(Credit:
Art Lebedev Studio)
The Fleximus is a twisty concept camera from Art Lebedev Studio, generator of such innovative ideas as transparent trucks and the Optimus Maximus keyboard.
(Credit:
Art Lebedev Studio)
The Fleximus is a tubular, flexible photo and video camera with a lens at one end and viewfinder or a 3-inch display at the other.
The device is designed to be as simple as possible, with few controls. Natch, since the motto of Art Lebedev Studio is "No bullsh--."
The Fleximus is also meant to get those photo angles you never could before, though it seems less practical than, say, a more compact camera you can simply aim at anything.
But it may be perfect for plumbers angling through pipes, nooks, and crannies--rovided, that is, it ever becomes a product and gets a much longer tube.
There is a neat page of designs showing how the Fleximus was created here.
A video signal is delivered from the camera mounted in the head of the truck to the back door panels through a projector.
(Credit: Art Lebedev)Russian design studio Art Lebedev calls this simple invention--a camera that takes images from the front of a truck to show it on screens in the back--Transparentius. I call it geeneeuzz.
I don't know why the drawing below shows a tank at the front of the truck, but I guess that in Russia people drive T-90s like people drive Fords in the U.S. I wish the technology was so cheap that this could be implemented for real, because I'm sure being able to see what's in the blind zone before switching lanes would save a lot of lives on the road.
(Credit:
Art Lebedev)
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
The woefully incomplete Louvre app for iPhone offers little to smile about.
J'adore France and the French people. But I'm pretty disappointed with Musee du Louvre, a free but painfully brief virtual tour of the famous museum.
The app consists of four main sections. In Louvre: The Visit, you get a video tour of seven well-known areas of the museum, including The Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa.
However, each "tour" lasts less than 20 seconds, and the default language is French. If you tap the screen to bring up the controls and then tap the language icon, you can select English (or German or Japanese), but there's no way to make it the default. You have to perform this step for each video, each time you watch it.
In Artworks, you get a Cover Flow-style selection of famous paintings--but only 20 of them. Tap one to get information about the work, a zoom-and-pan-able full-screen view, and a map showing its location within the museum.
The Palace follows the same format, but focuses on areas of the Louvre itself rather than individual artworks.
Finally, there's the prerequisite visitor information, including hours and admission fees--but no maps to or of the museum (save for the aforementioned few).
Musee du Louvre does let you bookmark any item for easy reference, but with so little content, this seems rather pointless. Hopefully the curators developers will turn this incomplete tease of an app into the rich, arts-friendly resource it should be.
In the meantime, anyone planning a visit to the actual museum would be much better served by Rick Steves' Louvre Tour ($4.99).
If you're a fan of comic books, you should also be a fan of the iPhone. Apple's smartphone is home to several neat comic-book apps designed specifically for those who want to enjoy harrowing stories of their favorite heroes in the Digital Age.
I've sifted through the many apps related to comic books and found a handful that you'll want to try out. Whether you're a DC Comics fan or you're partial to Marvel, I think you'll like what you find in these apps.
Get your comic on
Clickwheel Comic Reader if you plan to read comic books on your iPhone, the Clickwheel Comic Reader will be able to satisfy that desire.
When you start using Clickwheel Comic Reader, you'll be able to sift through comic books and find one you want to read. The app doesn't have many of the classics like those you would find from an app like Comics or iVerse Comics (see below), but it does have some comic books you might care about. Either way, the app displays all your favorite content in full color on your iPhone. And since it's free, it's probably worth trying out if you don't mind reading a relatively small collection of books.
If you want to read some comic books, Clickwheel might be your choice.
(Credit: Clickwheel)Comic Envi If you're more into comic strips than comic books, we have you covered too.
With the help of Comic Envi, you can check out some of your favorite comic strips. You can check out old, well-known comic strips, Web-only offerings, and more. You have the option of viewing them in a slideshow or by moving them with your fingers. You can also check out the daily updated strips or some of the titles in the archive. It's a neat utility, but beware that you will need to pay 99 cents to get it.
Check out Comic Strips with the help of Comic Envi.
(Credit: Comic Envi)Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
I like Japanese artist Mio Lizawa because he's the kind of guy who sits around and thinks, "My, wouldn't it be great if my PC had some sort of pulsating, frightening, brain-like thing hanging out of the side of it?" and then goes out and builds just such a thing.
"Mechanical Tumor" is art. At least I think it is. And it's functional: the more CPU usage his computer is experiencing, the larger the, uh, thing gets. Write a letter to grandma and it sits there rather quietly. Start playing Warcraft and it grows and pulsates and frightens. I can't ascertain exactly what materials Mechanical Tumor is made of, but I suspect it's made of evil and the sins of children.
I'm hoping that Lizawa can find a way to market this blob, maybe as a USB device. But I hope it doesn't get too popular--I want to be able to sit it on the table at my coffee shop whilst I blog, but I don't want everyone to have seen one before.
(Via Register Hardware)
Nik Ramage's "Fingers," shown in Putty White, are now on preorder for $740.
(Credit: Laikingland)As an obsessive-compulsive gum chewer, I never thought to make art of my annoying habit like mechanical sculptor Nik Ramage has done. He built a mechanical copy of his hand, which drums its fingers without cessation. Anyone imagining a use for this thing?
Based on Dezeen's description, this little motorized, battery-operated gadget is either a pure annoyance or maybe, depending on your imagination, something more useful:
Fingers by Nik Ramage are an eternally tapping mechanical copy of the artist's own hand. At the flick of a switch the resin cast fingers drum rhythmically, until switched off.
Ramage's piece is currently on display at 100% Design London, and is being batch-produced by U.K. kinetic manufacturer Laikingland in three colors--Putty White, Masking Tape, and Light Blue--for shipping in November. What's next? A foot-tapping gadget? Something to say, "Ummm, like...you know..." every few moments?
This story originally appeared on Gizmodo.
One of the coolest features for Spore gamers is the ability to create their own creatures. Now, anyone can assemble aliens through a new site set up by Electronic Arts.
Spore Creature Creator 2-D, released Wednesday, lets you conjure up and animate your own creatures using an assortment of eyes, arms, feet, horns, and various unidentifiable body parts.
Produced by EA's Maxis studio, the Flash-based game starts with a large egg cracking open to reveal a simple alien body that you mold online like a lump of clay. Thin, fat, long, or short--you devise your creature's basic shape. Then it's time to build your baby with the right parts.
Choosing from such categories as mouths, limbs, and graspers, just drag your favorite body parts onto your creature to evolve it from a formless blob into a fully-functioning whatever. The game helps you along, directing you to drop the parts in all the right places. You can bend and resize many of the parts, giving your creature big eyes and a small mouth or long legs and stubby feet. You can also add a splash of paint by choosing from a wide palette of colors.
As you develop your creation, it takes on life by showing off its animated parts, such as a mouth that opens and closes, eyes that blink, and graspers that try to grasp. If you're in a hostile mood, you can even add weapons, like the Problem-Solvent that sprays solvent, the Hockitlauncher that spits out water, or the Phlegmthrower that shoots, uh, well, you get the idea.
If you need a helping hand, you don't have to build your creature from scratch. Spore Creature Creator 2-D lets you tap into the Sporepedia, an online gallery of creatures designed by Maxis developers and other Spore gamers. Simply load one of the pre-existing creatures and then tweak it to assemble a totally new organism.
Once you're done, it's time to name and describe your creature. You can then take it for a workout in the Creature Trainer arena, where you move it around the screen to catch bouncing balls with its mouth, hands, or other parts.
If you're proud of your new creation, you can e-mail a postcard image of it to a friend or save it as a PNG file for your own picture gallery or Web site.
A variety of Spore masterpieces are viewable at the Sporepedia Web site. And for all you budding Spore artists, Maxis is offering a Creature Creator challenge. Recreate one of your favorite Spore creatures using Creature Creator 2-D for a chance to be featured on Spore.com.
Caryl Shaw, a senior producer at Maxis who helped bring Spore Creature Creator 2-D to life, told me the game came about because Maxis wanted to make Spore more accessible and let anyone with a Web browser experience the same creativity that Spore gamers enjoy. As one of the most popular features of Spore, the Creature Creator seemed a natural.
... Read more
"Radford" has a retro View-Master for a head and an antique English tin for a body. A roller skate, faucet, valve, and tongs make up the rest of the piece. Click on the image above to see more of Will Wagenaar's work.
(Credit: Will Wagenaar)Florida-based artist Will Wagenaar is obsessed with junk. He constantly scours yard sales and flea markets for discarded objects that he transforms into playful creations. Wagenaar's robot sculptures, all recycled and bolted together, seem at once antique and futuristic.
"My inspiration comes from the materials themselves and the linkage of objects," Wagenaar says. "The human condition is also my inspiration. I use robots to illuminate all the problems, predicaments, and personalities of real people."
Below you'll find a gallery of some of Wagenaar's best; you can see more of the artist's creations at his photostream.
The Phonofone II
(Credit: Tristan Zimmermann)I'm no fan of iPod speakers; most of the ones I hear at the CNET offices tend to sound pretty awful. But Tristan Zimmermann's Phonofone II iPod speaker is just so cool I couldn't resist writing about it. The ceramic device uses what looks like a miniature horn modeled after an old-fashioned Victrola.
Conceptually the Phonofone II owes a lot to the earliest pure acoustic record players that made sound without electrical amplification. I have heard some of those sound remarkably good. Victor-Victrolas were made from 1901 to 1929.
According to Unica Home's Web site the Phonofone II "... boosts the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibels (or roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers) upon connecting active earphones to the Phonofone their trebly buzzing is instantly and profoundly transformed into a warm, rich and resonant sound." In other words the horn acoustically amplifies the sound of the earbud/headphone driver.
... Read more
Runte's take on real-world Pac-Man. The photographer designed and made the costumes for the series.
(Credit: Patrick Runte)While we wait for the big-screen adaptation of Halo to hopefully come out in the next couple of years, we must wonder about the real-life looks video games of yore may have taken. Modern games already look like awesome high-definition movies, but what about their heavily pixelated predecessors?
German photographer Patrick Runte has taken on the idea and has come up with some fairly funny recreations of old 4-bit video games as they would have looked in real life. The games adapted include Tetris, Pac-Man, and of course Pong. He even goes off the grid just a tad to bring us a pinball recreation. Rad.
Runte's a good photographer and there are many more (not so geeky) images on his site. In the meantime, check out a couple more of his game shots after the jump.
Runte's friends dress in costume to represent Pong in the real world.
(Credit: Patrick Runte)... Read more
