[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog; the original post includes a 1:27 minute long video] Collaborative Augmented Reality Makes Beautiful Music With ARmonica, two players bounce virtual balls off musical note bars using Wii remotes. Kristina Grifantini 11/17/2010 Augmented reality (AR) places interactive, virtual objects and effects over the real world, and it has huge potential for gaming. Imagine wearing an AR headset to play chess with animated virtual pieces on a real chess board, or to fight computerized zombies running into your own home. For this to happen, computer scientists need to make sure players’ views and motions are…

[From Parade] [Image: Family portrait: Jeff, Joel, Marissa, and Mira with Flat Jared. [Photo: Adrianne Stewart] The Stewart family deploys a novel solution to stay close to Dad By Brad Dunn When her husband shipped out to Iraq in August 2008, Marissa Stewart knew nothing could replace Daddy for her three young children. Still, she was afraid they would start to forget about their father. How could she fill the void he left behind? Today, she points to a lifelike, life-size photo of U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Jared Stewart perched on a chair in her Seattle living room. “That bit…

[From The Design Blog] NatoStation lets you experience the life inside womb, virtually Naresh Chauhan | Nov 23 2010 Designed by Colombian designer Nelson Ayala, the “NatoStation” (NS) is a virtual reality simulator wherein the user experiences visual, acoustic and sensory sensations similar to the prenatal environment, i.e. life inside the womb. Featuring an ergonomic and dynamic egg shape, the NS lets the user assume a position comparable to the fetal position, so he/she could virtually escape the atmosphere for a moment and relax in comfort. To experience the calm seclusion, you need to wear a helmet that includes a…

[A press release from amNewYork via PR Newswire; a pdf of the paper is available here] Manhattan’s Most Widely Read and Distributed Newspaper Comes to Life on November 24th amNewYork innovates again, digitally enhancing paper with metaio’s augmented reality NEW YORK, Nov. 23, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — amNewYork, Manhattan’s most distributed daily newspaper innovates again, becoming the first U.S. newspaper to present its readers with an augmented reality feature that will breathe life into its Thanksgiving eve paper. Watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons float from the pages of the paper, check out who’s invading Gotham and get answers to the…

[From Tech2] Miss London? See It In A Record Breaking 80 Gigapixels By: Padmini Harchandrai   |   Nov 20, 2010 Talk about being an avid photographer! Whew! Here is a record breaking 360 degree panoramic view of London made from 7886 individual stills, compiled into an 80 Gigapixel photo. The entire image is 400,000 x 200,000 pixels. This panoramic photo was stitched on a Fujitsu CELSIUS workstation comprising dual 6-core CPUs, 192GB of RAM, and a 4GB graphics card. The camera was a digital SLR that used a 400 mm lens and was mounted on a robotic camera mount that seamlessly…

[From Switched] Kinect’s Second Life: 5 Awesome Hacks, from Puppets to KinectBots by Terrence O’Brien on November 20, 2010 The Kinect hasn’t exactly wowed gamers, and reviews of the add-on have been tepid at best. Still, the rather elaborate motion-controller for the Xbox 360 has found fans among the hacking community, thanks to its impressive array of cameras and sensors. Resourceful modders have hooked the device up to computers, created elaborate shadow puppets and mapped 3-D models of rooms. Read on to check out a few of our favorite Kinect hacks floating around the Web.…