[From MIT’s Technology Review] [Office bot: This telepresence robot, from Anybots, costs $15,000. Known as the QB, it has built-in obstacle avoidance that automatically prevents it from striking objects such as doorways.] Telepresence Robots Seek Office Work New models have reached the marketplace, but high initial prices keep applications limited. Thursday, August 18, 2011 By Tom Simonite Building on the trend toward remote work, two companies started shipping wheeled telepresence robots to customers this year, and other versions are launching soon. While prices are steep and sales tepid, some early adopters find that the robots offer advantages over technologies such…

[From IANS via Gulf News] [Image: Vaibhava Srinivasan’s cockpit at his home with original Boeing 727 captain seats. The chartered accountant uses the flight simulator as a way of winding down on weekends. He built the cockpit in his house after collecting equipment from all over the world.] Bust stress by conquering the sky, the virtual way Market for flight simulators growing across the world IANS Published: August 6, 2011 New Delhi: Vaibhava Srinivasan, 33, was flying a Boeing 737 aircraft over the picturesque Himalayan mountain range on his way to China, when he had to suddenly cut short his…

[From TechNewsWorld] OPINION Why Video Conferencing Sucks Understanding human interaction isn’t easy. We tend to be complex and very different. The reason we aren’t doing video conferencing calls regularly is partially because these systems don’t interoperate, but it is mostly because these systems don’t embrace the way we actually like to communicate. By Rob Enderle TechNewsWorld 08/15/11 I’ve been covering video conferencing (now often called “telepresence”) products since the late 80s and saw my first offering in the mid-60s as a child at Disneyland. Over the years, product wave after product wave has come to market with the promise of…

[From Humans Invent, where the story includes additional images] You’re fired: How gaming killed the boardroom By Ben Sillis 15th August 2011 Need to get someone out to New York for a crucial business meeting next week? It’ll cost you. At a week’s notice, a business class return trip on British Airways from Heathrow to JFK International will set your company back upwards of £3,800. As stock markets plunge, and the wait for this “bounce back” continues, that’s money few can afford – but you can’t put a value on being in the same room as a potential client. Unless…

[From SmartPlanet] Video: How ‘augmented reality’ will make boring cities beautiful By Christopher Mims | August 10, 2011 In the near future, as you stroll down the street, billboards and street signs will change to suit your interests. Ghostly arrows will float in the air, pointing you toward your destination. Buildings, vehicles, the apparel of those you pass, and the very fabric of the reality you perceive will all be as changeable as your wardrobe. That’s the vision of futurists and science fiction authors like Vernor Vinge, and increasingly, it’s the reality brought to us by ever-more-powerful mobile devices.…

[From Microsoft Research] A New Window to the Face By Douglas Gantenbein August 8, 2011 9:00 AM PT The human face is a complicated thing—powered by 52 muscles; contoured by the nose, eyebrows, and other features; and capable of an almost infinite range of expressions, from joy to anger to sorrow to puzzlement. Perhaps that is why realistic animation of the human face has been what Microsoft Research Asia scientist Xin Tong calls a “holy grail” of computer graphics. Decades of research in computer graphics have developed a number of techniques for capturing three-dimensional moving images of the human face.…

[From The Huffington Post] The Modern Meeting — Not a Place We Go, But a Thing We Do Brett Caine President, Citrix Online Posted: 8/9/11 I recently had the honor of writing the foreword for a new book, Read This Before Our Next Meeting, by Al Pittampalli, who offers a very interesting perspective on meeting culture in today’s workplace. Throughout the book, Pittampalli suggests that many of the meetings we attend throughout the day are a waste of time and prevent us from doing the real work at hand. To solve this problem, Pittampalli proposes the “Modern Meeting,” with seven…

[From The Cornell Chronicle; much more information including sample sounds are available via the links at the end] [Image: Rapid movement of heated gases generates high-frequency sounds that are an important part of the sound of fire, but computer-generated images don’t simulate those details. Cornell researchers synthesize low-frequency sounds to match the graphics, then map in the highs based on the sounds of real fire. Provided by Doug James] Computers synthesize sounds — from fire to frictional contact — to go with graphics Aug. 8, 2011 By Bill Steele Computer-generated imagery usually relies on recorded sound to complete the illusion.…

[From AP via The Houston Chronicle; a 1:08 minute video of the wedding is available here] [Image: Miguel Hanson, right, kisses his fiancee Diana Wesley by the computer Thursday, July 28, 2011, in Humble, Texas. (David J. Phillip – AP)] Computer to serve as minister at Houston wedding By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press July 29, 2011 HOUSTON — You could call it “My Big Fat Computer Geek Wedding.” When Miguel Hanson and Diana Wesley get married Saturday, they won’t stand before a gray haired minister holding a Bible. Instead, they’ll be looking at a 30-inch monitor. On one half…

[From BBC News] [Image from Citylife] Virtual people to get ID checks 28 July 2011 The faces and behaviour of online avatars could help identify the people controlling them, scientists believe. Using both characteristics, researchers hope to develop techniques for checking whether the digital characters are who they claim to be. Such information could be used in situations where login details are not visible or for law enforcement. Impersonation of avatars is expected to become a growing problem as real life and cyberspace increasingly merge.…

[From PSFK] The Aeon Project: AR & Virtual Reality In Vehicles By Emma Hutchings on August 3, 2011 Designers Michaël Harboun, Fabien Chancel and Akki Reddy Challa have been working in collaboration with Dassault Systems to explore augmented reality inside vehicles. In the future, when our cars are autonomous and can drive themselves, Harboun and his colleagues have been questioning what we’ll be doing while travelling along. The Aeon Project features three levels the user can select from the heads up display (HUD): augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual reality. So they can choose from text information, 3D integration and complete…

[From Popular Science] Video: ‘Unlimited Detail’ Graphics Tech Surfaces Again With Tantalizing New Demo Using point-cloud construction rather than polygons, the software promises digital environments that are 100,000 times more detailed than the current state of the art By Clay Dillow Posted 08.02.2011 A little more than a year ago, we wrote about an Australian hobbyist named Bruce Dell who was claiming–with video evidence to back it up–that he’d created a new graphics technology that could deliver unlimited power. That is, rather than working with a limited number of polygon shapes (restricted, of course, by computing power), a graphic environment…