England – NerdBeach

Microsoft’s Project Natal Lets You Become The Controller

Microsoft had a cool new toy to show off at this year's E3. The inconspicuous black box turns the XBOX into a super gaming system with its hidden stash of tricks – including voice detection, facial recognition, motion detection, scanning, and more. Hollywood's Steven Spielburg was quoted as saying,

There is technology now that recognizes not just your thumb, it
recognizes your entire person. The technology knows who you are… (it is) a window
into what the future holds

If it performs anywhere close to what the video portrays, then Nintendo is about to be one-upped with what you can do physically within a video game. The video is well done, and it opens up a wealth of possibilities. Just make sure you clear out the space in front of the TV, you are going to need it. I can hear the media now, about how unsuspecting users were accidently drop kicking the TV sets and flipping over the furniture. Yes, it could be that much fun.

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A Video Game George Stick?

The name "joystick" is thought to originate with early 20th century French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie. There are also competing claims on behalf of fellow pilots Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce and Mr A.E. George. The latter was a pioneer aviator who with his colleague Mr. Jobling built and flew a biplane at Newcastle, England in 1910. He is alleged to have invented the "George Stick" which became more popularly known as the joystick. The George and Jobling aircraft control column is in the collection of the Discovery Museum in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. The joystick itself was present in early planes, though the mechanical origins themselves are uncertain.

source: wikipedia

The new Corpus Clock is a very unique mechanical clock

Greg Chaffins

The new Corpus Clock, destined for Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England, is a very unique and completely mechanical clock designed by inventor John Taylor. The clock took seven years to build, and incorporates six patents. How long will the clock run, you ask? Around 250 years, plus or minus a decade or so. The video shows the inventor explaining his creation.

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Plasma Speaker is Shockingly Pleasant Sounding

Greg Chaffins

PlasmaSpeaker_070708

To many audiophiles, plasma speakers are becoming the holy grail of audio components, and there have been many attempts at making it practical. One of the more famous incidents involved legendary audio designer Nelson Pass, whose prototype full range plasma speaker led to ozone poisoning and a trip to the hospital. However, Pass was later quoted as saying,

It was the perfect high end audio product: Exotic, inefficient, expensive, unavailable, and toxic.

Now we have Richard from England who has a new version of a plasma loudspeaker. Richard incorporated tungsten tipped electrodes and 60,000 volts to make it work, but it supposedly delivers the goods. The available video shows it in operation, but don’t expect the YouTube video to capture the nuances of the audio delivery.

Richard claims that his version of the Plasma Speaker creates no ozone at all. If this is true it could spell good things for future plasma speaker marketability. If they do come on the market, I would strongly suggest that you keep the speaker intact, since the plasma voltage could kill (not unlike a flyback transformer on an older style TV set, but they were certainly a marketable product). Personally I would love to give such a speaker a listen in person, and judge for myself – I am curious if dust, moisture, and electrical activity from a pending storm could affect the sound.

Of course, you could always open up the case and have the coolest sounding bug zapper ever created. And perhaps the most expensive.

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Mr. Asahi is a Robotic Bartender

Greg Chaffins

asahi_070408 Selfridges Department Store in London, England has a new bartender, and it goes by the name "Mr. Asahi". Asahi is a robot that is designed to serve a patron in under two minutes. Asahi has programmed replies to the customer in order to make it seem a bit hospitable (as any good bartender would), and he comes in fresh from six months of "training".

Mr Asahi is no lightweight, coming in at 250 pounds and that is without his legs. But since Asahi spends all of his time behind the bar serving his customers he really doesn't have a need for them. But we would probably like a few tips, metal coins only please.

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