Some of you might remember when I reported on Augmented Reality from Total Immersion. I believe I stated that this blog should stop reporting, because I had found the coolest gadget ever.
It would appear that Total Immersion has found another awesome use for their Augmented Reality technology by partnering with Topps, makers of many trading cards, specifically baseball.
Some of you might remember those holographic cards that have 3D on 2D, but Augmented Reality takes it to the next level. What you need to do is install some software into the computer, and it changes the way your webcam “sees†the card.
Hold the card in your hand before your camera, and the display will show a three-dimensional avatar of the player himself. Moving your hand will cause the avatar to change its angle. Total Immersion has also stated that the avatars will be able to do things like batting, catching, and pitching. I wonder if the cards will get to play against each other, like the Pokemon cards I saw at CES.
The cards will sell for about $2 for a pack of twelve. My source does not say how much the Augmented Reality software costs, nor does it say when these special cards will be available.
Sometimes when you have your laptop out with you someplace, those laptop speakers just don’t cut it. You can go for headphones, but if someone else is trying to listen it gets obnoxious to share headphones. With these portable speakers you could allow for whoever is near you to listen to what you’re watching or listening to. Of course, it’d be best to use these in someplace where those that don’t want to listen to it, don’t have to. Otherwise chaos might ensue, well that or people will silently fume and do absolutely nothing about it.
The Philips speakers oddly enough look about like the ends of an old phone rather than actual speakers. As with pretty much all portable speakers, these are small enough to fit in your pocket or bag. The speakers are designed for your laptop, but could easily work with your iPod or any other audio device. It has a bass pip that emphasizes the low tones of your music to give a realistic sound. You can pick up the set for $18.85 on Amazon.
I realize that what you are seeing in this picture does not look like much, but the Siftables could easily be the wave of the future. Siftables are tiny, cookie-sized computers with a singular display and motion sensor. Each of them has a wireless communicator and they are able to detect other Siftables.
I have included a YouTube video so you can see them in action. You will note that when the user can groups Siftables together, that there are all sorts of applications. For example, you can create “virtual blocks†that can seriously do the math. I’m not even going to try to describe that, you have to see that on the video.
Another application for the youngsters is the ability to line up different Siftables to create an interactive story. I guess that’s good enough for the kids, but can the grown-ups do anything with it?
Yes. If you look at the picture, you can see that someone is mapping out some sort of computer program with the Siftables. By the way, you can also play a Boggle-type game with a handful of these Siftables.
Personally, I think these Siftables are downright nifty, and I wouldn’t mind owning a few myself. This is presently a work in progress from David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi at the MIT Media Lab, but they hope to have them readily available for consumer use “soonâ€.
Shapeways is a Philips Incubator Project, and they have just rolled out PhotoShaper. For the uninitiated, PhotoShaper is the first online service that enables basically anyone to transform photos into 3D printable objects by Shapeways. If you’re interested to find out more about PhotoShaper, head on here. All you need to do is upload your favorite photo and let Shapeways PhotoShaper do the rest of the job, as it goes about creating a depth-layered 3D object based on the contrast of the picture instantly, where the latest 3D printing technology known as Rapid Prototyping are performed. This looks like a great way to create a gift, as it offers something different from the usual ceramic mug or photo frame.
I have a friend of mine who was riding his bike to work and was hit by a bus. The bus driver did very little to help him, except to give him a ride. Unfortunately, my friend had some bad head wounds that had to be treated by a doctor, and we all know how expensive that can get.
If my friend had the Bike Crash Cam, he would have had everything he needed for a lawsuit. This particular device that you see here can be mounted on the handlebars, and films with a resolution of 1280 x 1024.
The battery is completely rechargeable, using an AC adaptor, car charger, or USB cable. All the video footage is filmed in AVI or MPEG-4 and is stored on a Micro SD Card with a maximum memory of 32GB.
So, if my friend had the Bike Crash Cam, he could have taken the video footage to a lawyer who would have gladly represented him. Hopefully the camera’s wide angle lens and special mode for capturing escaping vehicles could get a shot of a hit-and-run’s license plate.
The Bike Crash Cam is available from our old friends at Brando, who makes devices like the MP4 Watch. You should be able to purchase it at the Brando site for about $266.50.
If you’ve ever gotten stuck in the backseat on a long road trip, you know what a short trip it can be to a nice padded cell. In the backseat you can feel crowded in and sometimes there aren’t even a sufficient amount of cup holders for the amount of people piled in there. Then you have to figure out what to do for the entire drive. In some cases you have a DVD player in the car, which is nice. If you don’t have one though, this little tray would be the perfect spot to set up your laptop on.
It’d also be great for those that carpool to work to finish typing up some important document for work at the very last minute. The table can be mounted to the back of a seat or even to the steering wheel itself. Please, only mount it to the steering wheel if the car is not actually moving though. When it’s not in use the tray can be popped into an upright position and be out of the way. You can pick up the plastic tray for $13.99 on Sourcing Map.
This is one combination of gadgetry that is a little bit surprising. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t really ever expect to see a iPod speaker in the shape of an iron. It’d make wandering about with your favorite music a little more eye catching. Although most people anymore try to keep their look of shock over odd articles of clothing fairly secretive, I’m not sure they could with this around. Plus if you have any young kids, I imagine they’d take off with this to go add it to their toy kitchen set.
This not only works as a iPod speaker, but it’s a radio and an alarm clock. The radio part isn’t all that shocking, since a lot of portable iPod speakers double as a radio. Since it also has the alarm clock function, it’d make a great travel alarm clock. Although, I’m not sure that it’d be great as an all the time alarm. I usually prefer my alarm to sit in one place on my nightstand. It runs on 2AA batteries and plugs into your iPod by plugging in the third and smaller prong on the plug of the iron. You can pick it up for $18.74.
Smith & Nephew has just rolled out a brand new negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) device that was specifically designed for people who want/need to ambulate. Known as the Renasys Go, it comes in a much smaller form factor that can be worn around your neck just like a fashionable MP3 player, although it doesn’t play back any music (could be a feature the manufacturer includes the next time round) but sucks at your gross wound instead. Hey, if somebody asks, you can either tell them the truth or pull their leg that you’re using a pair of prototype Bluetooth earphones which are located right inside your ear canals, hence having no wires running out from the Renasys Go.
The Renasys Go is intuitive, lightweight, portable and quiet, and can be used with the RENASYS-F foam and RENASYS-G gauze wound interfaces, the broadest selection of interfaces available from a single supplier. This enables clinicians to tailor NPWT to meet their patients’ unique needs and the specific requirements of their wounds, with clear improvements in patient comfort, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness. Southern Ontario-based Nursing Practice Solutions Inc. conducted a study in Canada comparing average total costs required to treat patients with conventional dressings to the same costs required to treat patients with gauze- and foam-based NPWT, in cases for which NPWT was appropriate. The study found that the cost-per-patient treated with NPWT was 55% less than the cost-per-patient treated with conventional dressings, and that wounds treated with NPWT healed more quickly than wounds treated with conventional dressings. Among patients treated with NPWT, there was no difference in healing times between wounds dressed with foam and those dressed with gauze.
Some of the features include :-
Discrete carrying case
Weighs less than 3 pounds
Frosted 300cc canister minimizes the visibility of exudate
The Amazon Kindle Reader 2 is supposed to be the device that delivers the soul of the e-reader by coming in the form of a highly portable electronic device which is able to store thousands of reading materials, all the while retaining the pleasures of reading from a printed book. It has already been available from the online retailer since February 23 this year, retailing for $359 a pop alongside a power adapter, USB 2.0 cable and rechargeable battery. As with any other device worth its salt, you can always opt to fork out more dough for additional accessories including a leather book cover and protective skin. In this day and age, extended warranties are always a good thing to purchase just in case the unexpected happens - the optional 2 year warranty can be picked up by throwing in another $65.
As expected with a newer release of any gizmo worth its salt, there will be a bunch of improvements to greet you, and the same goes with the Kindle Reader 2. It beats out on the original by being lighter at 10.2 ounces as well as having gone to the fat house, slimming down to just 0.36″ thin. This makes it easy to move it around, while packing is a snap although we’d recommend against doing that in your huge luggage as the pressure might just cause the screen to give way. Design-wise has also improved - you get page turn buttons, a 5-way controller and a paper-like display that boasts higher image and text resolution.
The 5-way button makes for easy navigation, allowing you to go to four directions and select. This allows you to highlight as well as skip pages and articles as and when required, reading in 16 shades of gray that will be much easier on your eyes compared to its predecessor.
This looks like some sort of strange mad scientist design of a contraption which concocts a weird potion after putting in all sorts of exotic ingredients. Actually, it is known as the Missisipi Distiller that attempts to capture the original spirit (pun not intended) of the American south distilling heritage.
Designed in Barcelona, Spain, this finely crafted home distiller illustrates the nuances of English that are often lost in translation. The still’s copper frame is engraved with Missisipi Destil Co.–an honest, if poorly translated, attempt to pay homage to the distilling heritage of the American south. Destined to elicit questions from guests and encourage conversation, the distiller is reminiscent of those used to make brandy or extract essential oils from plants for use in perfumes. The alcohol burner, cucurbit, condensing pot, and collection cup are made from heat-resistant borosilicate glass–the same glass used in laboratory beakers. The distiller is mounted on a walnut base and its frame is made from five copper plates secured in place with copper rivets.
How much does it cost to bring this piece of memorabilia home? $199.95.
Love some paintball action and yet don’t want to stand the pain or do plenty of cleaning up afterwards? There is always the Camo Power Popper that features a dozen bright hunting orange balls made out of foam. These soft foam balls will not hurt anybody, making it the perfect sport be it indoors or outdoors. We’d like to think that investing $15.99 on this would be best played indoors such as the home or office, but try not to hit fragile objects like vases or porcelain decorative items, all right? The faster the handle slides back and forth, the faster those orange balls will pump out from the nozzle. Too bad there are just 12 balls per round, not to mention the hassle of picking them up after that.
It has been argued that bath tubs for your baby are not really necessary. After all, they only work for a short period of time while your baby is little. Then some parents after getting their baby home realize that they prefer other methods to keep them clean, therefore the tub begins to collect dust. However, this new tub offers a benefit that might serve to soothe the frazzled nerves of brand new parents. It has a built-in thermometer, to make sure that your baby’s water is never too hot.
Just from dealing with bathing my nieces, I know I’ve worried several times that I would end up making the water too hot. That or I’d lose hold of one of my nieces when they were soaking wet. So despite that perhaps yes, some people don’t find the baby bath necessary, there are still some that could find this little thing useful. The color changing backlit display shows up as red when it’s too hot, green when the water is just right and of course blue when it’s too cold. It also has an audible high temperature alert. The bath tub would easily fit in the bottom of a tub and has a rinse cup that goes with it. You can pick it up for $40.
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Shapeways is a Philips Incubator Project, and they have just rolled out PhotoShaper. For the uninitiated, PhotoShaper is the first online service that enables basically anyone to transform photos into 3D printable objects by Shapeways. If you’re interested to find out more about PhotoShaper, 
Smith & Nephew has just rolled out a brand new negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) device that was specifically designed for people who want/need to ambulate. Known as the Renasys Go, it comes in a much smaller form factor that can be worn around your neck just like a fashionable MP3 player, although it doesn’t play back any music (could be a feature the manufacturer includes the next time round) but sucks at your gross wound instead. Hey, if somebody asks, you can either tell them the truth or pull their leg that you’re using a pair of prototype Bluetooth earphones which are located right inside your ear canals, hence having no wires running out from the Renasys Go.
The 
This looks like some sort of strange mad scientist design of a contraption which concocts a weird potion after putting in all sorts of exotic ingredients. Actually, it is known as the 
