[From DVICE, where the story includes additional images and a video] Contact lenses upgrade your eyes to enable true immersive VR By Evan Ackerman Jan 17, 2012 Our eyes are just not built for the future. It sucks, but it’s true. We can’t physically focus on things that are very close to us, which is why we’re not all rocking high-resolution immersive virtual reality displays built into our eyeglasses. How do we fix this problem? Simple: we upgrade our eyeballs. We’ve posted about head-mounted VR displays a lot around here, but there’s always a compromise going on: you can have…

[From Wired magazine’s Danger Zone blog] [Image: U.S. Department of Defense] Army’s Virtual Reality Plan: A Digital Doppelganger for Every Soldier By Katie Drummond January 18, 2012 The Army wants soldiers of the future to be all they can be — onscreen and off. As the military’s enthusiasm for virtual reality training continues to grow, the Army’s got a new plan to make the programs freakily immersive: National Defense magazine is reporting that the Army wants to give every soldier a digital doppelganger — a custom avatar they can use throughout their stints in the military, and in myriad virtual…

[From Gizmag] BodyWave lets you control a PC with your mind – without a headset By Kent Sutherland January 16, 2012 A bio-feedback armband called BodyWave is the first of its kind to measure brainwave activity through the body, not the scalp. Instead of an EEG headset recording a user’s concentration level, the Bodywave reads brainwaves at the arm by measuring the electric current given off by neurons firing in the brain. Bundled with an interactive software package called Play Attention, it reportedly enables interactive feedback and training towards peak mental performance. Apart from the obvious potential in sport, its…

[From Wired] Marco Tempest makes open-source magic for the 21st century By Charlie Burton 03 January 12 Magic tricks depend on secrecy. So it might seem counterintuitive that Marco Tempest — a Swiss-born magician living in New York — has gone open-source. He reveals his methods, talks to his audiences online and asks for feedback. “If someone has a good idea, I put it in my show and give credit,” says Tempest, 46. His illusions embrace screens, augmented reality, robotics and software (which he makes available to download for free), and familiar magic props. In his “magic projection” trick (pictured),…

[From Adorama; more information is available at the Tamaggo web site and in another press release here] Tamaggo 360 Creates Immersive Images It looks like an egg. It costs under $200. And it turns any scene into a 360-degree virtual reality with minimal effort. PMA@CES News By Adorama News Writer January 12, 2012 Creating a 360-degree image usually requires setting up your camera on a specialized tripod and using software and lots of time,  effort and expense. The Tamaggo 360 is claimed to be the first picture-taking device to easily create an “immersive imaging event”. It has a fully-integrated, built-in…

[From Gizmodo; more details follows in a second item below] Sharp’s 8k TV Is Like Standing in the Presence of a Wrathful God By Sam Biddle Jan 11, 2012 Sharp’s lineup of TVs has been pretty lackluster so far. Oh! Except for this 85-inch 8k television, which is made up over 33 million pixels that look so shockingly good I actually felt ill. The 8k set is a prototype, but the technology is real. Really, really real—and 16 times the resolution of 1080p. Which already looks fab. I’ve simply never looked at a thing like this before. What’s the point…

[From The Los Angeles Times] ‘Found footage’ the latest Hollywood tactic Surprise hit ‘Devil Inside’ is just the start of a fresh wave of ‘found footage’ films that play on reality. By Steven Zeitchik and Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times January 10, 2012 “The Devil Inside” was a surprise hit at the box office this weekend — a micro-budget horror film with no stars and plenty of bad reviews, the film came out of nowhere to gross $33.7 million and become the third-highest January opening in Hollywood history. But far from a novelty, “Devil Inside” is the first in a…

[From The Verge, where the story includes additional images and 0:58 minute video; more information on the Smart Goggles is here] Sensics Smart Goggles put your head in the game (hands-on pictures and video) By David Pierce on January 9, 2012 Pepcom’s the perfect place to find things you might not hear about otherwise — like Sensics’ Smart Goggles, which we got a chance to play with tonight. The Smart Goggles are basically an insanely heavy helmet containing a heads-up display that runs Android (Android 4.0, to be exact, though we’re not sure if that really matters) — it’s kind of…

[A press release from The United States Army] [Image: IED Trainer. Provincial Reconstruction Team Kapisa, currently training to deploy to Afghanistan at Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center, Ind., was the first PRT to train on a new virtual reality combat simulator designed specifically to help Soldiers.] Atterbury opens new IED simulator December 28, 2011 By Staff Sgt. Matt Scotten, Atterbury-Muscatatuck Public Affairs EDINBURGH, Ind. (Army News Service, Dec. 28, 2011) — Provincial Reconstruction Team Kapisa, who is currently training at Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center for an upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, was the first PRT to train on…

[From Business Insider] US Moves Toward Banning Photoshop In Cosmetics Ads Jim Edwards | December 16, 2011| Procter & Gamble has agreed to never again run an ad for its CoverGirl mascara because it used “enhanced post-production” and “photoshopping” to make eyelashes look thicker than they were in real life. P&G agreed to the ban even though it disclosed in the ad that the image was enhanced. The move is the latest in a series of baby steps that U.S. and international advertising regulators have taken to ban the use of Photoshop in advertising when it is misleading to consumers.…

[From Telepresence Options] Cisco Kills Umi: Home Telepresence is an Open Field January 4, 2012 | David Maldow Cisco’s Umi home telepresence solution was first introduced in October 2010. The industry was excited to see a major push for consumer videoconferencing from the tech giant, but concerned about aspects of Umi’s implementation. HPL’s Howard Lichtman provided a thorough description of the solution with his thoughts and analysis in our initial coverage of Umi. Howard immediately noted two significant issues with Cisco’s vision for this product; the cost, and lack of interoperability. In fact, Cisco’s Umi confused many industry analysts from…

[From The Huffington Post; see also Filmmaker Casey Neistat’s iPhone’s Siri vs. My Human Assistant and Conan O’Brien’s comedy feature Apple’s New Siri Commercial Cuts To The Chase] Apple’s Siri Curses At Boy, Tells Him To Shut Up The Huffington Post  Ramona Emerson Posted: 12/31/11 When it comes to the iPhone 4S’s voice-controlled personal assistant Siri, you’d better be careful what you ask for. According to the Sun, Charlie Le Quesne, 12, learned that lesson the hard way this week when he picked up a display model of the iPhone 4S at a store and asked, “How many people are…