Jean Paoli. The point is to “advance the company’s investment in openness — including interoperability, open standards and open source,” Paoli said in a blog post announcing the spinoff.
via Wired
New analysis of an experiment performed by the Viking landers suggests that evidence of microbial life in the Martian soil may have been detected 36 years ago. As one of the authors of this new paper puts it: “on the basis of what we’ve done so far, I’d say I’m 99 percent sure there’s life there.” Whoa.
Read More → "We’re ’99 percent sure’ we discovered life on Mars in 1976"
