Happy New Year.

Alle volgers van Beamlog wensen wij een gezellige jaarwisseling en een gezond en spetterend 2011.

Philips komt met PicoPix mini-projectoren.

Bron; nl.hardware.info
Philips heeft op YouTube een filmpje gezet waarin ze haar PicoPix pocket mini-projectoren voorstelt. Deze kleine projectoren zijn ongeveer zo groot, of eigenlijk zo klein, als vier op elkaar gestapelde CD-hoesjes. Middels drie Luxeon LED-lampjes moet de lichtopbrengst groot genoeg zijn om foto's en video's op een muur te projecteren. In een onverduisterde kamer zou een beeldformaat met een doorsnee van 2 meter mogelijk moeten zijn. Door de LED-lampjes kunnen de PicoPix Party mini-projectoren tot 2,5 uur op batterijen werken, daarnaast moeten de kleine afmetingen en het gewicht van 140 tot 300 gram de mobiliteit vergroten.

De PicoPix pocket-projectoren kunnen op diverse bronnen worden aangesloten, onder andere computers, spelconsoles, smart phones, digitale fotocamera's en MP4-spelers. De PPX 1230 en PPX 1430 zijn dankzij de meegeleverde verloopkabels te gebruiken met Apple producten zoals de iPhone, iPod of iPad. Hierbij beschikt de PPX 1430 tevens over een ingebouwde mediaspeler en een intern geheugen van 2 GB voor de opslag van films, foto's en ander beeldmateriaal.

Philips zal de PicoPix pocket projectoren vanaf volgende maand op de markt brengen. De adviesprijzen van de PPX 1020, PPX 1230 en PPX 1430 zijn gezet op respectievelijk 199 Euro, 269 Euro en 299 Euro.

Vertaalwonder.

Bron; freshgadget.nl
De wonderen der techniek zijn de wereld nog lang niet uit, zo blijkt uit de lancering van deze extreem handige applicatie voor de iPhone. Met Word Lens wordt de tekst van alles wat je maar kunt verzinnen -- denk aan borden, menukaarten, et cetera -- in een oogwenk vertaald van de ene naar de andere taal. Zelfs het lettertype van de desbetreffende woorden wordt overgenomen. Vooralsnog werkt de gratis applicatie (addertje onder het gras: een taalpakket kost 5 dollar) alleen van Spaans naar Engels en omgekeerd. Denk je eens in wat de consequenties zijn als dit met alle talen mogelijk is!

Word Lens is a dictionary -- evolved. It looks up words for you, and shows them in context. You can use Word Lens on your vacations to translate restaurant menus, street signs, and other things that have clearly printed words.

Now available for iPhone 4, iPhone 3gs, and iPod Touch 4.

Interacts with Health Data.

Let vooral ook op de bijzondere presentatievorm.

Hans Rosling's enthusiasm for data visualization has increased my appreciation for statistics. In the video below, Rosling interacts with 120,000 data points related to 200 countries over 200 years. I especially like the "Alternate Reality" effect
Hans Rosling is a Professor of Global Health in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Director of the Gapminder Foundation. The Gapminder World website has a wealth of resources for teachers, students, and anyone who is interested in learning about things through the use of information visualization.

According to information from the website, "Gapminder is a non-profit venture – a modern “museum” on the Internet – promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.Gapminder was founded in Stockholm by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on February 25, 2005. Gapminder is registered as a Foundation at Stockholm County Administration Board (Länstyrelsen i Stockholm) with registration number (organisationsnummer) 802424-7721."

3D kerstprojectie op de Bijenkorf.

Bron; www.adformatie.nl
Op de gevel van de Bijenkorf Rotterdam is sinds gistermiddag een '3D-kerstprojectie' te zien.

Deze kerstprojectie is gedurende de kerstkoopavonden op 21, 22 en 23 december van 17.00 tot 22.00 uur te zien. Toeschouwers die de gevelprojectie in Rotterdam filmen en deze filmpjes op YouTube plaatsen en doorlinken naar de Bijenkorf facebookpagina, maken kans op prijzen.
De projectie is ontworpen voor de zijgevel van de Bijenkorf Rotterdam. De totale projectie is 84 meter breed en 20 meter hoog. De projectie wordt gerealiseerd door acht Barco HD projectoren van 20.000 ansi-lumen per projector, om zo een optimale lichtopbrengst en scherpte te creëren.
Marketingdirecteur Robert Bohemen van de Bijenkorf: ‘Het pand van architect Breuer is drie dagen lang een levende kerstgroet van de Bijenkorf. De kerstprojectie is een kerstcadeau aan Nederland, het is de grootste 3D projectie van het land. Wij hopen met de 3D kerstprojectie een nieuwe traditie te starten.’

Multi-touch SmartBoard.

Take a look at the video demonstration of the new SMARTBoard (800 series) that offers multi-touch and gesture interaction support so that two students can interact with the board at the same time.


•Students can use 2 finger gestures to enlarge objects and move them around.
•Two students can interact with the board at the same time to complete activities.
•SMARTInk/Calligraphic Ink creates stylized print as you write. Whatever is written or drawn on the SMARTBoard becomes an object in the SMARTNotebook, allowing for things to be resized or rotated. (2:04)
•Multi-touch gestures enabled in Window 7 and Snow Leopard work with the SMARTBoard.
•Software development kit (3:28): Example of a physics application developed by a 3rd-party developer. The application supports two students working at the SMARTBoard at the same time

Learn more: http://www.smarttech.com/us/Solutions...

Sign.

Zo kan het ook !
Greengraffiti

De dunste LG monitor.

Bron; www.fan.tv
Hoe dun kan een monitor worden? De LG E2290 is slechts 0,73 centimeter dik.
Deze LG E2290 is dus een monitor voor wie het dunste van het dunste wil. LG kan de monitor zo dun maken door de elektronica naar de monitorvoet te verplaatsen. Onder deze superdunne monitor staat dus wel een flinke voet. Wat overigens niet misstaat.
De resolutie van de dunne LG E2290 monitor bedraagt 1920 bij 1080, de helderheid 250cd/m2 en de dynamische contrastverhouding van 10.000.000:1. De beeldkwaliteit is dus goed genoeg om de monitor als televisie te gebruiken in combinatie met een computer of mediacenter. Aan de muur hangen is echter geen optie door de voet met de elektronica.

Via diverse aansluitkngen (analoog, digitaal, hdmi) kun je computers en andere apparatuur aan de monitor hangen.

De LG E2290 monitor heeft een adviesprijs van 329 euro en kan via computerwinkels gekocht worden.

Map of Interactive Gesture Based Technologies.

Here is the description of the concepts outlined in the chart:

"If all of them belong to the “gesture control” world, the best segmentation is made from 4 categories:

Finger tracking: precise finger tracking, it can be single touch or multi-touch (this latest not always being a plus). Finger tracking also encompasses hand tracking which comes, for LM3LABS products, as a gestures.
Body tracking: using one’s body as a pointing device. Body tracking can be associated to “passive” interactivity (users are engaged without their decision to be) or “active” interactivity like 3D Feel where “players” use their body to interact with content.
Face tracking: using user face as a pointing device. It can be mono user or multiple users. Face tracking is a “passive” interactivity tool for engaging user in an interactive relationship with digital content.
Image Tracking: Augmented Reality (AR) lets users use images (flyers, real products, t-shirts, faces,…) to interact with digital content. AR can be markerless or marker-based. Markerless technology has advantages but marker-based AR is easier for users to understand. (Please note here that Markerless AR is made in close collaboration with AR leader Total Immersion)." -LM3LABS
If you are interested in this subject and want to view some good examples of off-the-desktop interfaces and interactions, take a look at the LM3LABS blog, as well as Nicolas Loeillot's Vimeo channel.

interactive balloons from Nicolas Loeillot on Vimeo.

World's biggest Digital Signage Screen.

Now a French company is marketing (and installing) technology, that really does turn a building into a media vehicle – with LED lighting actually embedded in the double-glazed windows of office towers.

As spotted in OOH-TV, the King’s Road Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has installed technology from a company called Citiled that turns the north, south and west facades into giant screens. Not sure why the east not done, but assume it has to do with Islam and culture.

Press reports on the project indicate:
21 floors on the north and south façades and 16 floors on the west façade have been equipped with LED screens developed by Citiled, i.e. a total of 9,850 sq m and more than 5 million LEDs, making this structure the largest Media Façade in the world installed on an inhabited building. It took more than 6 months to produce the 10,000 sq metres of this media façade, occupying a team of around twenty engineers and craftsmen for 3 months during the project design phase and then 6 months for installation and testing.
Citiled is a four-year-old, 25-person company based in Paris. The LEDs,as noted, are embedded in rows inside the window glass and the cabling embedded in the mullions. The wiring all maps back to a central control room that manages what’s called the Digital Media Facade.

Toshiba's new glasses-free 3D display.

Bron: www.engadget.com
Autostereoscopic (read: glasses-free) 3D screens sound like all the rage, but the narrow zones from which you can comfortably view their images have made them a dubious proposition. That's not stopping Toshiba Mobile Display, however, which recently came up with a novel idea for a self-adjusting display. By sticking a six-axis accelerometer in this 12.1-inch slate, the company can tilt the tablet's viewing angle as the tablet itself is tilted, letting viewers effectively look around 3D objects on screen, using software algorithms rather than the fancy lens-and-camera assembly that Microsoft's been prototyping. Toshiba figures it'll make a splash with e-tailers -- because who doesn't want to play with a prospective purchase in 3D space? -- but is mostly talking up the tech as a way to extend the limited 3D viewing angles of these sorts of displays.

Blackberry PlayBook tabletcomputer .

De Blackberry PlayBook tabletcomputer heeft een opmerkelijke nieuwe eigenschap. Niet alleen het scherm maar ook de rand is aanraakgevoelig.Je kunt de Blackberry PlayBook zodoende niet alleen bedienen via de touchscreen maar ook door je vingers over de rand te bewegen. Alle vier de randen zijn touch sensitive.
In de video kun je zien hoe dit in zijn werk gaat.

New LED technology from NanoLumens.

It has been announced that a new LED technology from NanoLumens will be distributed in the UK and Ireland by PSCo. The thin, flexible and lightweight LED display can be shaped into convex or concave configurations, allowing it to be wrapped around columns and flexed across walls. It also offers low power consumption, the company states.

Stuart Holmes, managing director of PSCo, comments: "At just 41kg, this is a product which keeps infrastructure costs to a minimum, while delivering a very bright, high-quality display."

The light weight of the product means that it can be hung from ceilings. It has been designed with the aim of being quick and easy to install, featuring plug-and-play capabilities.

"As a company, PSCo offers a highly technical knowledge base and in-house servicing department, enabling the same level of support for pre-sales and post-sales care that we can offer on home soil in the US," notes John Wilson, president of NanoLumens.

"The product was well received at Digital Signage Expo, Global Gaming Expo and other industry shows this year so we are excited to see the response from the European audience when we exhibit with PSCo at ISE in February."

Laser Powered Eco-Graffiti to London.

The technomagicians at Dentsu hit another home run with an interactive promotion for greentomatocars that uses lasers to sketch murals on buildings.
We admit that we're total fan boys for everything that Dentsu London create. Given their freaky-deaky fusions of design and high-tech, how could we not be? Their latest creation, promoting London's hybrid-vehicle taxi fleet greentomatocars, uses lime-green lasers to paint temporary doodles all over London's Battersea Power Station. Looks like they had a blast:
he laser-painting is supposed to give off the high-tech, yet scruffy vibe that greentomatocars presents with its eco-friendly cars. (The company even hacked free wifi and plug-in power into some of their vehicles.) Dentsu teamed up with Sensaa to make magic laser-wands connected to computers that project interactive digital "paint" onto surfaces in realtime, tracking the wand's movements. (An effect very similar to that invented by the Graffiti Research Lab, with their laser tagging.)

Lighter On London :: Laser Murals from greentomatocars on Vimeo.

Pioneers Discussion Table.

DigInfo TV → Engadget: The Pioneer Discussion Table is a Microsoft Surface-like mul­ti­touch table that offers some unique and com­pelling expe­ri­ences. Here’s a list of what I noticed in the video:

■Document shar­ing between a notebook/external mon­i­tor and the Pioneer Discussion Table.
■Instant desk­top mirroring.
■The built-in scan­ner scans doc­u­ments right into the Discussion Table.
■Photos from dig­i­tal cam­eras are trans­ferred into the Discussion Table using TransferJet.
Pioneer is cur­rently devel­op­ing the Discussion Table and expects to release it in 2011. Future Internet cafés will never be the same.

Bron; www.engadget.com
As the video above shows, Zebra Imaging's so called ZScape prints pull off some pretty amazing 3D visual effects despite being based on old school hologram technology. These prints are made using a variety of 3D data sources -- think AutoCad and the like -- that are then rendered as thousands of holographic elements by recording laser light onto a single film-based material. The resulting images are easily viewed without glasses or spinning mirrors, and just require a run-of-the-mill halogen or LED light source to reveal 360-degree, full color representations -- akin to what a physical model might look like. Fancier versions can also be made using overlays and layering techniques to show more information. To date, over 8,000 ZScapes have already been developed for the US military, but surprisingly their prices range between $1,500 for a 12- x 18-inch version to $3,500 for the largest 2- x 3-foot size, making them relatively obtainable for those not on Defense Department tabs.

Premiere of 3D Disney film Tron.

Christie projectors were used for 3D architectural mapping on the outside of the Queen Elizabeth Hall

The premiere of 3D Disney film Tron: Legacy has been brightened by 3D architectural mapping, which was achieved using six Christie HD18K projectors. The company has also revealed that it has won two Total Media Awards, in Madrid.

The projections, which were streamed on to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank, were part of a wider event that featured audio accompaniment from Daft Punk and an arcade that housed the original Tron video game. London-based firm Seeper executed the project in association with creative group Guided Collective.

Christie won awards in both the Innovative Solution and Best Projector categories – the former for MicroTiles and the latter for the Christie Mirage WU7K-M, at the Total Media fair, which focuses on digital kiosks, mobile marketing and trends within digital signage.

Antonio Abad, head of Christie for Spain and Portugal, notes: "Christie MicroTiles has revolutionised the market since it was launched at the beginning of the year, and the Christie Mirage WU7K-M, with its stereoscopic image quality and reproduction, is exceeding all expectations, making it beyond doubt the most advanced 3D projector available to date."

BARCO GETS GUINNESS RECORD FOR BRIGHTEST PROJECTOR.

Bron; Inavate digital
Barco has scooped a Guinness World Record after an adjudicator awarded its DP2K-32B the accolade of the ‘brightest digital cinema projector’. The record attempt took place at Barco’s facilities in Kuurne, Belgium and the achievement was witnessed and verified by Guinness adjudicator Kaoru Ishikawa.
The company says a Barco DP2K-32B digital cinema projector achieved an exact brightness of 43,000 lumens after colour correction to match the DCI color spectrum, measured at the centre of a 4m² cinema screen at a distance of 5 meters from the projector.

Wim Buyens, vice president of Barco Digital Cinema, congratulated the engineering team and all staff involved with the development of the projector

FIFA STOPS PLAY FOR HOLOGRAPHIC WORLD CUP.

Sony life-size holograms will not be heading to football stadiums across the world as Japan looses out to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. The Japanese electronics company had supported its country’s bid with a promise that it would transform stadiums in a number of countries into giant screens for life-size holograms. The technology, called Full Court 3D Vision, would have shown World Cup matches in real time.
But, FIFA chiefs weren’t suitably impressed by technology pledge and handed the event to Qatar.

Japan suggested they wouldn’t merely host the World Cup but would act as a partner to turn 400 stadiums around the world into virtual pitches where life-size holograms would play out the matches in real time.

Hundreds of cameras would have been employed to capture the action and the company said it would use 60 to 100 million pixels of resolution to create the 3D effect.

LED XL levert LED schermen Manchester City.

Het Rotterdamse bedrijf LED XL exploiteert zelf geen digitale schermen, maar plaatst ze wel.

Manchester City Footballclub bestelde 3 LED XL videoschermen. Ook de mastconstructie werd uitbesteed aan LED XL. In minder dan 6 dagen (en nachten) heeft LED XL dit weten te realiseren. Resultaat: bij het voetbalstadion staan 3 top-of-the-art LED videoschermen met de allernieuwste technieken, inclusief het LED XL besturingssysteem. De eigenaren zijn er enorm blij mee en de schermen draaien inmiddels continue.

Binnenkort (voor de kerst) plaatsen zij een scherm van 48m2 langs de A27 bij Hank.
LED XL kan de kleurvastheid over de totale levensduur garanderen op de LED schermen .

Kinect Treatment of Windows 7.

Video, by Evoluce, demonstrates gesture interaction/navigation in Windows 7 applications supported by Kinect.
Evoluce: Leading Surface Technologies

A simple TUIO hand gesture tracker for Kinect.

Martin Kaltenbrunner's description of TuioKinect:
"TuioKinect tracks simple hand gestures using the Kinect controller and sends control data based on the TUIO protocol. This allows the rapid creation of gesture enabled applications with any platform or environment that supports TUIO tuio.org/​ You can download the application from: code.google.com/​p/​tuiokinect/​ Music: Jabon Jabon by El Club de los Astronautas (Institut Fatima)"

I've played around with Tuio and OpenFrameworks, but it has been a while. I can't wait until I have time to dig into this with a Kinect. I think this has great potential for supporting learning and communication among students with special needs.

TuioKinect from Martin Kaltenbrunner on Vimeo.

TuioKinect tracks simple hand gestures using the Kinect controller and sends control data based on the TUIO protocol. This allows the rapid creation of gesture enabled applications with any platform or environment that supports TUIO. http://www.tuio.org/

You can download the application from:
https://code.google.com/p/tuiokinect/

Music: Jabon Jabon by El Club de los Astronautas (Institut Fatima)

The Virtual Autopsy Table.

Bron; www.engadget.com
Ever wonder what the insides of a human being really look like but lacked the grit or credentials to watch an autopsy in the flesh? Well, whatever the reasons, we can all probably agree this is one of the best uses for a multitouch table surface ever. The Virtual Autopsy Table (developed by Norrköping Visualization Centre and the Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization in Sweden) makes use of high resolution MRIs, rendered and processed into 3D images which are then accessible in the table itself. The results are super impressive and educational -- not to mention the fact that there's no actual cutting involved! The autopsy table was obviously developed with educational purposes in mind, and we wouldn't be surprised to see these cropping up in museums all over the globe any day now.

The Virtual Autopsy Table from Visualiseringscenter C on Vimeo.

The Gesture Cube: Next Must-Have for Your Coffee Table?

The Gesture Cube is purely a conceptual design at this point. But, if it morphed into a real product, would you put one on your coffee table? It would certainly be a conversation starter.


No need to touch just give it a wave!

Just wave your hand to access music, web, your family and friends. You don´t even need to touch the surface.
Gesture Cube uses 3D spatial movement tracking to help transform navigating a device into a magical intuitive experience. The underlying GestIC® technology detects your hand´s approach and movements - your favorite apps and media all at a wave of your hand.
http://www.gesture-cube.com