[From CISCO] Duke University Extends Global Learning With Cisco TelePresence Lecture Hall Custom-Built Virtual Lecture Hall Provides Fuqua School of Business Students With Access to World’s Most Influential Leaders and Extends Classroom Environment DURHAM, N.C., and SAN JOSE, Calif. Feb. 10, 2010 — Duke University and Cisco today unveiled a first-of-its-kind virtual lecture hall for students enrolled in Duke’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, N.C.  Custom-built using Cisco TelePresenceTM technology, the new lecture facility provides business school students with access to professors, business leaders and guest lecturers located around the globe, extending the in-person classroom environment across campuses and…

[From The Washington Post] Heavy Rain, the PS3 Exclusive That’s Not a Game Matt Peckham PC World Sunday, February 14, 2010; 12:19 AM Remember the phrase “interactive movie” tossed around in the 1990s when games like Myst and The 7th Guest and Gabriel Knight were in the headlines? Heavy Rain, Sony’s PS3-exclusive noir murder-mystery, may be the first game worthy of what those words actually mean. As overused phrases go, “interactive movie” is a doozy, right up there with “virtual reality.” It’s also historically misleading. What we used to call an “interactive movie” looked nothing like an actual movie. Even the…

[From the Plastic Pals blog] Wearable Robot Hitches A Ride on Human Meat-Puppets Here’s an unusual robot project from the Tsumaki Telerobotics Laboratory (Yamagata University); a Wearable Robot. The experimental model (Telecommunicator T1) seeks to provide gestural presence that you don’t get from a cellphone conversation. A person connects to the small robot through the internet, controlling where it looks by simply tilting their head. Arm gestures, such as waving, are also possible though limited by the current hardware. Anything the robot sees is transmitted to the operator via goggles, who can speak and hear through the robot’s speaker and microphone.…

[From Wired] Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes By Chris Suellentrop January 25, Wired Feb 2010 The situation was desperate for the Denver Broncos. On the first Sunday of the National Football League’s 2009 season, with only 28 seconds left in the game, they trailed the Cincinnati Bengals 7-6. The ball was on the 13-yard line — their own 13-yard line. On second down, Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton heaved the ball downfield, only to see a Bengals defender deflect the pass away from the receiver. And then something remarkable, close to miraculous, happened. Instead of falling to…

[From Free-Press-Release.com; watch a local news segment on this topic from NBC 15 in Madison, Wisconsin here] Speed Skating “Avatar” Racers Debut at Vancouver Olympics By Bruce Winkler on February 5, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 5, 2010 — The world’s first Virtual Reality Speed Skating avatars will be unveiled by RA Sports, LLC at the Winter Olympics Pavilion in Vancouver, where, onsite participants will race virtual avatars on-line, in real time, against competitors in both Holland and London. The “skaters” will utilize new Speed Skating Simulators equipped with inertial sensors allowing them to race their on screen avatars down the track…

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog; see a 3 minute video of Siri here] Friday, February 05, 2010 An Intelligent Software Assistant Debuts By Erica Naone Last year, we selected the “intelligent software assistant” Siri as one of our top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009. Now, you can try the software out for yourself, as the app has be added to Apple’s app store. Siri, which the company’s CEO Dag Kittlaus describes as “the mother of all mashups with a big brain in the front,” tries to perform all sorts of useful tasks based on simple voice or text commands.…