By David Ponce

Luke Jerram is an artist and he decided to create a 3D sculpture of sorts based off of the seismograph of Japan’s devastating March 2011 earthquake. Measuring 11 inches long, the sculpture is simply 9 minutes of seismographic data rotated 360 degrees in a 3D modelling program, and then printed with a rapid prototyping machine. It is going to be presented at the

Jerwood Space in London for a show called Terra. Exploring how data is read and can be represented and interpreted, the artwork is one of a series of data visualization sculptures Jerram has recently created.

“Next month Jerram will be artist in residence at the Museum of Glass in Washington where he hopes to create this work as a limited edition in glass.” If you think you might want one, you let Luke know you’re interested by sending him an email: luke at lukejerram dot com.

[ Luke's Page ] VIA [ PC World ]

By David Ponce

Americans are getting used to the idea of full body scanners. Or maybe not. Either way, the BodyMetrics 3D scanner has much tamer goals than to sniff out your underwear explosives. Step into one and 8 PrimeSense 3D sensors will map your body’s shape and measurements, quickly and accurately creating 100 data points. Once your shape has been determined, the retail store will be better able to offer you clothing that complements your specific shape. Better yet, you’ll be able to store your profile online for later access when shopping from home. No more guesswork, or wishful thinking.

There’s only one BodyMetrics scanner at the moment. It’s at New Look, a global clothing retailer, at their newest location in the Westfield Stratford shopping complex. There is a chance you’ll be seeing more of these if the companies are successful in convincing other stores to go for them.

[ Press Release ] VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By David Ponce

A Japanese company called REAL-f has gotten itself in the dubious business of manufacturing ultra-realistic 3D replicas of your face, which they call 3DPFs (“3 Dimension Photo Forms”). These can be made into mask form or full head form and cost a truckload of money. The first mask is $3,920 while each additional replica of it goes for $780. But the full head starts at $5,875 and each additional copy a mere $1,960. They make these masks by taking a series of photos from different angles and heat molding a piece of vinyl chloride resin. The photo-realism is so accurate that it’s said even blood vessels and iris details are replicated accurately.

Of course the obvious thought is that Halloween is coming and wouldn’t these make an awesome disguise? But at $4k+ a pop, we think we’ll settle for getting ourselves a Bieberlicious mask and terrorizing the neighborhood on the cheap instead.

[ REAL-f ] VIA [ Techcrunch Gadgets ]

Not keen on the whole ‘sharing 3D glasses with a complete stranger’ idea when checking out a 3D flick at the theater? Well there are plenty of companies selling cinema-friendly 3D eyewear that you can bring with you when you go to see a movie, but if you already wear glasses you might want to serious consider LG’s new clip-on 3D glasses. Like a pair of clip-on sunglasses, they’re not going to make you look any less dorky while wearing them, but they do mean you can avoid the whole double glasses situation which I’m going to assume makes seeing a 3D film even more uncomfortable. Better yet they’re available for around just $20, and are easily stashable once you leave the theater so no one realizes you’re still supporting 3D movies.

[ LG AG-F220 Cinema 3D Glasses ] VIA [ Engadget ]

I’m not here to debate whether you should or should not be shooting in 3D, but if you are, you really need a way to monitor what’s being recorded in all 3 dimensions. Of course wearing shutter or filter glasses while on set is even worse than in a theater, so Marshall’s new 7-inch glasses-free 3D field monitor is by far the way to go. It uses the same “parallax barrier and lenticular hybrid technology” as the Nintendo 3DS, but I’m assuming with better results since this is designed to be used by professionals.

Its 1600×600 resolution falls just shy of 720P, since the bottom half of the display is actually filled with realtime waveform monitors and color vectorscope displays for image quality control. And it comes with all of the connections and hookups required for use with a high-end camera system. It can even be used as a post-production display, though staring at a 7-inch monitor all day while editing or color correcting could get tedious. Available October 1st for $7,899.

[ Marshall ORCHID OR-70-3D Field Monitor ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

Finding a half-decent digital camera for under $100 these days is not impossible. But finding a 3D capable digital camera for just $70? Well there’s bound to be some trade-offs. And in the case of the DXG-018O, there are certainly a few. If I’m reading the tech specs correctly the camera uses a set of 0.3MP sensors, which isn’t even VGA quality. But because there’s 2 of them, and the fact that the camera does internal interpolation, you end up with a combined resolution of about 1.3MP in your 3D images.

Unfortunately it’s impossible to actually view the 3D images it captures on the camera because there’s only a tiny 1.44-inch TFT LCD display on the back which isn’t 3D capable. If you want to see your images in the 3rd dimension you’ll have to actually print them out and use the DXG’s included 3D viewer, which in reality is nothing more than a fold out cardboard tube with a couple of lenses in it. At the least it probably produces better 3D results than a red/cyan anaglyph system, but not by much.

[ DXG-018O 3D Camera ] VIA [ Coolest Gadgets ]

By David Ponce

Snow, cold, dreary and politically inanimate… These could be words mistakenly used to describe Canada. I’d use others like safe, healthy and every now and then… full of free laptops! That’s right dear OhGizmo! readers: Toshiba Canada has partnered with us to give our Canadian readers a Satellite A660 3D laptop valued at $1,899.

The cool thing is the laptop in question is the higher end A660-0T4 with the following specs:

An Intel® Core™ i7-740QM processor, 6GB DDR3-1066MHZ ram, 640GB 5400RPM hdd, Blu-ray Disc™ Rewriteable and DVD SuperMulti drive, Harman Kardon built-in speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTS 350M with 1GB GDDR3 memory, 15.6″ 16:9 HD TruBrite™ 120Hz 3D Ready TFT with LED backlight and NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ Kit with glasses and built-in internal laptop IR emitter

So how do you win this beauty? Well, we’re going to make you work a little more than usual for this one, so read on.

1) The contest is open to all Canadians 18 years of age and above (except residents of Quebec (sorry folks)).
2) It will run from Today, January 31st, until February 7th, 2011.
3) There are 5 ways to enter, or 5 different types of ballots if you’d prefer to see it that way. Which means that you can enter up to 5 times!

1. Follow OhGizmo on Twitter.
2. “Like” us on Facebook.
3. Follow Toshiba Canada on Twitter.
4. “Like” Toshiba Canada on Facebook.
5. This last one is for anyone eligible already following us on Twitter or Facebook: simply retweet this promotion!

It’s going to be fun keeping track of all this, but we’ll do our best and will announce the winner in the week of February 7th.

Good luck!

By Chris Scott Barr

3D is the next big thing, whether we like it or not. I’m still not sold on the technology, but maybe Nintendo’s 3DS will be the thing that changes my mind. We’ve still got a bit of time to wait for that, so in the meantime, why not check out this 3D Giant Chalk from Crayola?

Sure, it’s not quite as interactive as a portable gaming system, but it is portable. Apparently you can take this stuff, draw on the sidewalk, then see the images pop out of the ground when you put on the special glasses. This one again proves just how spoiled the kids today are. Back in my day, you just drew on the sidewalk, and it didn’t do anything special. You had to use your imagination. $16 gets you 4 giant dual-colored sticks of the stuff and two pair of glasses.

[ Amazon ] VIA [ BookofJoe ]

They have no plans to put it into production at the moment, but at the ‘Future 3D Technology Demo’ section of their CES booth, Sony had this fully-working glasses-free 3D Blu-ray player on display. While 3D was still the prevalent theme of the show this year, there was actually quite a bit of glasses-free 3D technology on display. But I’m sorry to report that the 3D demos playing on this weren’t exactly mind-blowing, though I suspect it was the content to blame since it didn’t look like genuine 3D footage. Sony had other glasses-free 3D technology on display at their booth that looked quite impressive.

Sony held their official CES press conference today, and one of the things they announced was a new addition to their Bloggie camcorder line called the MHS-FS3, or more affectionately known as the Bloggie 3D. As you’ve probably guessed it’s basically a Bloggie blessed with the powers of capturing full 1080P video in 3D thanks to a set of two lenses, two image sensors and even two mics for recording glorious stereo sound. It’s also got a lenticular 2.4-inch LCD screen on the back for enjoying your 3D content without the need for those stylish shutter glasses, though it doesn’t have as high quality a 3D display as some of Sony’s higher-end 3D camcorders. So to be perfectly honest, the 3D effect wasn’t really that amazing I’m sad to report.

However, since it does capture genuine 3D footage when viewed on a full-sized 3D TV the effect should be as impressive as it is with Hollywood blockbusters. And when you get tired of capturing things in 3D after the first 15 minutes the Bloggie 3D can also capture footage in primitive 2D you lameo. It comes with 8GB of non-expandable internal storage, and is expected to be available in April for ~$250.

[ Sony Bloggie 3D ]