Galactica: Sabotage is an awesome mashup that pays homage to both Battlestar Galactica and The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage video.
If you start the video below (at 0:34) with the one on the top at the same time, you’ll see that the mashup is an almost exact copy of the original clip, shot for shot.
[Via Buzzfeed]
Not only is A Gentlemen’s Duel one of the best 3D short we’ve ever seen, but it’s one of the funniest too. Enjoy!
Thanks Ross!
Warning: Video contains strong language.
Google’s translation services are making the news this week with improvements to a smartphone app which now attempts to translate voices rather than text (hopefully more accurately than in our illustration.)
The app, titled Google Translate (which is also the name of the firm’s website translation tool), is designed for users visiting a foreign country. Instead of resorting to phrasebooks or online dictionaries, the idea is to simply ask the person you are conversing with to talk into the phone. The app then attempts to recognize what has been said and then “speaks” an English translation. It can also work in reverse, translating your speech into a foreign language.
Although the app already existed and could handle text, this is the first time it has worked with speech. At the moment it can handle speech in English, Mandarin (the most common language in China) and Japanese, though other languages including German are in the works. According to the Los Angeles Times, the speech feature “works surprisingly well for translating basic phrases”.
As we noted last year, NEC is working on a similar service which involves the user wearing special spectacles, meaning that as well as hearing the translation, they can see the words as subtitles. That’s not likely to reach as wide an audience though: the spectacles, which are currently designed for making it easier for technicians to see pages from repair manuals without using their hands, cost more than $2,500 and won’t have the translation feature until next year.
The Google app improvements follow on from the announcement last week that a translation feature is to be built directly into the Chrome browser. Users visiting a webpage marked in a language other than English (or whichever language they have set as default) will be offered a one click button to see the page translated.
It uses the same technology as the Google Translate service, but doesn’t require any cut-and-pasting of either the text or the URL. The service is based around a database of 20 million words worth of United Nations documents. That’s particularly reliable as those documents have been officially translated into six languages by expert UN translators. The service has also used documents from the European Parliament on a similar basis.
(Picture courtesy of Flickr user Xiaming.)
Tron Legacy is a 3D high-tech adventure set in a digital world that’s unlike anything ever captured on the big screen. Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the tech-savvy 27-year-old son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), looks into his father’s disappearance and finds himself pulled into the same world of fierce programs and gladiatorial games where his father has been living for 25 years. Along with Kevin’s loyal confidant (Olivia Wilde), father and son embark on a life-and-death journey across a visually-stunning cyber universe that has become far more advanced and exceedingly dangerous.
Tron Legacy will hit theaters on December 17th, 2010 in both Disney Digital 3D and IMAX 3D.
Doritos Canada has just released an edible alternative to the iPad: The Doritos Tablet, which features spice 2.0 technology and an awesome multi-taste interface. Check it out:
[Via]
Neil Fraser wondered if a lava lamp would still work in the higher gravity environment of Jupiter. How such a question ever occurs to anyone is a matter of wonder in itself, but Fraser went ahead and built a ten-foot centrifuge in his living room to conduct an experiment to answer the question.
The centrifuge is a genuinely terrifying device. The lights dim when it is switched on. A strong wind is produced as the centrifuge induces a cyclone in the room. The smell of boiling insulation emanates from the overloaded 25 amp cables. If not perfectly adjusted and lubricated, it will shred the teeth off solid brass gears in under a second. Runs were conducted from the relative safety of the next room while peeking through a crack in the door.
Highlight this text for a spoiler: Yes, the lava lamp worked in 3G.
[via Digg]
Tags: centrifuge, gravity, Jupiter, lava lamp