Google Earth lets you view the entire world. It’s sweet. But most of the time, you’re viewing the entire world as it was a year ago or more. If you’ve played with Google Earth, the first thing you probably did was go find your house. The second thing you probably did was go find your ex-girlfriend’s house and then get really disappointed when you couldn’t actually peek in the windows.
Now you can! (Maybe.)
A project called Live3D, brought to you by the Media and Machines lab of Washington University in St. Louis, takes live webcam images and overlays them on Google Earth. This is something that you could do before, but Live3D makes it fast and easy and integrates the images onto Google Earth’s 3D models. There’s a database of live webcam images, and it’s super easy to add your own via drag ‘n drop tools in Google Earth itself. So as long as there’s a webcam operating in the area, you get a constantly updating view of whatever the webcam sees (in stills, not video yet). Cars driving, people walking, everything, with a level of detail limited only by the resolution of the webcam.
Of course, this brings up all kinds of potential privacy issues, since you can set a webcam up wherever you want and have it pointed wherever you want and make the image accessible on Google Earth. People have always been able to do this, but somehow when it’s easy, it tends to become a problem.
It’s nice that paper can be recycled, but usually you don’t get to experience the end result of that recycling process in a direct and immediate manner. Not this direct of a manner, anyway. This machine is called White Goat, and if you feed it 40 sheets of waste paper, it will produce a roll of toilet paper. The entire process, start to finish, is completely contained within the machine: it shreds the paper, dissolves it in water, dries it out, and winds it into rolls that are probably not huggably soft. Total cost? A mere 10 cents a roll, although the entire White Goat machine (which goes on sale this summer) will cost about $100,000.
And just in case you were wondering (although I’m sure you weren’t wondering), according to the resident OhGizmo livestock expert, for only $120 or so you can get an angora goat (plus a friend, since goats need company) who will eat a newspaper’s worth of waste paper every day (along with other food, of course) and produce cashmere, with which you can make what is surely the most luxurious toilet paper known to man. The actual goat won’t work as well in an office environment, but it does produce a bunch of free fertilizer, will pull a small cart, and if it dies on you, you can eat it.
Touchscreen displays not only make portable devices like smartphones and MIDs easier to interact with, but they also remove the need for a dedicated keyboard, which can take up a lot of space. However, if you still prefer the tactile feel of a hardware keyboard, the compact smallQWERTY keypad from Mobience could be a reasonable compromise.
Even though its name includes the term ‘QWERTY’ the keypad doesn’t have 26 alphanumeric keys, instead it includes a 12 button numeric keypad like on a traditional phone, with 8 additional function buttons. Typing out words either requires you to hit certain buttons multiple times to get the letter you need, or hopefully it uses a software trick like T9 to predict the word with minimal presses. Unfortunately there’s no information on when this device might be available, and the fact that the Mobience website is currently just a GoDaddy pageholder doesn’t bode well for anyone wanting to get their hands on one.
When you have a gun in your hand, people often advice you – ‘Watch that Trigger’. Armatix decided to take that advice literally and came up with a watch that controls your gun. Wearing a stylish wrist watch is trendy (except this watch is fugly) and owning a gun has its own aura – so if the two can be combined, it offers you the best of both worlds.
The gun won’t work and a red LED will light up if the watch isn’t in close proximity of the gun. The way this unusual combination works is through the watch sending a wireless arming signal to the gun. If the gun picks up the signal, it gets armed and a green LED lights up. Priced at nearly 7,000 Euros, this is quite an expensive affair.
I’m wondering what happens if your watch battery dies out and you need the gun?
The theme of this year’s Toy Fair seems to be: “Hey, remember those games you played with as a kid? Now they require batteries!” First it was Boggle who got a high-tech upgrade, and now it’s the Rubik’s Cube. Of course this isn’t the first electronic version of the Rubik’s Cube, that distinction goes to the less-than-well-received Rubik’s TouchCube with its $150 price tag, but the second time could be the charm!
Besides a slightly more reasonable MSRP of around $40 (£25), Rubik’s Slide features a different kind of puzzle gameplay with just 9 light-up squares that have to be twisted and turned to match a pre-determined pattern. According to Pocket-lint, Rubik’s Slide will come with over 10,000 puzzles of varying difficulty levels to keep the replay value high, and is expected to be available later this year.
The last few days of January where I live have been particularly brutal, with temperatures falling well below freezing, and wind chill making the prospect of going outside completely unappealing. But the ColdAvenger mask could be the perfect solution for sub-zero temperatures, as it promises to keep your face warm and dry even in the worst of conditions, without the use of electrical heating elements or chemical reactions.
Instead, the ColdAvenger uses a patent-pending ventilation design to mix the cold air you’re inhaling, with the warm, humid air you’re exhaling, to create temperatures inside the mask that are on average 40º to 60ºF higher than outside, depending on your level of physical activity. The mask was developed and researched during the Winter months in the Rocky Mountains, and according to the company’s own testing, has been worn, with comfort, at -20ºF. What I like best though is that the ColdAvenger mask starts at just $49.99, which is cheaper than a nice scarf! Not to mention the fact it makes you look like a baddie from Half-LIfe.
When switched off, Martin Neuhaus’ Becherlicht lamp will leave you wondering why there’s an oddly mounted plastic cup near the wall. But when it’s turned on, you’ll understand its clever design. When properly positioned, the lamp projects a three-dimensional image of a colored lampshade on the wall, making it appear more like a traditional lamp with shade, as well as illuminating the room where it’s installed. It was created specifically for an exhibition at the imm cologne international furnishing show, and while it looks like a finished and sellable product, I don’t think it’s available for sale, or know if it will ever be.
Related Tags: Google, Online Services, Privacy, Webcam.
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