New Florence. New Renaissance.

Immersive Disney

Leave it to Disney and its technologies to make you part of the show – even when you are far from their parks

At a mall

Love the bit where the guy says on his phone "I think I am being shadowed by Goofy". How did person at other end react?

Also geeks, sure you know what Umbra and Penumbra are?

 

By making you part of a show

Mickey hats with LEDs allow audiences to Glow with the Show. BTW there is also a Minnie Mouse-inspired headband, a Mickey Mouse glove and, my favorite, a magical wand that reminds me of Sorcerer Mickey.

 

Everywhere you go

You can show off your Disney Side with your mobile phone

 

 

Not coming to an App Store near you

An app to light up One World Trade Center

As for the spire, it contains about 1,500 LEDs of its own—which could allow for a breathtaking light show. “We can define any hue or brightness level,” says Mark Domino, the digital-media artist behind the building’s illuminations. “There’s an RGB value charged to each light that can be controlled independently.” The result is millions of potential color combinations and even animation (building operator Durst Organization is developing a control system). Domino has real-time control over the lighting program via his phone, though he says he doesn’t know whether management will let him use this custom-built software when 1WTC opens later this year.

LEDs for better food

University of Florida researchers say they can alter the levels of antioxidants and other healthy compounds in sprouts, including kale. They are employing a technology found everywhere from traffic signals to computer power buttons: light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

LEDs are small, cool and energy efficient. They also produce light from narrow bands within the spectrum, making it easy to give plants a focused dose of, say, red light. This functionality is important because scientists have known for some time that a plant’s chemical processes can alter depending on the wavelength of light to which it is exposed. Studies have shown sweeping metabolic changes occur in plants when they are grown under different qualities of the light, including some humans cannot see.

Txchnologist

Christmas Lights Record

The Richards family in Canberra, Australia has over 500,000 lights – a Guinness record!

 

Walmart takes LED mainstream

It was only a matter of time before Walmart would try to take command of the LED light bulb market by drastically undercutting the competition. That's now happened; the massive retailer has unveiled a new line of LED bulbs under its in-house Great Value brand. The light bulbs, immediately available from all US stores and soon at Walmart.com, start at under $9 — priced even lower than Cree's $13 breakthrough bulb. Walmart isn't new to selling LED light bulbs, but this is its most aggressive push yet to make them affordable for shoppers. In all, the Great Value line includes 26 different bulb types, the cheapest of which costs only $8.88.

The Verge

 

Photo Credit of bulb for even less - $ 8.48 with these specs

• 40W equivalent using only 7W of energy
• Saves up to 80 percent on energy costs
• Lasts 25,000 hrs
• Brightness: 470 lumens

The Smarter Home

By proving that something as mundane as a thermostat doesn't have to be mundane, Nest helped inspire a generation of home-automation products that are now arriving in force. Other distinguished alumni of the consumer-electronics business are joining the fray, including industrial-design guru Yves Béhar, known for fashionable gizmos like the Jawbone headset. He's one of the minds behind August, a front-door lock that lets you use your phone as a key without so much as bothering to remove it from your pocket.

Time (sub required) with graphic below of 1) Canary, a security system 2) Smartthings, with lost key finder and other apps 3) August described above and 4) Phillips Hue, a smart LED bulb

Deepak Chopra’s Dream Weaver

Businessweek

“On Feb. 7, Deepak Chopra showed up at the Silicon Valley offices of German software giant SAP (SAP), causing quite a stir. Hundreds of people packed SAP’s cafeteria and an overflow room to listen to the New Age guru. Chopra, wearing a black suit with red sneakers, advised workers to sleep more, eat right, and meditate on their place in the world. And, if anyone needed help, Chopra recommended his line of consciousness-altering Dream Weaver glasses. “I got the idea for these during my first LSD experience at the age of 17,” Chopra told the SAP employees.”

That would have been in 1963, btw.

Whether you believe Chopra is such a far looking technology visionary, or needs hallucinogenics (btw he clarified on Conan his LSD use was during medical school) his device uses light and sound pulses at specified frequencies. “Behind your closed eyelids you will see a complex kaleidoscope of color, multidimensional layers of fractals and a variety of dream-like imagery”

It is supposed to help the user relax and reach trances states as in “Gregorian chanting, Hebrew davening, Tibetan prayer bowls, Native American drum circles and rain chants, Sufi chants and Whirling dervishes, and African trance dancing.”

That may be too “far out” for many users but here is Chopra describing the product

Technology and Christmas Eve

I was taking a look at prior year posts on this magical evening.

Christmas lighting. Here’s the 2005 version from Ohio

and here’s 2012 version from California

 

And then there is NORAD tracking Santa - 2008 on Google Maps.

2012 on Bing

The next graphene?

Like graphene, itself a 2-D form of graphite, molybdenum disulfide has been used for many years as an industrial lubricant. But it had never been seen as a 2-D platform for electronic devices until last year, when scientists at the Swiss university EPFL produced a transistor on the material.

In the future, it could also enable entirely new kinds of devices. The material could be used, in combination with other 2-D materials, to make light-emitting devices. Instead of producing a point source of light from one bulb, an entire wall could be made to glow, producing softer, less glaring light. Similarly, the antenna and other circuitry of a cellphone might be woven into fabric, providing a much more sensitive antenna that needs less power and could be incorporated into clothing, Palacios says.

The material is so thin that it’s completely transparent, and it can be deposited on virtually any other material. For example, MoS₂ could be applied to glass, producing displays built into a pair of eyeglasses or the window of a house or office.

Kurzweil blog

The Republican convention buildout

The Tampa Bay Times Forum where the convention will be held starting August 27 is home to the NHL hockey Lightings and the Arena Football Storm teams. The Storm had its last home game July 14, and since then the build out for the convention has been in full swing. The video below shows the first 2 weeks of the convention buildout – so less than half of the total planned effort. Compare that to the fact that the roadies spend just 2-3 days to get an arena ready for a major concert and you can see the magnitude of the effort.  

In addition, the forum has already made significant lighting and acoustic enhancements in the last year:

• the foot-candle power of lighting has doubled, enhancing high-definition television broadcasts. There also are continuous LED displays on two levels with 1.7 million square pixels that surround the entire playing area
• a massive faux pipe organ, which is entirely digital with five keyboards and 260 speakers. Computer controls also can use theatrical lighting to continuously alter the coloring of the pipes to enhance the experience
• two separate Tesla coils that hang down from the rafters at opposite ends of the Times Forum. Each coil throws a 25-foot arc of artificial lightning in two directions