This is the first work in the area of optical camouflage that I have actually been impressed with. This team of reasearchers from Japan have made some headway into this incredibly useful technology. Their system, however, is a little awkward and not very easy to replicate. The picture above was from one of their “invisibility suits”. The scenery behind the camouflaged person is recorded and sent to a nearby projector perpendicular to the line of sight between the person wearing the suit and the viewer. The background is then projected onto a half-mirror tilted at an angle that projects onto the suit, which is made of a highly reflective material. The resulting effect is shown as the suit appears transparent.
Obviously this technology could be used for numerous things, but the overhead that is needed to successfully perform this is enough to prevent its use in most applications. I remember hearing about a theoretical technology that supposedly performs the same effect but uses fiberoptics. The fiber was supposed to bend the light from the back of the image to the front, so anyone standing on any side of the subject would only see the light coming from the subject’s opposite side. This concept makes a lot of sense to me, but I’m sure there are still a lot of technical problems to overcome. In any event, this suit is still pretty cool, even if it can’t currently be used like the Predator’s active camo.
This is a smooth little ‘how to’ for the non-technical. Got a secret stash that you don’t want anyone to see? Or do you simply want to store your floppy disks the way Neo does in the Matrix? Either way you should check out this thorough explanation of how to create a secret storage book. It could also come in handy the next time you are stuck in prison with nothing more than a Bible and a rock-hammer.
Google video is now hosting over a hundred historical films, including the Apollo 11 mission. I’m sure we’ve all seen clips, but learning more about how man conquered the moon is always exciting. You can now watch all you want from Google.
“This film tells the story of the historic first landing of men on the Moon in July, 1969. It depicts the principal highlight events of the mission from launching through post-recovery activities of Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Through television, motion picture and still photography, the film provides an “eye-witness” perspective of the Apollo 11 mission.”
Well we just can’t get away from touchscreens lately, can we? This product however isn’t just a touchscreen, its also a coffee table. HP has been busy trying to prove that even though they are now officially ‘over-the-hill‘ they can still be innovative and cool - at least in the furniture business.
Misto is a coffee table with a large touch-screen display built into the top of the table. The idea is to allow a group to congregate around the table and share pictures, play board games, or peruse a map…Misto uses a standard desktop PC as its engine, but comes with some specialized HP software for managing the interface.
