Made using 3ds Max, this video demonstrates what Earth would look like if it had a ring system like Saturn.
[Via Videosift]
Got a pen? There’s an app for that!
There’s an app store for the iPhone, the BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and pretty much every mobile device you can imagine.
Including a pen.
Sadly this isn’t for your humble Bic, though I’d happily subscribe to a magical USB auto-refill function. Instead its for the Livescribe Pulse, the digital pen at the heart of a system which allows the user to write on special “paper” and have the results inputted directly to their computer.
The pen also includes a built-in audio recorder for note-taking and will even syncronize the audio and the writing. That means that you can switch on the audio during a speech or lecture and then, if you later find something you aren’t sure about in your notes, you can instantly hear the audio from the point at which you wrote something specific.
The pen having an embedded computer, it’s possible to create other features for it, which is where the app store comes in. At present there are thirty apps, of which 22 must be purchased.
While most of them are the type of novelty app you find in most similar stores (a list of gifts appropriate to particular anniversaries for example), there are a few that make specific use of the pen, such as a range of Hangman games and one to teach you how to draw and name all 239 Acyclic Alkanes.
The most expensive app in the store, retailing at a whopping $99, works with a specially designed book of Hebrew chants and allows the user to point the pen to a section of text, hear a professional chanter recite the section, then record their own attempt and compare the two. The crossover of people who own this device and those who need to learn the chants is probably minute, but at $99 it doesn’t take many sales to make a tidy sum.
Thursday Morning Humor: Shiny Suds
While not really geek-related, this is just too funny not to post. Enjoy!
Dad Spoke Only Klingon to Child for Three Years
Minnesota linguist d’Armond Speers has a doctorate in computational linguistics. He says he isn’t much of a Star Trek fan. But he spent the first three years of his son’s life speaking to him only in Klingon!
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
So when Ultralingua, a dictionary, translation and grammar software company in Dinkytown, honored requests from customers to create applications for a Klingon dictionary, they turned to Speers, a self-employed software consultant.
Speers helped develop a digital dictionary in Klingon for Mac, Windows, and iPhone for the software company Ultralingua. Speer’s son is now 15 years old and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon. If he had stuck with it, we’d have at least one bona-fide code talker for the CIA!
[via Digg]
Introducing the iPhone Blower App
Yes, with the power of the iPhone Blower app, you’ll be able to use your iPhone to blow candles out wherever you go!
The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop.” In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he’ll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.
Twitter on TV a reality in Europe
Twitter can be used for as many purposes as there are types of communication, many of them of great social and political importance. But for many of us, it’s a way to discuss TV shows as they are broadcasted without running the risk of swamping a traditional message board forum with one-liners.
The one big hassle with this – and let’s be clear that “big hassle” is a relative term – is that most people have the TV show on one screen and their Twitter application on another. That can mean switching your attention between the TV and a smartphone, or switching back and forth between the TV and a computer including, in some particularly catastrophic cases, actually having to walk into a different room to share your views.
But not for long.
Viewers in France, Spain and Poland will soon be able to send and read Twitter posts directly on their television screen. That’s because mobile phone operator Orange provides integrated TV and broadband packages in which the TV signal is sent via the broadband phoneline, allowing interactive services to be built directly into the TV picture.
It’s not yet clear whether the Twitter function will be limited to particular programs or will be able to be used at any time (as imagined in our mock-up image).
Why Nerds Are Spoiled
Even nerds can be curmudgeons. David Wahl yearns for the good old days as he writes about how networking has changed science fiction fandom. Blame the convention, which allowed fans to get together and see just how many fans there were. Sure, we were all excited to find we weren’t alone in our devotion to Star Trek (or some other sci-fi world), but then we realized there was power in numbers. Then the internet came along and now you don’t even have to buy a ticket to see how many fans agree with your opinions. Things are too easy for you kids these days! You rule the world!
The internet is like one giant instant fanzine where movies can live or die years before the first frame is ever filmed. In 2002, J.J. Abrams wrote a script for a “Superman” reboot that got such bad online reviews that the studio scrapped the movie. It’s rumored that Jon Favreau leaked fake stills from the set of “Iron Man 2? so that people would be pleasantly surprised when they see the finished product. They think he’s trying to trick them into thinking the movie might have something that they don’t like so they’ll be happy when it doesn’t.
Every detail of everything nerd-related is blogged, twittered and dissected to death so far in advance of it actually being available to experience that it’s hard not to already have an opinion before you experience it.
But honestly, who wants to go back to the era when it took real work to be a sci-fi fan?
[via Mostly Forbidden Zone]
Tags: fans, nerds, Networking, sci-fi
Bacon Mug Looks Delicious!
Hmmmm… a bacon mug… filled with what seems to be melted yellow cheese. The perfect side dish to go along with The Original Bacon Explosion!
[Via Digg]
Geeky Pics: Robots!
With the popularity of both the kick-ass (Transformers) and adorable (WALL-E) variety, robots are kind of hot right now. But even the really imaginative kind aren’t just on the big screen or in the future; in fact, you might find them in some strange places…
Just because you don’t have a stomach doesn’t mean you don’t need cookies. – angelinawb (CC), And you don’t have to have blood to need caffeine coursing through your veins. stevekeys (CC), Um hi, can you get this guy off my back? – gogdog (CC), These are not ideal environmental conditions for either humans or robots. But it’s kind of cute. – eldave (CC), True love, obviously. Hey baby, wanna go kill all the humans? – donsolo (CC), Steampunk Beholder is watching you. – danielproulx (CC), Dead end. – donsolo (CC), The end of the world is no time to be high-tech. – luvataciousskull (CC)