Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to shows, we pick a title, sit back and relax, and watch it. However back in 2017, Netflix started toying with the idea of interactive content where viewers could interact with the shows to help make things more interesting, which they later rolled out to some of its children’s shows.

Now if you’re interested in such content, then you’ll be pleased to learn that Netflix’s Black Mirror Bandersnatch movie has been released. For those hearing about this for the first time, the movie is based around the Black Mirror series and shares a similar concept in the story it is trying to tell. However the key difference is that this is an interactive movie.

This means that throughout the movie, there will be moments when a choice will be presented to users on how they want to proceed, which will ultimately affect how the movie and story progresses. Unlike video games that offer up similar choices, these choices will be more basic, but the point is that it will change the way you watch the show.

According to Netflix, based on your choices, there are a variety of ways that the movie could end, which means that you could rewatch it, make different choices, and see how that works out for you. Note that not all devices will support interactive content just yet, such as Chromecast and the Apple TV.

Interactive ‘Black Mirror’ Movie Now Available On Netflix , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

It seems someone took Every Frame a Painting literally: The Very Slow Movie Player is a device that turns cinema into wallpaper, advancing the image by a single second every hour. The result is an interesting household object that makes something new of even the most familiar film.

The idea occurred to designer and engineer Bryan Boyer during one of those times we all have where we are sitting at home thinking of ways to celebrate slowness.

“Can a film be consumed at the speed of reading a book?” he asked himself, slowly. “Slowing things down to an extreme measure creates room for appreciation of the object… but the prolonged duration also starts to shift the relationship between object, viewer, and context. A film watched at 1/3,600th of the original speed is not a very slow movie, it’s a hazy timepiece. A Very Slow Movie Player (VSMP) doesn’t tell you the time; it helps you see yourself against the smear of time.”

The Very Slow Movie Player is an e-paper display attached to a Raspberry Pi board; you load a movie onto the latter, and it processes and displays a single frame at a time, updating the screen with a new one every two and a half minutes.

That adds up to 24 frames per hour, as opposed to the usual 24 frames per second — 3,600 times slower than normal viewing, and producing a (perhaps) 7-or-8,000-hour tableau you view over the course of a year or so.

“It is impossible to ‘watch’ in a traditional way because it’s too slow. In a staring contest with VSMP you will always lose,” writes Boyer in a post explaining the project. “It can be noticed, glanced at, or even inspected, but not watched.”

He compares it to the work of Bill Viola, whose super-slow-motion portraits are similarly impossible to watch from start to finish (unless you’re very, very patient) and therefore exist in a sort of limbo between motion picture and still image.

The image itself leaves something to be desired, of course: e-paper is essentially 1-bit color depth — black and white. So the subtleties of color you might see in any film, color or no, will be lost to dithering.

The way it’s done helps highlight the contrasts and zones of a scene, though if you really want to appreciate Rear Window as cinema, you can watch it any time you like. But if you want to appreciate it as a process, as a relationship with time, as an object and image that exists in the context of the rest of the world and your life… for that, you have the Very Slow Movie Player.

It is inevitable that as our bodies begin to age, we end up with more and more ailments, not to mention parts of our bodies begin to function in a less efficient manner than ever before. Many of the elderly have learned to cope with various conditions, and having a blood pressure monitor machine at home is always handy. Omron Healthcare has come up with its all-new HeartGuide, which is touted to be the first wearable blood pressure monitor from the company. Made available for pre-orders already, this oscillometric blood pressure monitor would arrive in the design of a wrist watch and has picked up clearance from the FDA as a personal medical device.

Being a medical-grade blood pressure device that looks very much like a regular wrist watch, this particular piece of wearable technology enables the wearer to keep track of their blood pressure anytime, anywhere, all the while looking stylish wearing it. Of course, it makes perfect sense to have the HeartGuide double up as a digital wrist watch since you would be wearing it like one. The oscillometric measurement that is featured has been incorporated in an innovative design, where the cuff in the watch band will inflate to measure clinically accurate systolic and diastolic pressure.

This particular oscillometric method is the FDA-recognized standard for accurate, automated, medical-grade personal blood pressure measurement, and over 80 new patents have been filed during the pioneering of new components for the HeartGuide. Apart from keeping track of your blood pressure measurements, the HeartGuide is also well within its capability of tracking one’s daily activity including the number of steps taken, distance walked and calories burned, in addition to the quality of sleep.

Keeping the time is further enhanced via basic smartwatch functionality such as time, date, notifications of texts, emails and calls, as well as the ability to set event reminders. Expect the HeartGuide to retail for $499 apiece with availability being set on January 8, 2019.

Press Release
[ Omron Healthcare HeartGuide available for pre-order copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

It seems someone took Every Frame a Painting literally: The Very Slow Movie Player is a device that turns cinema into wallpaper, advancing the image by a single second every hour. The result is an interesting household object that makes something new of even the most familiar film.

The idea occurred to designer and engineer Bryan Boyer during one of those times we all have where we are sitting at home thinking of ways to celebrate slowness.

“Can a film be consumed at the speed of reading a book?” he asked himself, slowly. “Slowing things down to an extreme measure creates room for appreciation of the object… but the prolonged duration also starts to shift the relationship between object, viewer, and context. A film watched at 1/3,600th of the original speed is not a very slow movie, it’s a hazy timepiece. A Very Slow Movie Player (VSMP) doesn’t tell you the time; it helps you see yourself against the smear of time.”

The Very Slow Movie Player is an e-paper display attached to a Raspberry Pi board; you load a movie onto the latter, and it processes and displays a single frame at a time, updating the screen with a new one every two and a half minutes.

That adds up to 24 frames per hour, as opposed to the usual 24 frames per second — 3,600 times slower than normal viewing, and producing a (perhaps) 7-or-8,000-hour tableau you view over the course of a year or so.

“It is impossible to ‘watch’ in a traditional way because it’s too slow. In a staring contest with VSMP you will always lose,” writes Boyer in a post explaining the project. “It can be noticed, glanced at, or even inspected, but not watched.”

He compares it to the work of Bill Viola, whose super-slow-motion portraits are similarly impossible to watch from start to finish (unless you’re very, very patient) and therefore exist in a sort of limbo between motion picture and still image.

The image itself leaves something to be desired, of course: e-paper is essentially 1-bit color depth — black and white. So the subtleties of color you might see in any film, color or no, will be lost to dithering.

The way it’s done helps highlight the contrasts and zones of a scene, though if you really want to appreciate Rear Window as cinema, you can watch it any time you like. But if you want to appreciate it as a process, as a relationship with time, as an object and image that exists in the context of the rest of the world and your life… for that, you have the Very Slow Movie Player.

It is inevitable that as our bodies begin to age, we end up with more and more ailments, not to mention parts of our bodies begin to function in a less efficient manner than ever before. Many of the elderly have learned to cope with various conditions, and having a blood pressure monitor machine at home is always handy. Omron Healthcare has come up with its all-new HeartGuide, which is touted to be the first wearable blood pressure monitor from the company. Made available for pre-orders already, this oscillometric blood pressure monitor would arrive in the design of a wrist watch and has picked up clearance from the FDA as a personal medical device.

Being a medical-grade blood pressure device that looks very much like a regular wrist watch, this particular piece of wearable technology enables the wearer to keep track of their blood pressure anytime, anywhere, all the while looking stylish wearing it. Of course, it makes perfect sense to have the HeartGuide double up as a digital wrist watch since you would be wearing it like one. The oscillometric measurement that is featured has been incorporated in an innovative design, where the cuff in the watch band will inflate to measure clinically accurate systolic and diastolic pressure.

This particular oscillometric method is the FDA-recognized standard for accurate, automated, medical-grade personal blood pressure measurement, and over 80 new patents have been filed during the pioneering of new components for the HeartGuide. Apart from keeping track of your blood pressure measurements, the HeartGuide is also well within its capability of tracking one’s daily activity including the number of steps taken, distance walked and calories burned, in addition to the quality of sleep.

Keeping the time is further enhanced via basic smartwatch functionality such as time, date, notifications of texts, emails and calls, as well as the ability to set event reminders. Expect the HeartGuide to retail for $499 apiece with availability being set on January 8, 2019.

Press Release
[ Omron Healthcare HeartGuide available for pre-order copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]