A $6,000 mirror for your megapixel mug

(Credit: mcleodmirror.com)

If you could spend $6,000 on anything right now, it would certainly be a photomosaic mirror comprised of a 30-inch LCD screen and a Mac Mini, right? If so, you're in luck, because The Barbarian Group is now selling custom-made, limited-edition, real-time photomosaic mirrors. They come as a large box that you need simply hang up and plug in. Its built-in Web cam will take your image and display it as a photo mosaic with about a second of lag while it processes many teeny-tiny pictures to reflect a live image (see video here).

To build up its spectrum to accurately represent real-life colors, the McLeod mirror will take still frames from video and put them into a temporary library of other users. So what you're looking at are pictures of others who have used the mirror, combined together to look like video. The effect is truly neat.

The run of these "mirrors" is a mere 100. The Barbarian Group plans to introduce the next version of the mirror at next year's Emerging Technology Conference in early March. If you live in the greater Seattle area, you can also go check it out in person at the McLeod Residence art gallery.

[via the O'Reilly Radar blog]