Festo’s Robotic Walls of Doom

Festo, a company we’ve featured here on [GaS] in the past for their extraordinary work on various forms of strange robotic organisms, is back with a new video showcasing the latest toys out of their development labs: two robotic penguins, a robotic hand… and a robotic wall. Yes, you read that right: A friggin’ robotic wall! I don’t know about you guys, but being surrounded by walls like this would totally freak me out. Oh, they may look fairly inoffensive for now, but one day, these things might be programmed to crush you at the slightest nod of their owners. Ok, maybe not, but the thought is still disturbing, right? Video after the jump.

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Busted! The sneaky moves of anti-social smartphone users

In this funny (and actually poignant) 3-minute talk, social strategist Renny Gleeson breaks down our always-on social world — where the experience we’re having right now is less interesting than what we’ll tweet about it later.

Retro Hardware Orchestra

Can you get any geekier than Bohemian Rhapsody played by an orchestra of vintage gadgets? I think not. From the YouTube page:

Please note no effects or sampling was used. What you see is what you hear (does that even make sense?)
Atari 800XL was used for the lead piano/organ sound
Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar
8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass
3.5 inch Harddrive as the gong
HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals. Please note I had to record the HP scanner 4 seperate times for each voice. I tried to buy 4 HP scanners but for some reason sellers on E-Bay expect you to pay $80-$100, I got mine for $30.

[via Arbroath]



Were You Here Before Oprah?

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Seeing Oprah start “tweeting” made me realize a few things:

  1. Celebrities who are not comedians or geeks twittering is just a bad, bad idea. I realize that this probably just makes me a snob, but Oprah’s credibility goes down once I learn that she can’t use apostrophes correctly.
  2. My mother is probably going to start using twitter now.

If this means that Twitter is now officially “mainstream,” then perhaps the old school Twitter geeks will remember the time B.O. (Before Oprah), much in the way many remember Facebook more fondly before their parents discovered it. I once saw a shirt that read “I Had an iPod Before You Knew What One Was,” and luckily a service has popped up to allow Twitter users the same kind of affirmation.

before_oprah

Just as Twitter asks the simple question “What are you doing?”, herebeforeoprah.com asks: “Was ____ here before Oraph?” Just type in a Twitter username and find out if that person has the appropriate cred. Though if there is now going to be a mass geek exodus from Twitter, might I recommend Flutter? It’s the next craze in “nano-blogging” – because a lot of people don’t have time to twitter.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Trailer

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Is it July 15 yet? The new trailer for Half-Blood Prince is pretty awesome. So far it looks to be a great thing that David Yeats (director of Order of the Phoenix) is back for this one, as the dark aesthetic seems to be similar, which is fitting for this particular story. Just from the trailer, I think that visually this one will be great to see in IMAX.

Underwire points out that this trailer was released around the same time as the new Transformers sneak peek. Which one are you more excited about? (Note: “Neither, I’m too excited about Star Trek and/or Terminator” is a perfectly appropriate answer.)

New Transformers 2 Sneak Peek Looks Amazing

Some new footage of the upcoming Transformers 2 movie has just hit the web today, and the whole thing looks pretty darn awesome. While the first minute is kind of funny, there’s nothing really exceptional about it. But if the remainder of the clip is a good indicator of what we’ll be seeing in movie theaters, fans should be in for a great treat. Check it out.

Amazing 3D Immersion Technology

A simple pair of polarized 3D glasses, a 10′ x 10′ x 10′ white room, and $600,000 worth of projector and computer equipment, combined with the smarts of the folks at Eon Reality, results in one insanely real experience.

[Via Newlaunches]

Courtroom webcasting ban a “disagreeable” outcome

The good news for lovers of webcasting is that a federal appeals court has ruled that the medium is a form of broadcasting with equal status to that of television. The bad news is that that ruling was made to ban webcams from covering a music filesharing case.

The defendant, Boston University student Joel Tennenbaum, had asked for the hearing to be streamed live through the Harvard Law School website, a request the case judge approved in January. However, the Recording Industry Association of America successfully argued on appeal that doing so would violate local court rules banning broadcasts since 1996.

Tennenbaum’s lawyer insisted that those rules – brought in to ban TV broadcasts – were not relevant to webcasting. He said the difference was that an unedited internet broadcast would not add the type of emotion or hype which would come from television coverage such as news bulletins. The appeals court rejected that argument, saying the difference between TV and webcasting was “one of degree, not kind”.

One of the appeal court judges supporting the decision said he was forced to uphold the law, but that it made for a “disagreeable” outcome. Kermit Lipez said there were “no sound policy reasons” for banning a webcast and said it was questionable whether the law was still relevant today.

Pac-Man Runs Amok

French prankster Remi Gaillard brings us a real-life version of Pac-Man, and leaves chaos behind! If you enjoy this sort of thing, see a dozen more real-life video games here.

[via Metafilter]

Snakes on a Plane (No, Really)

By Casey Lynn
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

snakesDuring a passenger flight in Australia, four pythons escaped from the cargo area during the flight. Fortunately for the passengers, though unfortunately for all of us writing punchlines, this went unnoticed until after the plane had landed. A reptile expert searched for the snakes but never found them… the plane was eventually fumigated and sent back on its way.

Which leads one to wonder: what happened to those snakes? Are they going to show up in some poor tourist’s luggage? I’m suddenly having Arachnophobia flashbacks. As if flying weren’t bad enough.

Airlines: Didn’t Samuel L. Jackson teach us anything? Put the people and the snakes on separate flights.

Other things from movies I would not like to see on real planes:

– Decepticons
– Inflatable Pilots
– Serial Killers
– Spiders
– Tom Cruise

[Image Source: Flickr]