Monday, December 20, 2010

Two Kinects join forces to make 3D telepresence, enable virtual light saber battles (video)

Two Kinects join forces to make 3D telepresence, enable virtual light saber battles (video)

UC Davis's Oliver Kreylos has been responsible for two of our most impressive Kinect hacks yet. He was one of the first to get proper 3D video out of the thing, following that up by pairing up two of the cameras, one to fill in the gaps of the other. You might have thought he was just playing around but no -- oh no. There was a method to the madness and his ulterior motive has been revealed: 3D telepresence. This is what he's been working on all along and he has an early version operational, using the output from two Kinects in a remote office to beam a 3D representation of another person to his display, which he can navigate around (and through) using a Wiimote. Meanwhile, the viewer can see the position of Oliver in real-time, a virtual camera floating around and enabling them to maintain eye contact despite her not actually looking at either physical camera. That demonstration is embedded after the break along with a somewhat fanciful follow-up in which Kreylos engages in a rather... protracted lightsaber battle against the forces of evil.

Continue reading Two Kinects join forces to make 3D telepresence, enable virtual light saber battles (video)

Two Kinects join forces to make 3D telepresence, enable virtual light saber battles (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Dec 2010 10:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Best Buy offering free mobile hotspots with iPad purchase

Best Buy offering free mobile hotspots with iPad purchase

Planning to pay Verizon an extra $130 for an iPad + MiFi 2200 bundle? Hold on a sec, because Best Buy's planning to give away hotspots free of charge when you purchase Apple's tablet. This advertisement, obtained by 9to5 Mac, does mention that you'll need to shackle yourself to a carrier for two years to qualify -- unlike Verizon's original arrangement -- but in exchange you get a free Verizon FiveSpot, AT&T MiFi, or perhaps most excitingly, a WiMax-capable Sprint Overdrive. Fine print in the lower-right hand corner suggests that the promo will begin immediately and run through January 2nd. What better way to spend your leftover Hanukkah gelt than on gigabytes of wireless data?

Best Buy offering free mobile hotspots with iPad purchase originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  source9to5 Mac  | Emai l this | Comments

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Sunday, December 19, 2010

A $670,000 X-Ray Camera That Sees Through Melting Metal [Video]

A $670,000 X-Ray Camera That Sees Through Melting Metal [Video]

A new high-speed X-ray video camera, now the fastest in the world, can see through molten metal and watch weld-weakening flaws form in real-time. Take a look at sample footage from the device.

The $670,000 device successfully captured X-ray footage on Nov. 23 at 5,000 frames-per-second (fps), or five times faster than previous X-ray cameras (and 83 times faster than a consumer camcorder). The high-speed video above shows a laser welding solid aluminum in visible light, followed by the new X-ray-light welding clips.

"With visible light, we could only see the surface of the welding process. You couldn't see what was happening inside," said Felix Abt, one of the camera's designers at the University of Stuttgart. "The only way to see pores that weaken weld seams was to cut the metal into pieces."

Automotive companies use robots equipped with high-powered lasers to seam cars together with extreme speed and precision. As laser welding continues to get "more powerful, move faster, go deeper" and increase in use, Abt says, it's increasingly important to understand the dynamics involved.

"Laser welding creates very high-pressure, high-velocity, fluctuating environments. You're boiling metal that's cooling almost instantly," Abt said. "This leads to instabilities that weaken your weld."

A 0,000 X-Ray Camera That Sees Through Melting MetalTo capture the welding process in action, Abt and his colleague Rudolph Weber use an industrial-strength 4-kilowatt laser, which is roughly 400,000 times more powerful than a DVD drive's beam. As their laser pummels a hunk of metal moving on a track, a cathode fires X-rays through the weld and toward a high-speed video camera.

As a frame of reference, the first clip shows 10,000 fps visible light footage zoomed in on a small 10-by-5-millimeter frame. The fuzzy 1,000 fps and 5,000 fps clips that follow are the new ones filmed in X-ray light.

"The white structure on left is where the laser hits. That's a capillary of metallic steam," Abt said, noting aluminum boils at 4,400 degrees Fahrenheit. Whitish globules that break off the capillary are weld-weakening pores that become invisible as they cool, typically in a matter of microseconds.

The new X-ray footage isn't pretty, Abt says, but in a few months he and Weber will tune the camera to increase its clarity. They also plan to imbue welding samples with tracer materials, such as tungsten carbide, that emit X-rays at high temperatures.

"This is really only the beginning, but we now have the ability to watch processes that lead to porosity in real time while we're welding," Abt said.

Video: A 4-kilowatt laser melts solid aluminum. The first clip is 10,000 fps in visible light, followed by 1,000 fps and 5,000 fps in X-ray light. Credit: Felix Abt, Rudolph Weber/University of Stuttgart

Image: The device Abt and Weber constructed to record laser welding in X-ray light. The laser hangs from the ceiling, the X-ray cathode is on the left (as the welding itself doesn't produce X-rays) and the digital video camera is on the right. An exhaust vent pulls fumes away from the rig during welding and a track below moves a metal sample during recording. Credit: Felix Abt/University of Stuttgart


A 0,000 X-Ray Camera That Sees Through Melting MetalWired.com has been expanding the hive mind with technology, science and geek culture news since 1995.

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USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0)

USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0)

It took LaCie nearly a full year to ship the 2big USB 3.0 RAID drive -- a device that was announced in the fall of 2009 -- but now that it's here, it's being accompanied by a concept that actually far outshines the unit itself: USB 3.0 on a Mac. For whatever reason, Apple has refused to offer SuperSpeed USB on any of its machines, even a fully specced-out Mac Pro costing well north of $10,000. We've seen purported emails from Steve Jobs noting that USB 3.0 just isn't mainstream enough to sweat just yet, but coming from the guy who's still bearish on Blu-ray, we get the feeling that it'll be quite some time far too long before Apple finally caves and upgrades from USB 2.0. We're obviously no fans of the holdout -- after all, even a few sub-$500 netbooks are enjoying the SuperSpeed spoils already -- so we couldn't have possibly been more excited to hear that a longstanding storage vendor was about to fill the void that Cupertino continues to ignore. We were able to pick up a LaCie USB 3.0 PCIe expansion card as well as a 4TB (2 x 2TB) 2big USB 3.0 drive and put the whole setup through its paces on our in-house Mac Pro. Care to see how it stacked up against USB 2.0, FireWire 400 and FireWire 800? Head on past the break for the grisly details.

Continue reading USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0)

USB 3.0 for Mac review and benchmarks (with a LaCie 2big USB 3.0) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 14:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceLaCie's USB 3 driver for OS X, PCIe card, ExpressCard  | Email this | Comments

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L.A. Noire's amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video)

L.A. Noire's amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video)

L.A. Noire's amazing facial motion capture system demonstrated (video)
In gaming, 3D graphics get more powerful, environments get more expansive, enemies get more intelligent, but still facial animations haven't progressed much since Pac-Man chomped his first power pellet in 1980. Finally, a major breakthrough courtesy of Australian company Depth Analysis. It has developed technology called MotionScan, which enables a high-res 3D recreation of a person's face -- not just capturing bits and pieces of facial animation but their entire head, right down to the hairstyle. It's getting its first use in next year's L.A. Noire, a 1940s PS3 and Xbox 360 murder mystery game from Rockstar, and while we don't know enough about the title to be able to say whether it's worth plunking down a pre-order now, after watching the video embedded below it's clear that the bar has been raised.

Continue reading L.A. Noire's amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video)

L.A. Noire's amazing MotionScan facial capture system demonstrated (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users

Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users

We're assuming it would still prefer you use Internet Explorer for all your web browsing needs, but Microsoft is now lending something of a helping hand to Windows 7 users that insist on using Firefox for one reason or another. It's just released a plug-in that gets around Firefox's current limitations in handling H.264-encoded videos on HTML5 pages by taking advantage of the H.264 support built into Windows 7. On a more technical level, that means the plug-in parses HTML5 pages and replaces the Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in, which then allows the content to be played right in the browser. Sound like just what you've been waiting for? Hit up the link below to download the add-on and try it yourself.

Microsoft releases H.264 video plug-in for Windows 7 Firefox users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 20:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET  |  sourceMicrosoft Interoperability Bridges and Labs Center  | Email this | Comments

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iTwin USB filesharing solution now shipping in America

iTwin USB filesharing solution now shipping in America

Hope you didn't put your life on pause waiting for the iTwin to ship to the US of A, 'cause it took just over a full year to do so. The company's self-named device has finally been listed for sale in America this week, with just 50 limited edition builds able to head out prior to Christmas. If your memory has faded somewhat over the past 14 months, this twin-stick solution is meant to pass files between two USB-enabled devices, but unlike Infinitec's IUM, it's not making any bold promises related to media streaming. The concept is simple enough; just plug one of the twins into your computer, and the other into your pal's computer. It relies on 256-bit AES encryption to keep things secure, and if that's good enough for you, the source link is the where you need to be. These first-run kits are selling for $99 (plus $10 shipping), with a choice of gunmetal gray and lime green awaiting you, and if you miss your shot now, general availability will hit early next month.

Continue reading iTwin USB filesharing solution now shipping in America

iTwin USB filesharing solution now shi! pping in America originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 00:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DIA Parrot digital photo frame by nodesign is not a digital photo frame

DIA Parrot digital photo frame by nodesign is not a digital photo frame

How do you a frame a digital photo without framing it? That's the mind-bending question considered by Parrot and the nodesign agency, and the "mysterious object" known as the DIA Parrot is their answer. Just what is it? We'll let Parrot explain.
What is striking is its 10x4 inch high resolution screen. Dismantled, deconstructed, disconnected from the frame as if there was nothing behind, this screen is transparency, is light. The picture, your photo, appears through this "light box" in a brand new aesthetic dimension...

"The photo frame designed by Jean-Louis Frechin is very mysterious," continues Henri Seydoux. "Jean-Louis was smart or 'crazy' enough to dismantle the LCD screen we get used to, and the result is quite simply magical. We don't see where the photo comes from... It is simply there, on this transparent and half-dismantled screen... It is prestidigitation!"
Look for it to set you back $500 when it launches in February. You didn't expect a brand new aesthetic dimension to come cheap, did you?

Continue reading DIA Parrot digital photo frame by nodesign is not a digital photo frame

DIA Parrot digital photo frame by nodesign is not a digital photo frame originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 10:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ExoPC now up for pre-order at Microsoft Store, shipping next week

ExoPC now up for pre-order at Microsoft Store, shipping next week

Been waiting to order an ExoPC here in the US of A? Well, today is your day -- ExoPC has just announced that it's teamed up with Microsoft's very own store to bring you the 11.6-inch Windows 7 tablet. There's only one configuration at the moment, but $699 buys you a rather thin 0.5-inch slate with 64GB of flash storage, an Intel Atom N450 processor, 2GB of RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium with ExoPC's unique UI layer, and a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera. As for that UI, ExoPC just told us that a major update should be coming next week and that it'll amend a number of issues we had with our early review unit. The slate is currently up for pre-order on the Microsoft Store website, but we're told it will start shipping out early next week. And if you're waiting to check it out in person before pulling out the plastic, we hear they should be arriving in all those Microsoft retail locations soon -- apparently, San Diego and Scottsdale already have 'em in stock. Hey, looks like Mr. Ballmer was right, we will have Win 7 tablets this "crucial holiday season."

ExoPC now up for pre-order at Microsoft Store, shipping next week originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with

First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with

This RED EPIC belongs to Mark Pederson -- the head of studio OffHollywood -- who was apparently the very first one to drop $58,000 for the pre-production 5K camera, not to mention the first to lay down money for the original one. In case you've arranged to find yourself with a similarly jawdropping Christmas present in the mail, you can find pictures of what to expect at our source links below. The links will also do quite nicely if you haven't experienced that feeling called "jealousy" in a while and would like a refresher course.

[Thanks, Charlie and Patrick]

First hand-machined RED EPIC ships, gets lovingly toyed with originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceREDUSER.net, TwitPic (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7)  | Email this | Comments

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Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES

Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES

CES is no stranger to larger-than-life display installations, but as this whole "social networking" thing continues to blossom, it looks as if next year's megawall will be integrating with none other than Twitter. Designed by Finland's own MultiTouch, the Multitouch Twitter Wall will consist of "at least" six MultiTouch Cell 46 displays, each of which checks in at 46-inches wide. The whole shebang will offer onlookers at the show the ability to open tweets, move them around and give them a perfect opportunity to blow off steam while having their minds blitzed by the sheer quantity of news associated with the #CES tag. We'll be sure to give it a look once we touch down in the great southwest next month, but till then, you can get a taste by mashing play below.

[Thanks, André]

Continue reading Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES

Multitouch Twitter wall to fascinate onlookers, Engadget staffers at #CES originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video)

Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video)

Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all
We know all about the great woes that can befall a company when it tries to integrate an antenna into the body of its product, so we couldn't resist covering Chevrolet's latest attempt to do the same -- but on a larger scale. Early versions of the 2011 drop-top Camaro found themselves rolling out and about with a rather unsightly appendage hanging off the rear, a big whip antenna that was a little too genuinely retro to go with the machine's throwback styling cues. On hardtop Camaros the antenna is integrated into the rear windshield but, given the disappearing nature of this car's roof, that wasn't possible here. For help GM turned to two dedicated Antenna Engineers, Don Hibbard and Gregg Kittinger, who managed to find a way to bury the unsightly thing inside the svelte spoiler perched on the rear deck lid. Problem solved -- well, except that XM and OnStar require a separate shark fin that can sadly still be seen hanging out on the trunk. Maybe the 2012 model will be totally fresh and clean.

Continue reading Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video)

Chevy builds antenna into body of 2011 Camaro convertible, includes free bumpers for all (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 03:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic's new LCD TVs record video to SDXC

Panasonic's new LCD TVs record video to SDXC

Panasonic's plasma sets get most of the attention, and perhaps rightfully so, but it's actually the company's new LCD lineup for Japan that can help you make use of your woefully neglected SDXC cards. In addition to compiling terrestrial HDTV footage on a standard external hard drive, the Panasonic Viera G3 and X3 can record to a new SD card slot as well, archiving up to five hours of 1080p footage on a 'standard' 64GB SDXC card. We put 'standard' in quotes because while that's presently the typical capacity for that particular designation of flash, it'll still cost you upwards of $200 to get in on the ground floor, and that's a pittance compared to what Panasonic's charging for its own. Who said magnetic storage was dead? If Tokyo's where you hang your hat, expect both the G3 and X3 series to hit stores near you in February of next year.

Panasonic's new LCD TVs record video to SDXC originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 06:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Akihabara News  |  sourcePanasonic (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

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Samsung nabs Tegra 2 for Galaxy Tab 2, Google makes Tegra the Honeycomb reference platform?

Samsung nabs Tegra 2 for Galaxy Tab 2, Google makes Tegra the Honeycomb reference platform?

It sounds like all of NVIDIA's wrangling and cajoling finally paid off, if a couple of analysts are to be believed -- both say the company's dual-core Tegra 2 chipset is racking up wins in the tablet space. We've seen it seemingly raise the bar for smartphone silicon in the LG Star and tease us in slate after slate, but Citigroup's Glen Yeung says that Samsung has "placed a sizeable order with Nvidia for Tegra 2 chips in the first half of 2011, geared for both tablets and smartphones," and BMO Capital Markets analyst Ambrish Srivastava anticipates the next Galaxy Tab will be one of the devices that use it. If that sounds obvious, remember that Samsung was supposed to be producing a dual-core chip of its own. What could cause companies to embrace Tegra 2, if that's indeed what's happening? Any number of reasons, to be sure, but Glen Yeung also says that Google has made Tegra the reference design for Honeycomb, aka Android 3.0, and so Tegra 2 may sound like a fast track to victory in the budding tablet space. Here's hoping it's a good choice for consumers, too.

Samsung nabs Tegra 2 for Galaxy Tab 2, Google makes Tegra the Honeycomb reference platform? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Dec 2010 14:13:00! EDT. P lease see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink FierceWireless, UberGizmo  |  sourceBarron's, Forbes  | Email this | Comments

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Friday, December 17, 2010

LG 'B' Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed)

LG 'B' Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed)

We're still coming down from that rush of adrenaline that accompanied the launch of the dual-core Optimus 2X last night, but we've had a hunch lately that LG is planning on taking Android very seriously in 2011 -- seriously enough to have something even sexier than the 2X up its sleeve. Looks like that sexiness could be delivered in the form of a device codenamed "B," shots of which have been delivered to Phandroid in a direct comparison with the iPhone 4 and the Galaxy S -- two handsets we're sure LG would love to embarrass. As you can see up there, the screen's looking pretty insane, especially when you consider that those other two phones in the picture have arguably the best displays in the mobile business right now; it's claimed to offer 700 nits of brightness, a 40 percent improvement over the Galaxy S. Oh, and if that doesn't impress you, Phandroid's tipster has also sent in a shot of the edge that appears to make the 9.3mm iPhone 4 look downright chubby. No word on a release date for the B just yet.

Update: LG's decided to dispense with the mystery and has shot out a tweet confirming the B's existence and inviting us all to come check it out at CES 2011. We'll be sure to do just that.

Continue reading LG 'B' Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed)

LG 'B' Android phone caught in the wild, looking thin and ready to spank S-AMOLED (update: confirmed) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MobileCrunch  |  sourcePhandroid  | Email this | Comments

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