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This won’t appeal to those of us without children, but you’ve gotta admit the animation of this Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime app is absolutely stunning. Provided the child has an iPad, iPhone 4 or 3GS, you can read aloud to them from anywhere there’s Wi-Fi available.More »
As Kinect hacks go, this one’s not going to bowl you over with its technical complexity, but the effect of what it does is quite dramatic. One of Microsoft’s sensor-rich, camera-laden Xbox accessories has been repurposed to communicate with a Pufferfish spherical projection display — via the magic of WPF and openni — with its motion tracking algorithms serving to control the image on the giant ball. Naturally, the first thing the tweakers behind this mod thought up was a Tolkien-inspired eye that follows people around the room. Sadly, the single Kinect box isn’t enough to provide 360-degree coverage, but it’s probably just a matter of time until they splice an array of them together and creep us out completely. Video after the break.
Update: You asked for the eye of Sauron and now you’ve got it. Second video added after the break.
Kinect meets a Pufferfish display, produces wonderfully creepy all-seeing eye (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 04:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
cylonlover writes "Tired of your glasses fogging up on cold days, or of having to spit in your dive mask before putting it on? Those hassles may become a thing of the past, as researchers from Quebec City's Université Laval have developed what they claim is the world's first permanent anti-fog coating. Just one application is said to work indefinitely on eyeglasses, windshields, camera lenses, or any other transparent glass or plastic surface."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
A little over a year ago, the EU agreed to a deal with the US, called the SWIFT agreement, which said that the US could get access to EU citizens’ financial transaction data. This was so that the US could (in theory) better track down terrorists. That’s the story we’re told, anyway. There are a variety of conditions imposed on the US, such as that they have to justify their requests, the requests must be specific rather than general, and that it is limited only to people with “links to terrorist activity.” Oh yeah and any EU citizen is supposed to have the right to find out if the US accessed his or her financial data.
Apparently, an EU Parliament member decided to test this last part out and got a major runaround, in order to keep him from finding out if his data was seen by the Americans. Meanwhile, the Europol Joint Supervisory Body (JSB) complained that the requests from the US to get this kind of data have been too vague (remember, they’re required to be specific) to determine if they’re valid.
Given all of this, it appears the EU is wondering why it’s turning data over to the US at all. As the reporter Nick Farrell notes in that last link, what’s kind of amazing here is that the US has been given access to financial data of citizens of other countries, and you’d think it would be bending over backwards to keep that sort of access. Basically ignoring the very rules it agreed to seems like a good way to completely lose that access.
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Mediaqueri.es is a gallery of sites that use media queries for responsive web design. If you’re looking to give your next web project some flexibility, it’s worth trawling through the listings for inspiration.
Media queries are a feature of CSS3 that checks for certain conditions such as the user’s browser window size and screen resolution and gives the designer the ability to adapt the design to those conditions as necessary.
For instance, media queries have become a popular way of creating designs for both the desktop and mobile without creating two separate sites, or simply allowing designers to make use of extra screen real estate for those users who have it.
What are your favorite showcases of media queries in action? Tell us in the comments!
