[From Wired, where the story includes two videos] Ikea’s Augmented Reality Catalog Will Let You Peek Inside Furniture By Roberto Baldwin July 20, 2012 Ikea prints 211 million copies of its product catalog every year. That’s more than 20 times the population of Sweden, the home of the build-it-yourself furniture empire. These are impressive numbers for a print catalog in a digital world, but Ikea is now changing with the times with a head-first dive into augmented reality. “A lot digital stuff becomes very interesting when you mash it up with the tangible items of the real world,” said Andreas…

[From Kotaku Australia, where the post includes a 1:11 minute video; more information is available from The University of Illinois at Chicago] [Image: Individuals in the circular CAVE2 navigate 3D Mars. Image provided by Luc Renambot, UIC/EVL (data NASA & European Space Agency)] I’d Kill To Play Games On This 72-Screen, 36-Computer Virtual Reality System Luke Plunkett August 6, 2012 Later this year, the University of Illinois at Chicago will take the wraps off something it’s calling CAVE2. You, however, will most probably call it “that badass virtual reality system”. CAVE2 is big. It’s 24-feet in diameter and 8 feet…

[From The New York Times, where the story includes an additional image] [Image: A drone pilot at the base at Hancock Field, near Syracuse, working the controls of a craft flying over Afghanistan. Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times.] A Day Job Waiting for a Kill Shot a World Away By Elisabeth Bumilller July 29, 2012 HANCOCK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, N.Y. — From his computer console here in the Syracuse suburbs, Col. D. Scott Brenton remotely flies a Reaper drone that beams back hundreds of hours of live video of insurgents, his intended targets, going about their…

[From NBC News’ Cosmic Blog, where the post includes additional images] [Image: NASA / GSFC. An artist’s concept shows how a crew aboard an orbiting station could control robotic operations on Mars, ranging from real-time rover trips to rocket launches bringing shipments to the station.] Is there a virtual Mars in our future? By Alan Boyle Follow @b0yle August 1, 2012 Imagine a day when virtual reality gets so good that you could take a computer-generated walk on the Martian surface, right here on Earth. Or imagine having a space station in Martian orbit that can control robots down on…

[From AP via The Huffington Post, where the story includes a photo gallery] Artist Brings 3-D Pavement Art To Grand Canyon By Felicia Fonseca  07/16/12 FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Uninspired by modern art, Kurt Wenner set out to learn how European masters made architecture soar and figures float in ceiling frescoes. What started off as two-dimensional chalk and pastel art on the streets of Rome decades ago, mimicking what Wenner saw in Renaissance classicism, morphed into an art form of his own – one that makes objects appear to rise from or fall into the ground in three-dimensional pieces. His latest…