The next time you’re out shopping for a gigantic new flat-screen TV to impress your friends, don’t forget that sometimes big things come in little packages. Sure, a 100+ inch monster taking up 80% of your living room would be eye-catching, but what if you flipped on the big game and it magically appeared like a hologram inside a 3.9-inch crystal ball sitting on your coffee table instead? That would be impressive too right?

Well probably not, but at the least it’s oozing with novelty charm. That’s probably why the Japan Trend Shop recommends it as signage or advertising for stores, pubs or even a reception desk. It’s got a basic video-in connection so it can actually display video from a DVD player or other source, not just static images. But, the whopping $4,909 price tag is probably going to produce more spit-takes than sales.

[ Holoart Crystal Display Ball ] VIA [ Random Good Stuff ]

I’m not entirely sure if this was a real display created for Coca-Cola given the video’s watermarked with an ‘internal use only’ warning, but if it wasn’t it should’ve been since it’s cool enough to make me want to drink sugar water again. The video mostly demonstrates the potential behind the Dreamoc 3D Holographic Display system, created by a company called Realfiction, which combines a real product like a Coke bottle with 3D animations that are viewable from 200 degrees. Like with most holographic technology these days it kind of sucks that the bottle is trapped inside the glass pyramid which facilitates the effect, but at least it looks like it’s light years beyond that old holographic Time Traveler arcade game.

[ Realfiction Dreamoc Holographic Displays ]

The Panik Design website is a little vague about how this hologram suspension lamp actually works (or who Eddie’s son is) but if the illustration is to be believed, it hangs from your ceiling and either projects a hologram of a light bulb onto a flat surface below (unlikely) or it makes it appear as if there’s a glowing pink light bulb floating inside the shade in mid-air (more likely). Either way, it better do something cool since they’re asking almost $1,600 (£1,020) for it. And I guess smokers might want to pass on this one since the website cautions that “Direct sunlight and nicotine may reduce the hologram’s life span.” Technically that applies to humans too.

[ Panik Design - Eddie's Son Hologram Suspension Lamp ] VIA [ 7Gadgets ]

It’s been over 30 years since we first saw R2D2 project Princess Leia’s distress call via a slick hologram, and even though that supposedly happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, you’d think our own galaxy would have developed a similar technology by now. But when it comes to holograms, they still seem to be just a novelty to us. Case in point, the holoCube. It’s a fully integrated 3D projection platform that the manufacturer is selling for displaying products at a store or trade show. Now I’m sure it will draw a crowd, but is that the best application we can come up with?

Inside the holoCube you’ll find a 40GB hard drive (do they still sell those?) that’s capable of storing 8 to 18 hours of video depending on the data rate/compression, and demo videos can be easily uploaded via a USB connection. As for the price? Well apparently the holoCubes start at around $9,000, but you do get your choice of a black or white finish, so I guess that’s reasonable.

[ holoCube ] VIA [ TechEBlog ]