New Florence. New Renaissance.

Hologram Eyeglasses

Technical Illusions has developed castAR, a pair of high-tech glasses that project 3D hologram like images, and a “magic wand” that can be used to interact with the holographic projections to enliven gaming and teaching.

BusinessWeek

It’s a game, it’s a commercial, it’s an app…

I love rich mobile apps and wrote recently about the Cognizant Code Halos app.

BMW takes it a notch higher with a game/360 degree virtual drive metaphor in its Become Electric app for its UK i3 launch. Free in the iOS store.

It’s elaborate enough to merit its own rolling credits!

Coolest products at CES

Every tech pub has its own list of favorites from CES this week but I especially liked the list of 12 from Popular Science that Frank Scavo pointed out

It includes the Playstation Now

“The most frustrating part of gaming is still, well, getting the games--either purchasing your game and waiting for it to download, or stopping by a brick-and-mortar shop and plugging in a disc (then waiting for any updates the game might need). PlayStation Now, a game streaming service just unveiled by Sony, lets gamers instantly play their games from a PS3, PS4, or PS Vita, without downloading and always in the most updated version. Plus, it gives users the ability to rent titles they're interested in, rather than buying the full copy.”

People Analytics

The Atlantic on growing science based recruitment and other employee assessments

“Knack makes app-based video games, among them Dungeon Scrawl, a quest game requiring the player to navigate a maze and solve puzzles, and Wasabi Waiter, which involves delivering the right sushi to the right customer at an increasingly crowded happy hour. These games aren’t just for play: they’ve been designed by a team of neuroscientists, psychologists, and data scientists to suss out human potential. Play one of them for just 20 minutes, says Guy Halfteck, Knack’s founder, and you’ll generate several megabytes of data, exponentially more than what’s collected by the SAT or a personality test. How long you hesitate before taking every action, the sequence of actions you take, how you solve problems—all of these factors and many more are logged as you play, and then are used to analyze your creativity, your persistence, your capacity to learn quickly from mistakes, your ability to prioritize, and even your social intelligence and personality. The end result, Halfteck says, is a high-resolution portrait of your psyche and intellect, and an assessment of your potential as a leader or an innovator.”

Thanks to Dion Hinchcliffe for pointer

Photo Credit of Wasabi Waiter

XBox One = One Microsoft

“The console incorporates software and systems developed throughout the rest of Microsoft and is the first big test of what the company calls its One Microsoft strategy. Pushed by outgoing Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, the idea is to encourage Microsoft’s product groups to work together and tear down once-rigid walls between divisions.”

Bloomberg

Candy Crush Saga

In the past year, Candy Crush Saga has been downloaded some 500 million times and played more than 150 billion times. The game got off to a slow start as an online game two years ago, but after some design changes expressly intended to thwart players tempted to put it down, it has become a global phenomenon--popular everywhere from Brazil to Hong Kong. It is the first game of the smartphone era to top the most-downloaded charts for Apple iOS, Google Android and Facebook simultaneously.

The rules of play are simple: line up three candies of the same color and repeat. But within that basic premise, Candy Crush's maker, a London-based software company called King, has devised an apparatus that is almost frighteningly effective at turning new players into fanatics--and making money too. Which is a particularly sweet trick considering that Candy Crush is free to download and free to play.

Time

Photo Credit

The Quantified Self

Time (sub required) on the growing obsession to benchmark everything in our lives

In fact, the quantifying self--i.e., self-knowledge through numbers--was projected as one of 2012's big trends. Earlier this month, the Quantified Self Global Conference held its fifth meeting, a sort of show-and-tell during which self-trackers share their counting ways.

In a video on the Quantified Self's website, a young man from Boston reveals how he transformed his weight and fitness through a number of self-quantifying tools, including Weight Watchers, RunKeeper, MyFitnessPal, a Garmin Forerunner watch and the Nike+ system. Another reports using various sleep and biomarker data to maintain himself in "optimized zones" for long-term health.

Grand Theft Auto – the humble beginnings

This latest iteration of the violent videogame, which retails for about $55, had sales of $800 million on Wednesday, its first day out, hijacking the previous record for first-day sales set by Grand Theft Auto IV ($310 million). On Friday, the company said estimated sales of the game reached $1 billion during its first three days, saying it was the fastest any entertainment property, including video games and feature films, reached that milestone.

ABC News

Video  below of DMA Design (now Rockstar North) in 1996 when they were working on Version 1

 

 

The future of court evidence?

Contrast Forensics uses Wireless Motion Capture Suits and other tech for Crime and Accident Reconstruction. The animated video like a sample below is being evaluated for admission as evidence by the judge in the George Zimmerman case in FL. You could see more of it in future cases

 

Evolving the XBox

"The Xbox One is a black rectangle with sharp edges—it looks like the monolith in 2001—and the accompanying controllers have a similar aesthetic. The onscreen interface will appear familiar to any current Xbox owner, although the machine can flip between applications much faster than the 360. Voice commands allow users to switch between games, movies, TV, and music, instead of having to close one before opening another. Apps can run simultaneously, allowing a basketball fan to watch a game in one window while tracking fantasy stats in a second. These features, along with some displays of the Xbox One’s graphics engine, were met with applause from many attendees at the launch event. That’s a refreshing change, given the tepid reception to other Microsoft offerings (see Surface tablets, Windows smartphones, and even Windows 8)."

Bloomberg