Tag Archives: technology

From a company called Activision: This animated character is being rendered in real-time on current video card hardware, using standard bone animation. The rendering techniques, as well as the animation pipeline are being presented at GDC 2013, “Next Generation Character Rendering” on March 27. The original high resolution data was acquired from Light Stage Facial Scanning and Performance Capture by …

Long-foundering Research In Motion this week launches its first competitor to the iPhone and tech sites are rather excited. Note that commmenters at Gizmodo are quite suspicious of the above rendering of what the new Blackberry actually looks like.

As part of their campaign against the black market for prescription narcotics, the NYPD will today announce a plan to hide GPS tracking chips in “bait bottles” to be placed on pharmacy storage shelves. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was expected to unveil the plan Tuesday at a La Quinta, Calif., conference on health issues hosted by former President Bill Clinton’s …

Just a prototype, but very Minority Report.

Launched in China, of course. It used to take the best part of 24 hours to travel by train from Beijing to the southern boomtown of Guangzhou. But as of Wednesday, when the world’s longest high-speed rail line opened for business, the 1,428-mile journey has been cut to a mere eight hours. The trains travel at an average speed of …

Details.

Via New York Times: Now the United States government is telling the United States government to allow devices on airplanes during takeoff and landing. Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration Thursday, urging the agency to allow more electronics on airplanes. Mr. Genachowski said the F.A.A. should “enable greater use of …

An interesting project via the Telegraph: Ghent University’s centre of microsystems technology has developed a spherical curved LCD display which can be embedded in contact lenses and handle projected images using wireless technology. “Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years,” said Professor Herbert De Smet. …

In a televised interview with NBC, Apple’s quietly gay CEO Tim Cook yesterday revealed that next year his company will be opening a manufacturing facility in the United States. Mac fans will have to wait to see which Mac line it will be because Apple, widely known for its secrecy, left it vague. “We’ve been working for years on doing …

There are only 11,000 payphones left scattered across the five boroughs and New York City has launched a contest for their reinvention. We know that with the rise of mobile phones and digital media, the way that New Yorkers share information is changing rapidly. In order to modernize our powerful communications infrastructure, the City of New York is hosting Reinvent …

Tell us about your latest electronic toys.

John McAfee, the man who founded the company whose anti-virus software resides on hundreds of millions of computers worldwide, is being sought for murder by police in Belize.  Gizmodo reports: According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force’s Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down …

In the wake of widespread flooding to most of New York City’s subway and vehicle tunnels, Homeland Security has renewed testing of a giant inflatable plug. The Resilient Tunnel Plug has been years in development and testing, but it may be more relevant than ever: Superstorm Sandy sent a record 14-foot storm surge into New York Harbor, flooding subway tunnels …

The white iPad Mini is already sold out. The iPad mini was available for pre-order at 3 AM eastern today. In the four hours it’s been available on the market, Apple has sold out of the white wifi models, according to its site. Shipping times for the white iPad mini are delayed by two weeks. The black wifi iPad mini …

You knew that headline was coming, right? Via Gizmodo: The iPad Mini is here. It’s a sleek, thin and light 7.9-inch tablet made of anodized aluminum and glass that follows the format reduction pioneered by Google and Amazon. This thing is really neat. Really light and thin at 0.68 pounds and 7.2 millimeters. The iPad Mini has a larger surface …

Google has posted images of its server farms to its Street View gallery. Engadet has the slideshow.

NPR Music takes note: Today marks the 30th anniversary of a musical format many of us grew up with: the compact disc. It’s been three decades since the first CD went on sale in Japan. The shiny discs came to dominate music industry sales, but their popularity has faded in the digital age they helped unleash. The CD is just …

Apple CEO Tim Cook has posted an apology on the company’s home page: At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are …

How have your movie-watching habits changed in the last ten years?

Apple reported today that pre-orders for the iPhone 5 have eclipsed all previous records. More than two million units were sold in the first 24 hours. Last year, Apple reported that, overall, the iPhone 4S had sold one million pre-orders in the first 24 hours, a figure that the company said it was “blown away” by at the time. Demand …