‘Cross The Breeze

Although it seems like this is pretty much a creative idea, and nothing quite real today, I like it immediately. Good out-the-box thinking from the researchers at the BBC. Imagine how this could bring a totally immersed movie experience into your living room. Or think about gaming, COD4 to name a one for instance, now that would be absolutely amazing.

[Via David Bausola]

Within a week we’ll be on our way to Vegas again for the MIX08 conference. I quite enjoyed last year’s MIX conference with the announcements of Silverlight and Expression Studio, but also for presentations such as Lou Carbone’s for instance (who will be back this year by the way).

What I like about this year’s agenda as well is that there will be a bit more presentations and workshops that aren’t all 100% tech, as that was probably my only wish after last year. With people like Steve Ballmer, Lou Carbone, Guy Kawasaki, David Armano and obviously also Hugh MacLeod and Loic Le Meur (and many others) it looks indeed like that is happening. Anyway, a lot of presentations these 3 days so to make sure I don’t miss anything, I’ve fired up the schedule builder on the MIX website to make sure I scheduled everything I wanted to see (and added that to my Outlook which is an option within ‘my schedule’). Small note on the schedule builder, you need to be registered for the event to be able to use it. And unfortunately, if you aren’t registered already, the event is sold out since last week.

So if you’re going to MIX as well (and you’re reading this blog) then let me know so we can connect in Vegas (maybe in the Blogzone). I guess that relates immediately to the one big thing I’m missing on the MIX website and that’s the social element. Now I’m not waiting for the next social network, but since I’ve got a login after registration anyway, it would have been nice to be able to use that some more. Who do I know that is going? Which sessions are they going to? It’s like adding a bit of LIFT08 to MIX08 :) That said, it was interesting and fun last year, I’m sure it’ll be so again this year.

PS: Oh yeah, and thanks to David Armano, I now known in Vegas as ‘Two Slice’

A good friend of mine, Matth, just sent me this video over IM. It’s about a guy who did some cool development for the Wii:

“Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space. By Johnny Chung Lee, Carnegie Mellon University. For more information and software visit http://johnnylee.net“

But you know what, just watch the video instead ;)

Imagine how this could be used in gaming, I really hope some game developers do answers Johnny Lee’s request and use this. This is the consumer 2.0 - taking the product further…

Contagious magazine just released it’s ‘most contagious’ overview for 2007 which you can get here (in PDF), and which is “a round-up of the most intriguing, effective, and downright exciting happenings of the past year from landmarks to gaming, from design to social media”. In the report you’ll find Facebook, the iPhone but also Photosynth, Halo3 and ‘The Bomchickawahwahs’ and much more. Enjoy the read.

I got to have this on my tablet PC, somebody just tell me where to download :)

[Via Scobleizer]

Technorati Tags: tabletpc,game,video

Even if you’re not a gamer, you should take a look at this. When I looked at this the first time I was wondering how they (AKQA) did this, and now I found out that it’s actually a real diorama they created for it, it’s even more impressive.

If you are into gaming then take a look at these HD videos as well.

When I met up again with Kevin Slavin in NYC last week, he told me about a new game they were creating for Discovery Channel which sounded very interesting. The game is part of Shark Week and I had a chance to play it for a few days and I must say it’s quite original.

Kevin got me interested in it when he told me that in the online game, you would have to navigate your own boat on a map whereas the sharks you need to find & research are not controlled by artificial intelligence or whatsoever, they are real sharks. The game is using live data from real sharks with GPS tracking (for research purposes) that are swimming in that area. I liked that approach.

When you set your boat’s waypoints the game continues while youre away as you can easily set up a trip for several hours. Whenever there’s a shark within range (like in the image above) you will get an email to warn you about that. That gives you 3 hours to log in and react.

You can request some information about the sharks you encounter, especially to see what data you have already collected and what not (see image above). If you need more research you get your crew ready to collect that.

There are several ways to collect data (some of which you have to buy) but the most effective in the beginning seems to be the 1-person dive. It says that comes with very high danger, but only one crew member has been injured so far ;)

Last but not least, when you collect data on each shark, for instance on habitat, you get a short info on what it is that you actually learned together with a short video of that. No long learning pieces in between, but easy to digest ‘clips’ that you do watch. That makes the game complete for me. It’s not just a fun game just to promote a tv show, it incorporates some content into it already.

Good stuff from the area/code crew!

Technorati Tags: sharks, areacode, playareacode, game, online, promotion, shark week, discovery channel, kevin slavin

This is kind of funny. Most of the time we’ll see references on how realistic games can be. Remember these screenshots of racing cars where it’s very tough to say which is actually in game footage and which isn’t.

In this case, it’s the other way around. Today I noticed this image on a blog called Asfaltkonijn (don’t ask me to translate that). West of Antwerp (linkeroever) there is an abandoned school with a (crashed?) jetfighter on the playground. In itself this is already a pretty weird thing and if you want to see what that looks like, check it out on this map.

Yesterday these guys went to check it out and Tupid made some amazing images in colour and black&white of this jet, and looking at these you can only confirm that it might just have been a scene in some type of shooter game, but I can assure you it’s very real. Really cool pics Tupid, subscribed!

(Courtesy of Tupid)

I just found out about this mashup between the Xbox gamertag and Twitter. It looks kind of complicated still to actually make it work, but that will probably improve soon. Once installed, the Xbox Twitter will check your gamertag status regularly and post updates when needed. This way you’ll see what people are playing on their Xbox.

With the last Xbox 360 dashboard update, Windows Live Messenger can show you the same status message by the way. If you’re logged into Live Messenger on the dashboard (one of the new features), your contacts using Messenger on their pc will see in the status message behind your nick what game you’re playing.

Coming back to Twitter, I haven’t made a post with my thoughts about the service yet, but yesterday I did an email interview with Linda Jones of Twitterati about it. Linda asked me about 15 questions and the interview gives you a pretty good overview about what I think of it today.

Take a look at these stunning images. Stunning, you ask? Yes, knowing that only one image is from a real life situation and the other one is a computer generated one from Gran Turismo HD for PS3, I think you can call that stunning. Do you see the difference?

[Via fosfor gadgets]