Paper iPad 2s are flying off of shelves as Chinese residents in Malaysia flock to honor their dead ancestors as part of the annual Qingming festival. The event, based on the teachings of Confucius, is commemorated with the burning of fake luxury items and money.
The wish list for the event usually includes things like designer hand bags and luxury cars. This year, however, everyone is gunning for an iPad 2. In fact, the paper replica of Apple’s popular tablet is in such demand that it’s actually selling out–a familiar sight for anyone who has attempted to get their hands on the real thing.
Reuters spoke to Jeffrey Te, an owner of one of the Malaysian prayer shops that sells the items. At Te’s store an 888GB iPad 2 will run you $1–a pretty good deal, save for the whole paper thing. Te’s store is totally sold out of its shipment of 300 iPad 2s–though there are plenty of fake iPhones, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, and first generation iPads to choose from.
We’ve already seen Evolucetoy around with using a Kinect to control Windows, but it’s now taken things one step further with its new “Win & I” software, which promises to let anyone do the same with minimal effort. That comes in both a home edition that offers gesture controls for Windows 7 itself, plus Media Center and other applications (which could be particularly handy for a home theater), as well as a business edition that apparently adds some extra controls specifically tailored to Microsoft Office, and PowerPoint in particular. Head on past the break for a quick video demonstration, and hit up the link below to snag the software if you’re interested — the home edition runs €20, or just under $30 (Kinect not included, obviously).
Update: Well, it looks like Evoluce already has a bit of competition. Upstart company So Touch has now also released its Air Presenter software that will let you liven up your next presentation with more gesturing and hand-waving than usual.
In a then surprising move, Eric Schmidt stepped away from his position as Google CEO in January to make room for co-founder Larry Page. Schmidt has moved into an Executive Chairman role, and Page takes the reigns today. So what does it mean for you? More »
The infamous hacking organization Anonymous is reportedly turning its attention to Sony following the company’s legal battle with alleged PS3 hacker Geohot.
According to new numbers from scientists, NASA’s Kepler observatory has identified some 1,235 transiting planet candidates since in launch in March 2009. Most intriguing in these new numbers are the 54 planets that fall within the the “habitable zone,” putting them the proper distance from their stars to offer liquid water. Fifteen of the candidates have been confirmed as planets by terrestrial telescopes
The above image features the stars for the transiting planets on the top row. Our sun is on the row below, with the planets following after that.
If you haven’t already seen our demo of the 3DS’ rather impressive bag of augmented reality tricks, then let us take this opportunity to show you — once again — why we’re excited about the thing’s AR capabilities. The folks over at software development firm Refactr have done some tinkering and found that all you need to make your very own 3DS AR card is a white board, some dry erase markers, and a projector. By tracing the outlines of that mysterious question mark card on to a shiny white surface, they found that conjuring the device’s AR interface is actually quite simple, and mostly a matter of contrast. Going big, in this case anyway, not only makes for a good time — as evidenced by the video below — but it should also put to rest any questions about whether or not these things are sprinkled with pixie dust, Juju powder, or some other magical substance.
Zdenek Kalal’s Predator object-tracking software is almost uncanny. Show anything to its all-seeing camera eye, and it will quickly learn to recognize it and then track it, whether it fades into the distance, hides amongst other similar objects or — in the case of faces turns sideways.
It really lives up to its name, reminding us of the Predator’s HUD-enhanced vision in the movie of the same name.
Kalal is a Ph.D. student at the University of Surrey in England, researching projects that make computers see. His Predator algorithm is both fast and powerful.
After telling it what to look for (by dragging a box over the onscreen image) the Predator gets to work. Within seconds it can recognize patterns, objects and faces and track them as they shrink, grow and rotate. When Kalal hides from the camera and holds up a sheet of paper with his photo among a patchwork of thumbnails, Predator picks his face out immediately.
Four minutes might seem like a long time in today’s attention-starved world, but you should watch Kalal’s demo video. It’s worth it just to see him scooting hyperactively around on his office chair.
Keep watching past the credits and you’ll see plenty of other uses, such as tracking individual animals for research, and chasing cars and people across multiple security cameras. It’s not hard to imagine more.
Remember the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai last year? The Dubai authorities tracked the assassins — probably Israeli Mossad agents — across hours and hours of city-wide security footage. Predator would likely make that a lot easier.
I have another, civilian use for this algorithm. Imagine a Nerf-shooting, camera-equipped aerial drone which could acquire and lock onto targets, and then rain holy hot foam onto them from above. That would be a pretty awesome addition to your office warfare arsenal, right?
The Page-machine, the Larry-meister, the chief of all Google execs. As announced in late January, Google’s top decision-making position is today changing hands from the trusty grip of Eric Schmidt to the slightly less proven hold of co-founder Larry Page. Monsieur Page should be familiar with the role, having performed it until Schmidt was hired back in 2001, but the Google of a decade ago was quite a different beast from the multi-tentacled, omnipresent one it is today. It’s probably a good thing, then, that Schmidt is remaining on Google’s board in the role of Executive Chairman, with a focus on outward-facing deals and partnerships, while Page takes care of strategic and product development decisions. The other original Google gangster, Sergey Brin, is still a big part of the company’s triumvirate at the top, but his attention will be dedicated to developing new projects — things like that gigabit broadband network Google’s just started building in Kansas City, Kansas. As to us, our undivided focus will be placed on coming up with fresh “do no evil” jokes.
You probably don’t know who Joe Hayashi is — well, unless you skimmed his bio immediately above — but he just departed one company that you might care about, and went to another one. Hayashi was VP of webOS product development at Palm / HP, and now he’s become the VP of marketing at Numenta, also known as the place where Palm’s founder (and two former CEOs) decided to stay after the Folio tanked. Numenta’s kept fairly quiet during its six years of operation, except to describe a concept called “hierarchical temporary memory” which could lead to a form of artificial intelligence based on human learning schemes, but we imagine if it needs a marketing guy, the company’s about ready to actually create something. For its part, Numenta agrees — it’s publicly stated that we’ll see the technology in some sort of product later this year.
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