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Continue reading Objects in Chinavasion’s Video Glasses may be cheaper than they appear

Objects in Chinavasion’s Video Glasses may be cheaper than they appear originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Really now? KIRFing a phone and a UI is one thing, but claiming to have a 26-core CPU (!) capable of 8-gigaflop (!) floating point operation — or the “equivalent of four iPads combined,” apparently — is one helluva stretch for a smartphone. This is apparently how awesome the QderoPateo Ouidoo will be. According to the launch event at the Shanghai World Expo on Friday, the too-good-to-be-true Divinitus CPU will help power the Ouidoo OS’s augmented reality articulated naturality apps and 3D social-networking virtual world. The rest of the specs include 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM, 28GB of built-in storage, microSD expansion, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, built-in 3D map, accelerometer, digital compass, 5-megapixel camera with flash, 220 hours of standby battery life, and a sharp 3.5-inch 800 x 480 screen. No prices or even videos of the UI available yet, but our friends over at Engadget Chinese are promised a review unit in July or August — around the time of the global launch (followed by an LTE revision in 2011), so it won’t be long before we find out whether this is just some absurd vaporware. A couple of pictures of the prototype after the break.

Update: Recombu has pinged us a link to Oxford University’s PTAM (Parallel Tracking and Mapping) augmented reality software, which is licensed to QderoPateo. You can see it demoed on an iPhone 3G after the break.

[Thanks, xleung]

Continue reading QderoPateo Ouidoo to pack 26-core chip, looks like Palm Pre and Windows Phone 7 love child

QderoPateo Ouidoo to pack 26-core chip, looks like Palm Pre and Windows Phone 7 love child originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It was a monumental week for efficient transportation as China unveiled plans to connect its high speed rail network all the way to Europe. We were also excited to see Solar Roadways unveil the first prototype of an energy-generating road that stands to transform our freeways into power conduits. Meanwhile, one 74 year old man is going solo and blazing his own trail across the states aboard a solar powered stroller.

Inhabitat also showcased several amazing feats of architecture this week. One of the world’s first skyscrapers with built-in wind turbines is rising above London, while designer Enrico Dini has created a gigantic 3D printer that is able to create entire buildings out of stone.

Finally, we explored all sorts of ways that people are getting wired – literally. Students at the University of Washington are working on a set of solar-powered augmented reality contact lenses that may just bring terminator vision to the masses, while Spanish scientists are working on nanochips that can be that can be implanted into human body cells to detect diseases earlier. And in case you haven’t heard, “me-fi” is the new WiFi as researches have discovered a way to transmit 10mbps broadband data through a human arm.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: high speed rail, augmented reality, and body broadband originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What, you thought Home was the only project in the pipeline for these guys? The mobile UI experts at Sweden’s TAT are in the house at MWC this week showing off a couple other nifty developments that are keeping them busy these days: a dual-screen UI concept utilizing TI’s next-gen hardware, and an app that makes good on a concept it had demoed before. First up, they’ve been using a TI Blaze to demonstrate their vision of a phone with two displays, likely in a slider configuration (in fact, they showed a Droid to represent how they think the form factor could work) with a screen where you’d normally expect they physical QWERTY keyboard to be. It’s slick and wicked smooth on the brutally powerful OMAP4 core, but realistically, this is something unusual enough so that we’d need to play with a unit for a good, long while before drawing any usability conclusions. TAT believes we could see devices with this kind of setup by years’ end, but we don’t know what carriers, manufacturer, or time frames would be involved at this point.

Next up, Recognizr is the realization of the Augmented ID concept it showed off last year that lets you tag your face (it sounds weird, but it’s quite literally true) with icons representing services that you use, each of which exposes information about you that you want others to know; then, other users with the system can put you in their viewfinder and see the same icons. It’s not flawless — in fact, TAT readily admits that they probably need better camera tech before it can be commercialized, and they had quite a few issues during our demo time — but it’s a clever concept that’s better watched on video than explained, which is convenient considering that we’ve got videos of both of these goodies in action after the break. Check ’em out, won’t you?

Continue reading Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app

Hands-on with TAT’s dual-screen phone concept and augmented reality app originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ladies and rockers alike enjoy spending time testing different makeup, but their tag-along boyfriends? Not so much. Luckily for Japanese couples, cosmetic giant Shiseido has finally rolled out its Digital Cosmetic Mirrors in Tokyo malls to help speed things up. The machine is able to recommend products for the user’s skin type, while allowing them to view it applied via an augmented reality effect. When all is done, the machine prints out a shopping list along with before and after mugshots to make you spend more money feel good about your selections. Good luck with matching the picture though — the cosmetics aren’t going to apply themselves. Video demonstration after the break.

Continue reading Augmented reality mirror picks makeup for the ladies (video)

Augmented reality mirror picks makeup for the ladies (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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