Technology, Gadgets, IT, Games

The Telexistence Wide-angle Immersive STEReoscope (TWISTER) is a goggle-free panoramic display aimed to ‘immerse viewers in a 3D video environment.’ Developed by a team at the University of Toyko, TWISTER is being hailed as the ‘world’s first full-color 360-degree 3D display that does not require viewers to wear special glasses,’ and it’s finally coming together after a decade of work. Within the cylindrical, rotating device, you’ll find some 50,000 LEDs that give off the illusion of a three-dimensional object without any ocular aids. Moreover, the team is already looking into the possibility of adding 3D videophone technology to spruce up video telephony, but we’d be totally content with a couple rounds of Halo in this thing.

SOURCE: PinkTentacle

The Center for Information Work at Microsoft concentrates on taking emerging and new technology and finding real-world applications for it. One product they have developed is the DigiDesk workstation, shown off at Convergence 07. The DigiDesk is a workstation intended for use at a manufacturing plant or suchlike, and it combines many managerial functions into one station. From this desk, you could check for errors on the system, see where stock is, calculate whether there is enough stock to fulfil any new orders, automatically order new stock, alter the schedules and rotas to accommodate changes and publish them directly to the web. It also includes a document digitizer (OCR), natural language input (speech recognition) and loads of fancy user interface gimmicks such as manual on-screen document moving and resizing. No word on when this would actually be implemented anywhere, but the concept is great. Video after the jump. Read more

Ever wondered what a wet magnetic Christmas tree could look like? Us too. The Morpho Towers are two cones that sit in a pool of magnetic ferrofluid and vary their magnetism to the beat of music. As they spin, the metal filings in the fluid hang to the sides of the cones and produce these extraordinary patterns. The stronger the magnetism, the bigger the spikes on the side. Combined in the harmony of music, these cones can produce some amazing displays

‘When there is no magnetic field, the tower appears to be a simple spiral shape. But when the magnetic field around the tower is strengthened, spikes of ferrofluid are born. At the same time, the tower’s surface dynamically morphs into a variety of textures ranging from soft fluid to minute moss, or to spiky shark’s teeth, or again to a hard iron surface. The ferrofluid, with its smooth, black surface that seems to draw people in, reaches the top of the tower, spreading like a fractal, defying gravity. The spikes of ferrofluid are made to rotate around the edge of the spiral cone, becoming large or small depending on the strength of the magnetic field. In this work the speed of this rotation can be controlled without motors or shaft mechanisms – we simply control the magnetic power.’

Read on for a video of these sculptures in action: Read more

Canada’s D-Wave Systems has announced ‘the world’s first ‘commercially viable’ quantum computer.

Quantum bits (qubits) are digits that can be either ‘on’, ‘off’ or ‘both’, due to strange quantum physics down at the atomic scale. This 16-qubit processor can solve simple problems such as Sudoku and create complex ‘seating plans’ – not exactly good compared to normal binary computers.

However, if quantum computers can be created that process calculations thousands of qubits, they could be used for tasks modern computers take decades to pursue, such as encryption. Read more