What Is This? [Image Cache]

Posted on by

When I first saw this picture, I thought that the guy had gotten frustrated with some kind of weird do-it-yourself exercise equipment and was about to toss it into the woods. I was only right about the DIY part.

This strange contraption is a DIY plenoptic camera.

Still don't know what that is? I didn't either, but Make explained that "instead of capturing a flat, 2D array of pixels, a plenoptic camera uses an array of microlenses to capture 4D lightfield data. This data can then be processed to create a final image that is focused on any part of the scene." Basically, this means that it takes a lot of little images from different viewpoints and those can then be transformed into your ideal picture. If you want to get dreamy about describing this process, you could say that it lets you travel back in time and fix bad focusing mistakes of the past.

It looks crazy in action, too:

You can follow the links to Futurepicture and actually read all about how to make one of these camera rigs yourself. And if you do that: Please send along some images. I have a fascination with these trippy, crazy things. [Futurepicture via Team Droid via Make]



Gawker Media Is in Need of the Bravest Interns in the Land [Jobs]

Posted on by

Yes, bravery and all that goes with it are a requirement for all Gawker Media interns as you'll be thrown into our crazy communities and expected to keep them clean. If you think you're cut out for a gig, read on and apply:

Gawker Media seeks a few brave interns to work in comments and serve our beloved communities. The interns will work on behind-the-scenes administrative tasks and quality oversight. Applicants should have several days per week to devote to these duties. Strong communication skills, familiarity with Gawker Media blogs and commenting communities, and excellent decision-making abilities a must. New York City-based is preferred, but remote applicants will be considered. College internship credit available to those who qualify. Send email with bio, resume, commenter username and subject line 'Community Internship' to communityintern (at) gawker dot com.



Verizon Literally Puts a Band-Aid on Droid’s Problematic Battery Door [Repairs]

Posted on by

I really like my Droid, but have had the same loose battery door problem as everybody else; it usually slides off while being removed from my pocket, which makes the otherwise-heavy-duty-feeling phone feel weak. Verizon's solution? Also weak.

Apparently Flickr user Anticitizen took his Droid to a Verizon store to see what could be done about the battery door issue, and this was their solution. There's a better fix illustrated in this video, but still: What's up with the Band-Aid, Verizon? [Android Central]



Leak: Windows Phone Ads Could Debut at CES 2010 [Microsoft]

Posted on by

Whoops! These photos of ad agency Crispin Porter's Job Manager shows dates for Windows Phone ad campaigns as going "live" January 4th and 8th.

Crispin Porter Co-Chairman Alex Bogusky (profiled here) posted the shot to demonstrate CP's massive real-time job management system, which clearly lists two ad campaigns, on January 4th and 8th, for "Windows Phone," first as "Windows Phone Q3 Media Refresh" and second as "09 Windows Phone Banners." So who knows what the actual timing for these ads will be, but its a safe bet that ads will be previewed at CES in some way. (Crispin Porter, by the way, was responsible for the Seinfeld Ad campaign).



Fukasawa Design Specializes in Coffee, Tea, and Elegance [Design]

Posted on by

The Coffee + Tea Maker from designer Naoto Fukasawa makes the morning that much more bearable while you wait for that first sweet hit of caffeine.

It filters water through a double activated charcoal filter in less than ten minutes, and can produce up to six cups of tea or coffee. The Coffee + Tea Maker just became available in the UK here, though there's no word yet on if or when it will come to the US. Hurry up, people that make these decisions! My Dunkin' Donuts grounds might not taste great, but with this they can at least look it. [Design Museum Shop via Unplggd]



I Must Get the Stunning Chiaroscuro PC and a Light Cycle to Match [DIY]

Posted on by

Nick Falzone at Bit-tech has created the Chiaroscuro PC. Made of wood and inspired by the Beijing Digital building, this computer is a true thing of beauty. Absolutely amazing, in fact. The best thing: You can do one yourself.

Seriously, I wish all computers came like this from the factory. Or at least mine. Check Nick's photographies and how-to documentation at [Bit-Tech]



How Will We Look Back On Today’s Gadget Ads? [Advertising]

Posted on by

Looking back at vintage advertising can be a sociological horrorshow. It could never be printed now. But it also seems inevitable that some of today's tech ads will eventually seem utterly backwards, too. The question is, which ones?

I'm not talking about obvious screwups like Microsoft whitewashing their Polish advertising campaign (which they apologized for), or Intel's obviously unfortunate—but probably accidental—Core 2 Duo campaign. I'm talking about ads that never got pulled, never prompted an apology, and that, to most people, probably seem harmless. Who, dear readers, will be the 1949 GE of 2060? And for what? Racism? Sexism? Some as-of-yet-unnoticed *ism? Am I oversimplifying what constitutes progress? Difficult questions!

More to the point, will my kids watch these PSP ads in history class, come home, and ask me why I was such a terrible human, back in 2009?


Yep, probably. Post your best guesses in the comments, about, you know, the future. [CopyRanter]



The World’s Largest Lamp Can Eat My Bed, Two People, and a Dog [Lighting]

Posted on by

I don't know if my girlfriend would allow me to get Bart Lens' gargantuan XXXLamp—the world's largest lamp in production—but I really like the idea of it covering the entire bed, and having it close like a cocoon.

The only problem is that, at 13-foot in diameter and 5.25-feet high, I doubt it will fit anywhere in our apartment. The XXXLamp uses three white light sources, but you can order it with RGB LED sources to achieve any color you want at any time with a remote controller, like the much smaller Philips Livingcolors Lamp. Oh prettiness. [Eden Design via Dezeen]



The Wassup Commercial: Back In the Days When Men Communicated [Y2k10]

Posted on by

The Wassup Boys were a glimpse at the Early 2000 Male's civilized relationship with technology. No, really.

In 2000, Budweiser brought us the inimitable—or perhaps slightly imitable—"Wassup" commercial. Okay, maybe very imitable—Grandmas, Superfriends, Teletubbies, you name it, everyone got into the action.

I always get a little misty when I think of the manners and mores of men who lived in times of yore. The way they used cordless phones and had their friends pick up the princess-phone "extension" lines in the kitchen; the way they clacked away at their clunky desktops while staring at CRT screens. Shit, I mean, they actually had spoken-word conversations with each other! Girls were girls and men were not tied to wireless devices. Those were the days.

Anna Jane Grossman will be with us for the next few weeks, documenting life in the early aughts, and how it differs from today. The author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of ObsoleteTheBook.com, she has also written for dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post, as well as Gizmodo. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.



Michael Jackson Is Back in Glorious but Slightly Outdated 3D [Mickey]

Posted on by

I remember watching Captain Eo back in my college days, using polarized eyeglasses. At the time I was blown away by the 3D experience, which also incorporated real life effects, like lasers and fog. Now, the 17-minute film is back.

After watching 3D movies like Up!, I have my doubts about Captain Eo passing the test of time. The movie story was crappy enough back then, and its special effects have long been surpassed. But if you are a long-time or recently-converted Michael Jackson fan—and that's precisely what the Disneyland executives are banking on—you would be able to see the short for yourself on February 2010, when it opens again in Disneyland's Tomorrow Land. [Disney Parks—Thanks BigDave]



Epic 70-Minute Phantom Menace Review Justifies the Existence of The Phantom Menace [Movies]

Posted on by

You probably don't think there's any way you'd ever watch a 70-minute-long YouTube dismantling of the first horrible Star Wars prequel. And you'd be wrong, because this is one of the best things ever.

Seriously, just start watching the first one if you don't believe me. And really, are you going to argue with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof, who discovered this and said "Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making. Watch ALL of it."? I didn't think so. [YouTube via Damon Lindelof]



Video of The World’s Most Pathetic Computer Thief [Crime]

Posted on by

This guy stole $6,000 in Apple products from a small computer dealer. In the process he drove his car through the store, tripped over cords, nearly fell over tables, and had his whole pathetic burglary caught on surveillance video.

Apparently this thief grabbed all the store displays he could find, and "didn't bother to unplug any cords, so he struggled to get the monitors free." He caused so much damage during his escapade that the owner of the store stated that he would've rather "given the man cash than go through this" mess.

Geez. When someone would rather give you money than deal with the mess you leave after your burglary, it's time to find a different gig. [KSL—Thanks, Fred D!]



My Tech Buyer’s Guide from 2000 Is Pretty Hilarious [Y2k10]

Posted on by

Nine years ago, as a young tech reporter at Time Magazine, I co-wrote a buyer's guide with the latest and greatest gear known to man. Today, it sounds ridiculous.


• Creative's $500 Nomad Jukebox (pictured above), was not only "sleek"—at least when compared to a CD Walkman—but "can hold as much music as 150 CDs."


• The Extiva was a $350 DVD player from Samsung with the Nuon chip, so "you can also play videogames." Not sure which videogames we were referring to there.


• Our pick for digital camera was Nikon's twisty CoolPix 990, 3 million pixels for 1 thousand dollars.


• Gateway laptop with 12.1-in. display, 550MHz chip and a year of free AOL was "a great deal" at $1300.


• Two-way pagers from Motorola, $180 each, let you send messages back and forth, and came in "four hot colors."


• LG's Touchpoint 3000 smartish phone cost $400, combined an address book and an organizer, and had one killer app: "Tap someone's name, and it dials for you."


• The $300 Iomega HipZip took little PocketZip magnetic disks instead of flash memory so it was easier to "get with the MP3 revolution"—hooray for obscure proprietary formats that died within a year!


• Cybiko was invented a decade ago but promised to do almost more than what the Peek does today—with wireless messaging and an MP3 "attachment."


• "It's near impossible to find this killer game console—and just as hard to find good titles to play on it." The console? PlayStation 2.


• Handspring Visor Prism, the great hope of the PDA world, had a cartridge slot so that you could "turn it into a cellphone, an MP3 player, or a miniature digital camera." Only trouble was when the cartridges started costing more than the $450 PDA.

The whole list is pretty hilarious—I encourage you to pop over and read more. [Time.com]

I apologize for the crappy quality of some of the images—I had to go grab promo shots found out on the web. For some reason, Time didn't preserve our gorgeous photoshoot online. Guess they thought the internet was just a fad.



Sun-glint off Titan – A Lake?

Posted on by

A sun glint off Titan. Click for larger. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR

I know, we sort of knew there is probably lakes of methane or some similar hydrocarbons but to be able to see more evidence is pretty fun to me and I’m sure mind boggling to the Cassini mission and Titan researchers everywhere. This glint is a pretty remarkable catch. I wonder if we can repeat it sometime knowing the configuration required to see it. All things being equal I suppose it is up to the atmospheric conditions on the moon.

From the Cassini site:

This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn’s moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon’s northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere. Scientists using VIMS had confirmed the presence of liquid in Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere, in 2008.

The northern hemisphere was shrouded in darkness for nearly 15 years, but the sun began to illuminate the area again as it approached its spring equinox in August 2009. VIMS was able to detect the glint as the viewing geometry changed. Titan’s hazy atmosphere also scatters and absorbs many wavelengths of light, including most of the visible light spectrum. But the VIMS instrument enabled scientists to look for the glint in infrared wavelengths that were able to penetrate through the moon’s atmosphere. This image was created using wavelengths of light in the 5 micron range.

By comparing the new image to radar and near-infrared light images acquired from 2006 to 2008, Cassini scientists were able to correlate the reflection to the southern shoreline of a Titan lake called Kraken Mare. The sprawling Kraken Mare covers about 400,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles). The reflection appeared to come from a part of the lake around 71 degrees north latitude and 337 degrees west latitude.

It was taken on Cassini’s 59th flyby of Titan on July 8, 2009, at a distance of about 200,000 kilometers (120,000 miles). The image resolution was about 100 kilometers (60 miles) per pixel. Image processing was done at the German Aerospace Center in Berlin and the University of Arizona in Tucson.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team homepage is at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu.

Terroreidolia | Bad Astronomy

Posted on by

brillo_jesusSo this time, a guy leaves a brillo pad (for those not from the U.S., a steel wool pad with soap in it to scour pans and such) in his sink. He removes it, and what does he see?

He claims it’s Jesus.

Um. Seriously? I mean really, Jesus? In that?

He may claim that, but I think we all know who it really is.

brillo_jesus_terror

Tip o’ Karen Black’s sharpened teeth to Fark (warning: potentially inappropriate language in that thread because, duh, it’s Fark).