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Archive for the ‘Geek’ Category

Multimodal Co-Located Interaction Project

07 Apr 2006

Two days ago I said something about a multi-touch interface that came out of the Mitsubishi Electronic Research Labs. Edward Tse, a doctoral student and one of the authors of that prototype commented on my post and pointed to his website where I found a more complete version of the movie, including a demo of Google Earth. It’s amazing what you can do with this Multimodal Co-located Interaction project.

Turns out the project is a PhD research which is focused on supporting people’s natural interactions over digital surfaces such as large tables and wall displays.

Interaction on a digital table supports face to face collaboration with the added benefits of digital displays (e.g., real time updates, access to the Internet and rich satellite imagery).
Core features of my work include rich whole handed bimanual gestures, speech and gesture input, and multi user interaction.
Application areas include tabletop gaming, military command and control, air traffic control and hospital emergency rooms.

Check out the more complete video
Learn more about this project
Visit Edward Tse’s website

 

MERL Game Table Prototype

05 Apr 2006

Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs came up with this Game Table Prototype in which they demo Warcraft III and show you how you can command characters using your voice and hands. Awesome !

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories is the North American arm of the Corporate R&D organization of the Mitsubishi Electric Corporation. We conduct application motivated basic research and advanced development in computer and communication technologies.

Check out more projects of the MERL

Need more info about this prototype? Send email to shen at merl.com

 

Phosphor Beta 1

04 Apr 2006

Rasterwerks came up with this pretty amazing first person shooter in Shockwave 3D. It’s absolutely addictive and if you’re into gaming you just got to try this. It’s just one level with 3 bot players but I haven’t been bored yet since I’ve started playing this game. I like the graphics and the setup, it has everything a game like this should have.

The Shockwave Player allows the game to run within a web browser on Windows and Mac OS computers. Both single player (with AI-controlled bots) and multiplayer (using peer-to-peer Internet or LAN connections) game modes are supported. The designers’ goal is to create a gaming experience similar to classic FPS games like Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, but with the accessibility of a webgame.

Phosphor 1

Phosphor 2

Phosphor 3

This is the first public beta. Current development is focused on tuning bot AI and improving multiplayer performance. Future versions will include additional player models, game types, and many more maps.

Check out Phosphor Beta 1 | via Download Squad

 
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Posted in Games, Geek

 

The Simpsons Movie Trailer

04 Apr 2006

15 months away, that’s over a year… and yet the first official trailer for The Simpsons Movie has already been lauched. Talking about great expectations. Let’s hope this is going to be as good as they promise.

The Simpsons Movie

Check out the official trailer on Apple.com

 
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Posted in Geek, Humor

 

Craprr Lists Loser Generated Content

02 Apr 2006

In this time of Web 2.0, more and more sites are keen to collect and share input from their users. However, 99% of the people do not produce valuable content, which means a lot of applications are actually building upon the input of crap. In comes Craprr.

Craprr

In this Web 2.0 era, it’s also a must to find a really cool brand name and add an extra ‘r’ to it. Without the ‘r’ it wouldn’t be 2.0 or it might not be so catchy. You can also make a logo look like something big, preferably Google. That’ll do the trick.

Check out Craprr

 
 

Google Shirt Of The Month

31 Mar 2006

Heheheh. You might think it doesn’t happen, but the fact is, it already happened before! Randy points to this extremely funny t-shirt which is for sale at T-Shirt Humor:

Man She Forgot To Google

Women used to be warned when they were little girls. They told them not to take candy from strangers, not to drive along with unknown men. Now we can add to this: Google your date before you go out with him. Google has become part of our culture, even more than we could’ve possibly assumed.

You can also have it printed on a mug, a mousepad, a cap or a poster.

Get this goodie now !

 
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Posted in Geek, Humor

 

Download IT Crowd Movies

30 Mar 2006

For those who’ve followed my previous posts about The IT Crowd and waited patiently until YouTube loaded the videos, or for those who adore the series as much as I do, there’s a link to a fansite that has all the episodes available in .avi and .wmv format so you can download these goodies for keepers. Ever since the British policy came around that said ‘content is for UK residents only’ it’s been hard for surfers outside the UK to find any UK movies or audio files to download. Even the BBC plays that card with their Open Earth Archive of 400 movies using a rather bold disclaimer:

The BBC has decided to limit access to Creative Archive Licence Campaign content to UK residents to ensure best value for the UK licence fee. Users outside of the UK are not able to access clips and programmes that form part of this campaign. Regrettably we are therefore unable to offer you content and would like to apologise for any disappointment.

Yeah sure, if you’re outside the UK, you can pay to see the content, but that’s just plainly stupid. It discriminates 99% of the world.

So, us non-UK’ers are mostly depending on some sharing UK residents to link us up, which is exactly what The IT Crowd fansite is doing. Cheers to those guys and their download link.

The IT Crowd

Still want to see it online instead of downloading? Sure !

Episode 6
Episode 5
Episode 4
Episode 3 – 2 – 1

 
2 Comments

Posted in Geek, Humor

 

MSN Search Spoof

30 Mar 2006

MSN Search celebrates April Fool’s with the return of Spoof, the parody tool that uses fake (but hilariously accurate) search results to gently mock friends, bosses, or people who just need to be teased.
All you have to do is supply a name for your victim and choose a joke method. You can change the jokes that have been generated, then use the URL to trick your friends or send it by mail.
Very funny.

MSN Spoof

Try MSN Spoof | Thanx, Kris