[From The New York Times]   July 4, 2010 Discovering a Soft Spot for Circuitry By AMY HARMON Nothing Eileen Oldaker tried could calm her mother when she called from the nursing home, disoriented and distressed in what was likely the early stages of dementia. So Ms. Oldaker hung up, dialed the nurses’ station and begged them to get Paro. Paro is a robot modeled after a baby harp seal. It trills and paddles when petted, blinks when the lights go up, opens its eyes at loud noises and yelps when handled roughly or held upside down. Two microprocessors under…

[From The New York Times Bats blog]   July 11, 2010, 9:00 pm Get Ready for Baseball in 3-D By RICHARD SANDOMIR Baseball would seem to be difficult to portray in 3-D. With cameras for baseball production positioned far away — from center field and high above home plate — and a baseball field lacking interesting contours, the likelihood of 3-D cameras providing impressive depth perception did not appear to be high Saturday and Sunday when the YES Network carried the Yankees-Mariners games. The productions were done in conjunction with DirecTV and FSN Northwest. But once a fiber problem from…

[From The Wall Street Journal via LiveMint] Posted: Thu, Jun 17 2010 Thy hand, great doctor Created at its second global headquarters, in Bangalore, a tech giant’s flawless illusion takes doctors to places where they are not. Welcome to the next Internet By Seema Singh Bangalore: Outside, in the lobby, the flags of several countries seek to signify the boundary-less nature of the work that goes on here. Inside, true-to-life TelePresence (a video conference on steroids kind of thing) screens emphasize this point further, and create a flawless illusion of being where one is not. This is Cisco Systems Inc.’s…

[From The Boston Globe; the web story includes a 1:04 minute video] You, robot Nashua start-up hopes to revolutionize meetings at work by untethering video equipment from the conference room By Scott Kirsner, Globe Columnist Sitting in his cubicle in Nashua, Tim Root clicks his mouse a few times to steer a tall, white robot around a corner and through the doorway of a conference room. Root’s face is visible on a small screen where you’d expect the robot’s head to be. He says hello, and joins a meeting in progress. Both Root’s cubicle and the conference room are inside…

[From ReadWriteWeb’s Guest Author blog] [Image: “Future computers” – Natalie, Age 10] The Future of Tech According to Kids: Immersive, Intuitive and Surprisingly Down-to-Earth Written by Kim Gaskins / July 7, 2010 If we were to ask you to name one thing you wish your computer (or another Web-enabled device) could do, but doesn’t now, what would you say? How about the ability to “touch the things that are in the screen, to feel and move them.” That’s what 7-year-old Daniela* wants. Matthew, 6, wishes he could play 3D games on his computer, and Jenna, 7, would like a solar-powered laptop.…

[From MSNBC’s Cosmic Log blog] 3-D pictures writ in water “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.” It’s been 33 years since Princess Leia’s tiny hologram made that 3-D plea in the “Star Wars” saga – and ever since, researchers have been working on image projection systems that could turn that science-fiction special effect into reality. Today, Carnegie Mellon University is highlighting a projection system called AquaLux 3D that takes one more small step toward that virtual-reality dream – but the system is just one of many approaches that’s being tried.…