Why We Went to Japan

All Nippon Airways invited us to fly to Japan to experience their new Inspiration of Japan service – it was pretty wonderful!

Amazing People

Even though we’re used to fairly nice people we couldn’t help but notice how very nice and respectful the people in Japan were!

The City of Tokyo, Japan

The city is very clean, even with almost no trash cans on the street. It was also extremely quiet for such a huge city.

Making Friends and Picking Up Girls

Our new friend Yukari Peerless helped us make friends wherever we went. Whether it was me grabbing photos with high-fashion girls or John picking up girls, the people were great!

Some Unique Food

John was a little worried about the food before we went, but we both found some fantastic stuff. I ate crab brains! (He didn’t.)

Unexpected Tech Experiences

Seeing tech in Japan was an interesting (and surprising) experience. They’re not really influenced by the outside world – everyone had a flip phone!

Have you ever wanted to have a heads up display (HUD) built right into your glasses?

The OE-31

Lumus, who creates wearable displays, has revealed their newest technology. The “OE-31″ is a compact Heads Up Display that has an small optical engine that can be used in various frames such as goggles, motorcycle helmets, prescription or regular sun glasses. It will also be available in both binocular and monocular configurations. If that sounds familiar, Google is also working on their own heads up display glasses.

Specs

The OE-31 sensor only weighs .35 ounces and is no more than the size of a quarter. The design of the sensor allows for a 19-degree field of view and a full color 640 x 360 picture display. While the resolution on paper will look small, in reality the viewing experience will be closest to being in front of a 40 inch screen from a few feet away.

Full specs
Display format: nHD 640 x 360 pixels
Field of View: 19°
Virtual screen size: Equivalent of 40″ screen at 10 ft away; 400″ at 100 ft away
Eye motion box: 10 x 8 mm
Display color: Full color
Transparency: >78%
Brightness: >1,000 FtL
Contrast ratio: >250:1
Eye relief: 18 mm
Weight: 10g
LOE thickness: 1.6 mm

No word yet on when this will come to market, but it will be interesting to see what kind of products it will be incorporated into.

So, the ‘smarter than you’ guys at Chaotic Moon Labs have whipped up yet another awesome motorized board. In the spirit of their previous Board of Awesomeness, a motorized skateboard that you controled using gestures, they have created the Board of Imagination. The kicker? This new board is completely controlled with your mind. As in you imagine moving to some point and then you just do. You really have to see it to believe it.

So what is this black magic you say? Well, put down the torches there, Torquemada. The board is using a Samsung Windows tablet running the Windows 8 Developer Preview and is linked wirelessly to an Emotiv EPOC headset. The headset, if you aren’t familiar, converts brain waves into machine-useable information. It’s essentially a low-grade electroencephalograph (EEG). The headset sends an approximation of your brain waves to the tablet where the companion software makes sense of them. presumably from here CML has some in-house software that takes that processed data and uses it to control the motors in the board. What you get in the end is a motorized skateboard that will take you somewhere with a mere thought!

This is very much in the prototype stage and there is no telling whether this would ever actually become a product. Lucky for the more enterprising of us out there, CML plans to open source the code to their end of the chain and hopefully that also means releasing a Bill of Materials for the board. If this is the case, then I can assure you I will be building one myself!

For a more in-depth explanation of the board and to just see some really neat stuff take a look at the video below.

What do you think about the board? If CML made this a real product would you buy it? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

(via The Verge)

Animated GIF images remain extremely popular, years after they first hit the web. Many are simply tiny clips from other media, such as television shows or movies. But others have been created from scratch to offer something unique from designers showcasing their work.

David Ope has a Tumblr account called DVDP, where he features his many graphic art experiments. A great deal of his GIF images have cyclic movements as their focus. These are some of his best.

1. Inner Circles

Most of the circles in this GIF are evenly spaced and move outward. But the others move inward, giving more depth to the overall picture. At a certain point there is an area where the two seem to merge and there are more lines than the other spaces.

2. Light Ball

Set against a black background, this one has just a few lights that seem to make up a ball moving in circles to a center. It is interesting to see how the movements themselves create the effect of a circle rather than the other way around.

3. Rainbow Ball

This one is a lot more colorful than most of the others on Ope’s Tumblr. It uses one bent strip of rainbow-colored light to make up a ball rotating clockwise. Other lighter colors make up the other half to slightly solidify the shape.

4. Colored Ball

More complex than the rainbow ball, this example has different pieces that rotate in a cyclic motion to make up another ball. But they seem to move inside of one another to slightly change the shades as they go, remaining transparent so you can also see the others.

5. Stairway to Heaven

One of the cooler images Ope has made, this GIF shows a kind of staircase that is moving in a spiral up toward a backdrop of stars. There is something almost hypnotizing about it, and it is hard to look away after a while.

6. Seizure Inducer

My title was, of course, made in jest. But this one is hard to look at without feeling like your eyes are going to explode. There is a ball made of lines in the center that is moving in a cyclic motion. Then, the background is more lines moving in an opposite way. If anything could throw you into a seizure, it would have to be this one.

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For a lengthy part of my childhood, there was a local video game store which had many of the “cool” arcade game machines. Not extremely crowded at any given time either. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and WrestleFest (WWF at the time). Once the establishment turned their machines to nickels only, I was hardly ever home. Bob owned a store that shined on customer relationships.

WrestleFest was such an addicting game. My favorite of that particular time. Pro Wrestling had a larger than life appeal with guys like Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, “Mr Perfect” Curt Hennig, and so forth. Arguably, the first arcade game I learned the importance of button mashing. Today, wrestling has more focus on younger talent.

This week, WrestleFest was released for the iPad and iPhone. Both premium and free editions available on each device. I immediately stopped what I was doing, and downloaded the paid version for iPad.

Upon launching the game, it feels similar to the classic retro version. No fancy intro videos, or dynamic story like you’d find with games that maximize the iPad hardware. Just push start and dive right in.

The new roster consists of Jake “The Snake” Roberts, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, The Rock, Randy Orton, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Undertaker. If you want to pop another 99 cents in, you can also download Big Boss Man, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, CM Punk, and Sheamus.

Game Modes

Exhibition mode is typical for any game. Just a free-for-all. Choose two wrestlers and duke it out if your time is limited.

Road to Wrestlemania is a feature that debuted in the Smackdown vs Raw series on Playstation and later with X-Box 360. It’s a storyboard mode that takes a superstar through scenarios to win each respective title belt until you make it to Wrestlemania.

CM Punk on the Road to Wrestlemania

Royal Rumble is probably the hardest mode in my opinion. Lots of wrestlers in the ring at the same time. It’s a lot of button mashing, which is similar to the original arcade game. Dramatically getting knocked down with one punch when energy is low, can be hard on the fingers.

Saturday Night’s Main Event is a Tag Team Tournament. Like the original, choose two wrestlers and beat every team to win the championship. Unfortunately, there is no Legion of Doom at the end.

Tag Team Mode is like Exhibition. One match with two teams squaring off between each other. Pretty simple, but fun pairing two unlikely superstars together.

"Macho Man" Randy Savage (R.I.P)

Gauntlet Mode seems neglected. Choose a superstar and beat a “set” number of wrestlers one after another. Personally, I haven’t found an end to this. It just keeps going, and going…and going. I’ve beat Steve Austin about 5 times now. It also does ring entrances for each opponent. The operation of gauntlets should more real time like the Royal Rumble.

If taking on the computer gets too boring, there’s a multiplayer mode. Currently, the Game Center Auto-Match has a really long wait time. Noticed the iPad actually gives up looking if the screen goes black.

Conclusion

If you’re a huge fan of the original arcade game, you may or may not be disappointed. The bass thumping beat of wrestlers walking to the ring is missing. Announcer voices are missing with the exception of Justin Roberts. I think the original had a bulldozing edge by announcing every move performed in the ring.

The only two legends from the original game are Big Bossman and Jake Roberts at the moment. Also a little odd seeing Triple H and Shawn Michaels executing Hulk Hogan leg drops.

It still maintains the simplicity of two button action. Old strategies may still work to win matches (Hint: Manipulating punches). Most iPad games I buy are highly rated, but I tend to neglect them fairly quickly. WrestleFest won’t be one of those. I feel like WWE will have close eyes on this one, and put a good deal of advertisement into it. Anticipating that it will include more wrestlers and improvements in the near future.

It’d be curious to know what Gary Vaynerchuk thinks of the new release, since he’s a fan too. This video has nothing to do with the game, but it stands out over his message

LEGO Robotic Hand

When you’re trying to mimic human movement, LEGO is not a bad place to start! This hand and arm has an amazing range of motion.

Black Hole Storm Warning

Think it’s windy where you are? Astronomers have clocked stellar winds from a black hole moving at 20 million miles per hour.

Record EVERYTHING on TV

Did you miss a show because you didn’t remember to record it? With the Promise.TV DVR, you’ll record everything that aired for several days.

Wearable Camera for Police POV

RoboCop draws nearer as the Taser company introduces video cameras for police that can be mounted on glasses or clothing to capture a full shift of POV video.

Can anyone tell me why manufacturers feel the need to allow us to talk to our devices? Is it a gadget fad or is it something that will improve our quality of life? Or is it just cool? Google and Android developers seem to feel it’s something that’s necessary because some really cool uses for voice actions are becoming the norm in the devices we use the most.

Google TV Responding To Your Voice

Voice action apps for Android and iPhone have been available for years. But it looks like Google is about to take it one step further with a patent that was filed on September 29, 2011. According to Patently Apple, Google is looking to create a new remote or app that will use voice controls associated with  their cloud services. The Siri-like interface will allow users to use voice commands to record a television show, look up show information and share information with other Android devices, like smartphones or tablets.

For now these are only some potential uses for the voice actions, but it’s something that’s definitely possible. I’m curious to see if they will release additional information on their plans for this patent at Google I/O 2012 in June.

Utter!

Utter! is an Android personal assistant app that allows you to interact with your phone or tablet via voice command. It uses the IVONA Text-to-Speech HQ speech engine and with it you can set commands for specific apps, perform basic tasks or make system related changes to your device. It can perform a lot of the same tasks that Google Voice Actions and Siri can do, but it is very customizable.

What I like the most is that it enables you to assign specific keywords to interact with the applications you use the most. For instance, if you used Handcent instead of Messages to send text messages, you could set the text command to work with Handcent instead of Messages.

Check out the demo video below to see Utter! in action. Developer brandall76 is using a rooted HTC Flyer to show us some of the features. My favorite part is around the 9:16 mark, when he asks Utter! what she thinks about Siri. You can also set up Utter! to start random conversations (18:06 in the video) with you if you’re feeling lonely.

To keep up with the Utter! project, visit the forum post on XDA.

As always, I want to know what you think. Is this something that users will use over Google’s Project Majel? Will it be a viable alternative to what Apple is able to do with Siri? For a beta app, it seems to work pretty well.

(via Android Police and AndroidGuys)

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• BP Group Hierarchy: ” group creators to place a new group under an existing group. There is currently no limit to the depth of the group hierarchy.”
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