Saturday 30 June 2007

iPhone might be the new black iMac ?

Apple iPhone keyboard action
A few pictures of iPhone vending machines
Accessoriries at the clever phone's blog
A business foray into the iphone launch for Europe
Everything tv for iPhone TV and all web viewers
Heaps of links in getting around the iPhone
The first of many iPhone Forums

Everything Miscellaneous at the iPhone FAQ

A heap of help between your computer and iPhone

A very cool Everything iPhone designed site

Steve Jobs says the iPhone doesn't surf the web fast enough but adds that with the iphone's wifi capabilities allows uses to surf the web via wifi hot spots

A hasty drooling iphone unboxing
Get the Wiki on the iphone including 78 references
A gallery of 49 Snapshots of disassembling the iPhone
And in case these links aren't enough go here

Thursday 28 June 2007

WatAir: A Dew-Catching Inverted Pyramid

Leaves and spiders' webs beaded with dew have inspired a low-tech solution for collecting fresh water. WatAir, an inverted pyramid made from elastic canvas, recycled polycarbonate, metal or glass, can reap dozens of litres of water a day from the air. The inexpensive solution could help bring clean drinking water to people in remote or polluted areas. Joseph Cory & Eyal Malka from Haifa, Israel have a developed a device to catch water from air. The device features 96sq m of dew collecting panels arranged in an inverted pyramid shape and they estimate each device could collect 48 litres of water a day in remote places or places with contaminated water supplies. More pictures and information here and here.

Monday 25 June 2007

Waterfall Art







Waterfall Art

Saturday 23 June 2007

A Zoo Of Artificial Life: Worlds First Robotarium

Conceived for a public garden made as a large glass structure housing 45 Robots nearly all powered by photovoltaic energy others are powered thru the ceiling or the floor. All of the Robots were built especially for this project. There are 14 distinct species distinguished by 3 types of behaviours; Obstacle avoidance, movement of sunlight detection and interaction with the public. Robotarium X is a new kind of Art work, inwhich the Artist Leonel Moura is critically questioning nature, life, the artificial, culture and Science.

Flight Glide VentureOne in Motion

Originally a concept car by BMW but now being mass produced for Europe and the US has an amazing ability of tilting at almost 45 degrees and looks at becoming the worlds first mass produced Hybrid Trike, although there is also an all electric one. The vehicle seats two and is capable of a 100mph while maintaining 100mpg and has a velocity acceleration of 0 - 60 in 6 seconds. It will cost $18k US and $20k US will get you an all electric. Watch the Videos to experience the Flight Glide VentureOne in Motion,(hopefully you enjoy Dub music). All versions have standard features of GPS Navigation,HIVAC, Airbags.Cruise control and iPod intergration.

Friday 22 June 2007

Drobo : The Worlds First Storage Robot

The device manages your data for you and works independently all by itself. The device can be used with a Mac or windows machine. It does all the required data management on the fly. One can be using the computer whilst one is swapping smaller drives for larger drives. Some of the notable features include the ability to self repair corrupted data, the ability to detect when a drive is about to fail, the ability to let users add storage drives of any size or pull out dead drives while working with files. The front panel of the device has alert lights to indicate whether a drive is full or failing, watch the video to see how easy it is to use

Thursday 21 June 2007

Point & Click 3D Gestural Technology

In the movie Minority Report the actor Tom Cruise plays the role of a detective who can perceive future crimes before they might happen and he does this by standing in front of a large video screen watching and manipulating vast amounts of video clips to interpret future events.....this video is from a CNN Video report of a couple of inventors demonstrating their Gestural Technology (GT) device that imitates or clones the science fiction into science fact. It remains a mystery as to how it works nevertheless it goes without saying, until they bring their invention to market.

Art Group,Hacks Czech TV - Atombomb

what we have here is not all that distant from cloning,shape-shifting, morphing and/or virtual objects, nevertheless someone recently wrote:

Like many European TV channels the state-owned CT2 broadcasts live panorama / weather streams from popular recreation areas in its morning programme, fully automated 30 second pans per site with music in the background. Initiative Ztohoven, a collective around Roman Tyc, somehow managed to inject a pre-recorded pan with a sudden atomic explosion in the midst of a beautiful countryside. No word how they did it, assume they tricked the cabling on the unmanned camera site. Tyc also replaced traffic light icons in Prague with illustrations of drunk, pissing or ranting figures a few months ago.

Wednesday 20 June 2007

Technogicians at Sonar - Multimedia

Sonarmatica is one of the visual art sections of Sonar, Barcelona's increasingly massive festival of music and multimedia art. This year, Sonarmatica's theme is technological magic and its inspiration is a quote by Arthur C. Danto, the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which states, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' In a moment when the more insidious potential of ubiquitous and imperceptible technologies is often the subject of conversations around issues such as surveillance or privacy, Sonarmatica's theme takes a celebratory approach with the intent to immerse the viewer in a show of 'illusionism and pre-digitization' dense with references to the spectacular experience of magic shows and cinema experiments of the late nineteenth century. Curated by Jose Luis de Vicente, Oscar Abril Ascaso, and Advanced Music in collaboration with Interactivos from MediaLab Madrid, and titled Et Voila!, the Sonarmatica exh! ibition will present works by an international group of artists, including Luis Nieto, Zach Lieberman, Julien Maire, Phillip Worthington, and Mago Julien, amongst others. Several of the works realize familiar magic tricks, as in Jeff Lieberman's Lightbulb, which suspends a light bulb in the air through the use of a 'magnetic hall effect sensor, an electromagnet, and a [modified] PD feedback system.' Et Voila embraces the opaque, macabre, and amazing facets of technology to present a contemporary magic show. - Lauren Cornell

Toshiba's '360-degree' Head Mounted Display

It could be the way we will be watching our TV programmes and PC games in the near future. Toshiba has developed a giant full-faced helmet that weighs around three kilo and facilitates the wearer to see a full 360-degree view on a 40 cm dome-shaped fish-eye screen. The idea of full “360-degree viewing is fabulous but does anyone think it’s really fabulous with that gigantic 3 kg helmet on your head? It could have been a ground-breaking gizmo if they had made it a bit smaller ?

This thing could make even Darth Vader jealous. Bringing a whole new meaning to weighing the pros and cons, this full-faced Toshiba helmet weighs three kilos, but it offers a full 360 degree view on a 40 centimeter dome-shaped screen. That's incredicbly sexy if not for the helmet, is it too much to ask to have them display the images on my 40mm dome-shaped retinas?

Monday 18 June 2007

Cutting Edge TV with 500,000:1 contrast ratio

and super blacks
Well if you've got the readies 58 million won (about $100kA), Samsung has produced a new 70-inch LCD HD TV with a whopping contrast ratio (1080p) the high-definition LCDTV includes among other high tech features an LED backlight. This feature helps create a carbon credits reduction in its use since the background LED's turn off thereby enabling a dramatic increase in viewable blackness and thus less power consumption.

The wealthy top end of the market can acquire this display, right now from Samsung, nevertheless the rest of us can at the very least merely genuflect !

Light and Water Sound Fountain

A very enterprising Artistic invention indeed, Sound Fountain by Todd Vanderlin

Using light and water Sound Fountain acts as a alternate interface to audio. The sampled audio is altered and plays back as one interacts with a stream of water. The more one plays with a stream the more elaborate the sound becomes.

The difficulty I experience with this type of video interface is that I have a modest 512k broadband, which means that the stream playback is stop/start, kind of quite annoying, nevertheless its worth checking this blog out. Todd has done a remarkable job both in the work and in his documentation of it. Click thru to his photos if you experience streaming playback annoyances !

Sanyo Projector Technology Breakthrough

The image reveals this devices' spearhead in front of a growing market in video projectors. The Sanyo Projector is that little grey box on a stand in front of what appears to be a glass window. Yes the projector is just 8cm from the screen and is projecting an image 80cm wide. Obviously Sanyo has made an important inventive advancement in optical projection. This means that a teacher or presenter can stand behind the projector and not be gifted by the projectors searingly bright projection path.

Sanyo predicts that the 1024 x 768 resolution device will open up a realm of new uses, including projecting moving images from above onto a school floor for interactive learning, displaying advertising on ceilings or windows and even as a tool for architects or town planners to study plans on a collaborative work surface.
Other functions of note are a vibration-sensitive anti-theft alarm, a quick cool-down routine and a hue adjustment mode that allows images projected onto non-white surfaces - including the greener variety of blackboards - to be displayed correctly.

Saturday 16 June 2007

Turning Part of a Derelict Building

Commuters in the UK city of Liverpool will be treated to the sensational sight of a city centre eyesore literally turning itself inside out. The former Yates Wine Lodge building, opposite Moorfields station, is now the subject of one of the more eye-catching pieces of art planned for Capital of Culture.

Sculptor Richard Wilson has cut out an egg-shaped section of the derelict building’s front and fixed it to a giant pivot. The facade will rotate like a huge opening and closing window, giving passers-by a glimpse of the interior.

Chirpy Chihuahuas To Take Flight

These little charmers are on show at an equally quaint venue, inwhich you might be forgiven if you have difficulty locating. They are on display in the Studio foyer Avant Card stand at the Sydney Opera House Australia, from now until mid July. They have been created by Artist Jeweler Emily Bullock. The feathers are from domestic deceased pet budgies and have been seemlessly crafted to two deceased Chihuahuas, each measuring approximately 12cm in height and are available for purchase ($2,800A).
Some visitors to my blog may recall that the artist has been blogged about before and the updated news about that work meant that she returned home with some prize money for her entry and sold the work to boot.

Wednesday 13 June 2007

Z-BAR LED Lamp (Metallic Black)




The Z-Bar's 66, long-livin' LEDs pump 100 lumens in pretty much any direction you want thanks to that 47-inch, finger-thin neck loaded with hinges and rotational joints. Sure, 100 lumens doesn't seem like much when compared to an incandescent's 500-800 lumens. The Z-Bar's trick is to focus the light in a 50-degree viewing angle instead of the 360-degrees of waste emitted by standard light bulbs. The lamp can stand alone on its weighted base or clamped to a table edge.

Saturday 9 June 2007

Coal Freighter: Pasha Bulker Panorama

The large coal freighter Pasha Bulker was driven ashore yesterday in a fierce storm in Newcastle (130km N of Sydney). This beach, Nobby's Beach, is the main city beach of Newcastle, the CBD being just a 15 minute walk away. Now focus is shifted to environmental concerns and salvage of the ship with reports ranging from optimism to environmental catastrophe. The consensus in the maritime world is that damage from fuel oil can be avoided if the weather allows them to pump out the ship’s tanks prior to any additional structural damage.

Thursday 7 June 2007

Spatio-temporal Flights To Rosette Torregrosa

WiTricitic Power : Electricity without Cables
MIT Lab Discovers the Power of the Universe
A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have demonstrated a wireless power transfer scheme they have dubbed 'WiTricity' or wireless electricity

The concept behind the technology is simple and based on the idea that two resonant objects on the same resonance frequency can exchange energy efficiently.While the demonstration was of a 60W globe being powered from a source over two metres (seven feet) away, a more popular application could be to recharge electronic gadgets such as mobile phones, making them truly wireless.

The key: Magnetically coupled resonance
Objects tuned to the same resonant frequency can transfer energy efficiently over some distance (like a tuning fork separated from a resonating musical instrument at the same pitch) with little energy dissipated to surrounding objects with different resonant frequencies. The MIT team had previously worked out the necessary resonance conditions that would ensure relatively efficient electrical power transmission and used their calculations to design two electromagnetically resonating coils coupled by their magnetic fields.
A key point is that WiTricity does not use electromagnetic radiation, which would be inefficient and possibly hazardous. Instead, it relies on magnetically coupled resonance which gives efficient energy transfer and interacts very weakly with most common materials including living creatures. "The fact that magnetic fields interact so weakly with biological organisms is also important for safety considerations," said researcher Andre Kurs.

The system uses a pair of copper coils. One generates a magnetic field oscillating in the megaHertz range, and the other resonates with that field and converts the energy back into electricity. In comparison with magnetic induction (as used in electrical transformers), resonant coupling remains efficient when the two coils are not very close together.

And a very astute critically entertaining read

Simple switch turns cells embryonic

Technique removes need for eggs or embryos.
With the birth of this chimaeric mouse the suggestion is that the cells used to generate it behave like embryonic stem cells. Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice The race is now on to apply the surprisingly straightforward procedure to human cells. If researchers succeed, it will make it relatively easy to produce cells that seem indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, and that are genetically matched to individual patients. There are limits to how useful and safe these would be for therapeutic use in the near term, but they should quickly prove a boon in the lab. David Cyrnoski

New Web Interface : PhotoSynth Demo

This software looks to be the next development of the application interface already provided in the Apple TV, Google Street Level and a cat that hasn't yet pranced which you will be able to access via your iPhone. Or your Wide screen monitor/ TV / Computer as well as 3G phone Networks. To watch, what you want to watch/create it, watch when you want to watch/create it and where you want to watch/create videos,TV, chat download/upload, music, movies, In sum a way for all passive users to become active users/creators. The BMW Ad that follows the video keynote is a reel demo using PhotSynth .

Bits Now Stand Up For More Space On HDD


The latest Apple computers and probably many other computers now contain Perpendicular Hard drives. this creates a more efficient use of disk space. Perpendicular drives are hard disk storage devices that store data bits vertically rather than “flat” or horizontally. Vertical storage allows for a ten-fold increase in data capacity while preserving data integrity. For a rough comparison, imagine a bookshelf with a single layer of books laid flat, end-to-end across the shelf. This represents the way traditional platters hold data bits. Now stand the books vertically and press them to one side, and you can fit many more books on the same size shelf. This is the basic principle behind perpendicular drives. For a more detailed analysis of Perpendicular drives read this

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Peter Murphy's time lapse video panorama

very busy everything appears to be boiling but watch closely and you may see what's happening in this mediavr.

The file is 8 meg

more panoramas

Saturday 2 June 2007

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, "ethically sourced"

At the White Cube Gallery in a very posh area of London Damien Hirst was showing or pehaps I should say hiding one his latest works - A diamond encrusted 18th Century skull
Over 8,601 diamonds glued to platinium cast which cost 14 million pounds Damien seeks 50 million pounds for the art piece.The centrepiece of the Artists creation is a pear-shaped pink diamond, set in the skull's forehead The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th-century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than $8 million in the center of its forehead.
The skull, which was bought from a shop in Islington, north London, is thought to belong to a 35-year-old European who lived between 1720 and 1810.
Damien thought "what could be the maximum comment I (he) could make about Anti death that could be created.....then he thought what could be the biggest celebration I could do sort of against death"

If his work sells it would set a new record price for an artwork by a living artist. A commentator likens its exclusivity to the crown jewels, difficult to put a price on it ?

The BBC Camera (video on this page) was prevented from going any further, so the video footage of the work is a piece of private encapsulated footage edited into their news clip.

The work is in another location in the building, the Gallerist mentions that the location. "Looks like something you would dance around in an ethics disco and the whole atmosphere is like a night club Each viewer is individually escorted by Security Guards and you go down in a lift were the numbers of the floors on the control panel in the lift are hidden. and its place is like entering a disco...you go down into a darkened room and there's black every where and all the bouncers (security guards) are all dressed in black then you have in an ordinance (some sort of display case) in which the audacious work is in."

So what used to be the head of a 35 year old man has become a statement about death and all thats left of him are his teeth.

"It was very important to put the real teeth back. Like the animals in formaldehyde you have got an actual animal in there. It is not a representation. I wanted it to be real," he said.

The skull is missing one tooth, which Hirst initially replaced with a gold one and then decided to leave out.

"We felt we didn't need it, so we took it out. It feels sort of human and quirky," he said.
The artist said that he was inspired by an Aztec turquoise skull at the British Museum, and hopes that his work will eventually be displayed at the institution. He rejected suggestions that his works were more a standing joke against the art establishment than real works of art.

"I've stopped worrying about what art is. There is good art, bad art, indifferent art. It is art but it is more timeless than contemporary art," he said.

Two other Artists in my memory that have created similarly exotically produced Art Works are Michelangelo and Christo who funds his projects chiefly from the sale of his drawings.. There are probably heaps more (perhaps you could enlighten me in the comments). who have achieved similarly poignant statements.

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