Peter Kirn has a great overview of how Chris O’Shea is going open source with his experiments in building tangible interfaces — interactive tables on which moving physical objects (like blocks) create visuals and sound. One obstacle in this technology has been people haven’t been able to refine the techniques; they just create bare-bones proof-of-concept but haven’t been able to build on others’ work. This is really encouraging. Link.
Tom’s Hardware takes a look at the build-it-yourseld laptop systems. If you like building your own PC, this might appeal to you. It seems like it will always be a little more expensive, but you’ll get exactly what you want. The cool part is in the end you get to put it all together yourself, the article also includes a video. Thanks Spyder. Link.
Karl writes “I have a bunch of super 8 movies that I inherited from my father and would like to put them on DVD using some kind of compression (is mpg). Do have any suggestions? I have tried the projector with mirrors and a 8mm camcorder approach and was not satisfied with the quality“. Suggestions for Karl? I found this here, but not sure if that’s the best way. Post up in the comments!
G4’s AOTS has a cool remix of our Aerial Photography project. They hacked up a wireless camera and some battery packs to transmit video to a laptop down below. Here’s a video clip of part I of the project, they’re posting video and images soon. On another related AOTS note, looks like MAKE will be on the show in June! View QuickTime video.
Amazing public space art installation. The tower at the the S/U station has an odd glass cube on the top and the artists decided to give it eyes. The passersby could participate by looking inside the box. Their eyes were then projected onto the glass–front of the tower, making it look like the head of a robot with ever changing and personalized eyes. The project was an attempt to make “street–art that anybody can influence and use playfully.” Link.
I’m really interested in the Yahoo! Music Engine because of Ian Rogers who works for Yahoo! -he posted a list of reasons you should or shouldn’t use the new player and service. Napster taught us alll price matters, so $5/month is better, IM hooks (finally some does IM sharing), OGG and FLAC Encoding and plug ins for podcasting, as well as other roll your own type addons. I’m going to try it, looks different, looks like someone is listening…and that’s what it takes to get me to install something. Link.
