Cool Technologies

[viscousmemories]

IRON MAN posted a link on the Countdown thread to a stand-alone version of the very cool video in this blog entry, and I found another very cool video at that same blog.

[SharonDee]

That second video was also cool. The "fingerpainting" at the beginning was less than impressive but when he started moving photo images around and fooling with that map, digitally going wherever he pleased ... that was stunning!

[viscousmemories]

Yeah I wonder how long it'll be before that technology is available to everyone. That would rock.

[livius drusus]

Wow. Both of those are very cool. I have a special fondness for the pendulum and spring features in the MIT system.

[IRON MAN]

If you liked that - have a liv, have a play with this:

http://www.onemorelevel.com/worldofsand.php

I turned off the little fuzz ball thing, the salt and sand, and had the water filling up one container, the oil filling up another, and got them into a continuous cycle of filling with water, then plant growth, ending with it all being consumed by flames and starting all over automatically.

It's kind of like one of those executive stress relief things.

[livius drusus]

Oo fun! I'm mixing up the sand colors right now. I'll try the water-oil stuff next.

[IRON MAN]

The salt kills the little fuzz ball - the water makes him grow and move more.

If you have a stream of oil greater than 2 and set it on fire the flame is self sustaining.

If you want to make a fire proof crucible, line it with the spout pen. Ceramic isn't fire-proof which really sux.

You can have a self-sustaining plant growth too - by having it grow into the water stream.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

I want that ASSIST thing! Totally cool.

[ceptimus]

The whiteboard demo looked a bit contrived to me.

How did the computer know how strong the springs should be?

How did it know the relative weights of the marbles and the cup?

The demo guy didn't seem to do anything to 'anchor' the top of the springs or the top of the pendulum.

[viscousmemories]

I wondered about anchoring the springs and pendulum, but figured they're in a special class that always behaves the same. I didn't think about the relative weights of the marbles and cup, though. That's an interesting question. Here's some info on the project from MIT. Based on that, I think the video was contrived, to demonstrate technology they haven't actually perfected yet.

[MonCapitan2002]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

IRON MAN posted a link on the Countdown thread to a stand-alone version of the very cool video in this blog entry, and I found another very cool video at that same blog.

There was a link to a presentation about the touch technology on that second page. The technology looks very interesting. I wonder how many years it will be before this technology makes it to the average consumer.

[IRON MAN]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

I wondered about anchoring the springs and pendulum, but figured they're in a special class that always behaves the same. I didn't think about the relative weights of the marbles and cup, though. That's an interesting question. Here's some info on the project from MIT. Based on that, I think the video was contrived, to demonstrate technology they haven't actually perfected yet.

Oh I definitely assumed it was being projected in it's best light, and that a Boeing engineer wasn't going to be designing any jet engines on it anytime soon. But you can see that is simply a matter of software development, and therefore a perfectly reasonable point to start making such demos.

In my view it is as legitimate as demonstrating a GUI envirmonment when the only software you have so far is solitaire.

This is in contrast to what I was saying on another thread where the entire thing is a mock up of what remains purely pie in the sky.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

This is small beans next to all this technology, but it's why I love the MIT guys.