How does Google and its high-tech-specs effort top company VP Sebastian Thrun's viral photo of a dad's-eye view of Thrun swinging his boy round in circles?
Easy. It puts the Project Glass spectacles on someone, puts that someone on a trampoline, then puts the setting on "video" and lets that someone start jumping and filming.
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Hillcrest Labs isn't a household name, but if you have a
Based in Rockville, Md., Hillcrest developed the motion-sensing technology used in Roku's remote. So when you're flipping through menus or playing Angry Birds, Hillcrest is behind how it all works. Its first product in the motion space was the Loop controller, which it showed at CES 2007. After that, the company went on to license its technology to Sony and LG, develop the
For the next year, however, Hillcrest is thinking smaller. And by that I mean right down to the mobile level. Two weeks ago at CTIA in New Orleans, SVP Chad Lucien explained how the company is working to integrate motion control technology into cell phones and tablets.
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A cheery, two-dimensional lady will soon be arriving in New York City area airports to make the agony of modern air travel a little easier -- if she doesn't totally creep you out, that is.
The Port Authority of New York yesterday unveiled new customer service avatars at Newark and La Guardia airports. For now, the quarter-million-dollar units are essentially woman-shaped, motion-activated looping video billboards that dispense the same prerecorded but helpful information about shuttle buses and restrooms to anyone who walks by. Port Authority representatives said they hope future versions of the technology will be more interactive and capable of holding conversations.
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The annular solar eclipse darkened the sun and lit up social networks this evening.
Instead of completely obscuring the sun, the eclipse, which began around 5:30 p.m. PT, created a golden ring around the moon's silhouette, giving millions in the western United States and Southeast Asia front-row seats to a spectacle that hadn't been witnessed in 18 years.
While the eclipse was expected to last about 3.5 hours, the "ring of fire" phenomenon was only expected to last about 4.5 minutes, depending on location. The best viewing, weather permitting, was expected to be over more
After a stroke, it is often possible -- with months of therapy and determination -- for the brain to relearn how to control a weakened limb. Finding the resources (therapist, finances, time) can be the bigger hurdle.
Enter Circus Challenge, the first in a coming suite of action video games designed by Newcastle University stroke experts and the new company Limbs Alive to provide extra in-home therapy.
"Eighty percent of patients do not regain full recovery of arm and hand function and this really limits their independence and ability to return to work," pediatric neuroscience professor Janet Eyre at Newcastle, more
People are willing to tweet just about anything -- in 2009, Erykah Badu famously tweeted away during labor, and just this past month, the National Zoo live-tweeted the artificial insemination of a giant panda.
So it should come as no surprise that earlier today folks at the Houston-based Memorial Hermann Hospital live-tweeted via the handle @houstonhospital the "rabid play-by-play" of the removal of a tumor from a 21-year-old woman's brain.
The procedure spanned several hours and resulted in dozens of tweets, video uploads on YouTube, and a dizzying array of graphic photos via Twitter and Pinterest.
Dr. Dong Kim, more
Laser cutting, machine sewing, woodworking -- these are some of the basic skills used to build today's latest tech products. And more and more entrepreneurs are getting hands-on training to make their ideas a reality.
TechShop -- described by CEO Mark Hatch as "shop class on steroids" -- is one of the places that inventors go to make prototypes of their projects.
"A lot of people like to make things. It's fundamental to what it means to be human -- at least, we believe that," says Hatch.
He sat down for an interview recently with SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi more
Many of us have relied on rapid diagnostic tests at one time or another, whether it's testing for pregnancy, blood glucose levels, or strep throat.
But while dropping fluid samples on a small strip for near-instantaneous results is affordable and convenient, reading results using the human eye means there is the potential for, well, human error.
So researchers at UCLA have taken the human out of the equation as much as possible and developed a digital "universal" reader for all rapid diagnostic tests, or RDTs, that requires no translation of results.
In the journal Lab on a Chip, the more
SAN FRANCISCO--There's a whole lot of mobile startups these days, but how many of them are actually, you know, mobile?
A company called Needle is, and if you'd wandered near South Park here today, you would have seen its so-called Mobile Contact Center -- essentially a huge RV -- parked on the street with several employees working away inside.
Ostensibly based in Salt Lake City, Needle contracts with retail partners to provide them experts to chat with end users. The idea is that there's likely no one better suited to explaining a product, or answering questions about more
One day, capturing a physical environment and turning it into a 3D image will be as easy as using a point-and-shoot camera. Right now, technology like that can cost north of $100,000, and it's a challenge for businesses to get access. But Matterport CEO Matt Bell and his team are developing a patent-pending system that is cheap, fast, and consumer friendly. CNET visited their Silicon Valley offices for a look.
Bell said he believes the technology could be a game changer in a variety of fields -- from real estate to architecture. In the future he said he more
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