[From VentureBeat; see also coverage by Gigaom] Virtual reality has another ‘wow’ moment as Jaunt introduces 360-degree cinematic videos April 3, 2014 Dean Takahashi I was alone in a room wearing virtual reality goggles. But it felt like I was in a park, surrounded by four Shaolin monks who were threatening me on all sides with martial arts moves. This kind of surround-video experience is what you’ll get from Jaunt, a new entertainment startup coming out of stealth today. On top of announcing a funding round, Jaunt is unveiling for the first time its new way to experience 360-degree videos in…

[From Wired, where the story includes 2 videos] An Oculus Rift Hack That Lets You Draw in 3-D By Joseph Flaherty 04.02.14 Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift has reopened conversation about the potential of virtual reality, but a key question remains: How will we actually interact with these worlds? Minecraft creator Markus Persson noted that while these tools can enable amazing experiences, moving around and creating in them is far from a solved problem. A group of Royal College of Art students–Guillaume Couche, Daniela Paredes Fuentes, Pierre Paslier, and Oluwaseyi Sosanya–has developed a tool called GravitySketch that starts…

[Here are a few presence-related highlights of 2014 April Fools jokes from the web; if you spot others, please post links in the comments…!  –Matthew ] 1. RAZER Razer introduces Eidolon: The world’s first wearable drone system. Play life in the third person: A true out-of-body experience.…

[When effective, this should evoke inverse presence; the post is from designboom, where you’ll find many more photos of the art] Giant Photoshop eraser sticks to London streets Guus & Tayfun March 21, 2014 Two creatives behind the ‘street eraser‘ blog are merging the digital world with the analog, sticking their adobe-inspired art throughout London’s urban fabric. The giant playful labels illustrate the familiar grey and white checkerboard pattern, visible when using the eraser tool in Photoshop. Eliminating graffitti from traffic signs, color from mailboxes and portions of billboards, the intervention seemingly reveals a concealed world beneath our own.…