[From ABC News, where the story includes videos and other materials] For Watson Technology, What Happens After ‘Jeopardy!’? IBM’s Supercomputer Has Implications for Healthcare, Information Tech and More By KI MAE HEUSSNER Feb. 9, 2011 Wouldn’t it be nice to have your very own supercomputer in your pocket? If your laptop crashed while you were working on a major presentation, you could ask your portable expert to help diagnose the problem. If you wanted to bone up on Middle Eastern history, you could ask it to comb every document available and then wrap it all up in a simple summary…

[From USA Today; details and videos from Google are available here; an interview with one of the project creators is here; and a detailed review is available here] Google Art Project: Virtual museum tours, in one handy spot By Whitney Matheson, USA TODAY Feb 08, 2011 This morning I visited Washington’s Freer Gallery of Art, the Tate in London and Amsterdam’s van Gogh Museum. And man, are my fingertips tired. The Google Art Project is an idea that’s long overdue: Head to the website, and you can virtually visit 17 museums around the world (for free, of course).…

[From Purdue University’s News Service] [Image: Purdue industrial engineering graduate student Mithun Jacob uses a prototype robotic scrub nurse with graduate student Yu-Ting Li. Researchers are developing a system that recognizes hand gestures to control the robot or tell a computer to display medical images of the patient during an operation. (Purdue University photo/Mark Simons)] Future surgeons may use robotic nurse, ‘gesture recognition’ February 3, 2011 WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Surgeons of the future might use a system that recognizes hand gestures as commands to control a robotic scrub nurse or tell a computer to display medical images of the…

[From MuseumNext] Augmented Reality in the Museum Posted January 31st, 2011 In October 2010, a pair of somewhat mischievous new media artists staged a wholly 21st century intervention at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It involved placing numerous extra artworks in the galleries and introducing a whole new floor – the seventh – at the top of the MoMA building. And all this without the institution’s permission or knowledge (at least at first). If you haven’t guessed already, this seemingly impossible ruse was achieved using augmented reality (AR), the overlay of digital elements on a live view…

[From NPR’s The Two-Way blog, which also features a 4:28 minute audio story and a 1:03 video] Meet John and Julie: Holograms Beamed Into The Manchester Airport February 3, 2011 by Erin Killian Apparently people who fly from Manchester, England, often forget to throw away their liquids. Since 2006, when the policy that required travelers to ditch their liquids went into effect, staff at the Manchester airport has tried all sorts of mechanisms to get people to comply. “We’ve tried a number of things, from posters to leaflets, from real staff being there to remind people,” Russell Craig, spokesman for the…

[From the MIT Technology Review blog Mim’s Bits; more information on this and related work is available here] How Babies Know What Robots Are Thinking New research tells us something about infants’ theory of mind, as well as how to build robots humans instinctively recognize as sentient Christopher Mims 02/02/2011 Computer scientists don’t usually see their labs filling up with dozens of mothers and their infants, but that’s exactly what happened to Rajesh Rao as he embarked on one of his most recent experiments. In order to discover what it takes to make an infant engage with a robot as…

[From PCWorld’s Geek Tech blog; the 1:55 minute video is here] No-Glasses 3D Tech Makes You Blink Really Fast By James Mulroy, PCWorld    Jan 15, 2011 No-glasses 3D isn’t really new, but it has plenty of limitations, like the fact that you either have to be within a certain viewing angle to see it, or it may not be entirely safe for kids. If only there was a way to get glasses-free 3D without forcing you to wear glasses. Hmm… Enter this video, created by Jonathan Post, which shows an, um, entirely new way to do 3D without glasses.…

[A press release from IBM; a 3:27 minute video is available here] IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years ARMONK, NY – 27 Dec 2010: Today IBM (NYSE: IBM) formally unveiled the fifth annual “Next Five in Five” – a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years: You’ll beam up your friends in 3-D Batteries will breathe air to power our devices You won’t need to be a scientist to save the planet Your commute will be personalized Computers…

[From OpEdNews.com] January 27, 2011 Game-Changing Narratives, Or: How Social Media is Changing Reality By Bud Goodall (about the author) Lately there has been a convergence of news narratives that coalesce into a series of otherwise disparate nouns: reality, gaming, social media, Tunisia, avatar envy, emotion, college-students-aren’t-learning-anything, the Internet, and revolution. For academics studying communication, the merger of these nouns spells good times, fascinating times, times that promise cool science and thought-provoking essays. For entrepreneurs, they provide investment opportunities. For the world beyond the academy and entrepreneurs, however, this new series of nouns creates life possibilities that are at once…

[A press release from The Media Development Authority of Singapore] New S$23 million research centre by NTU, ETH Zurich and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill will make virtual communication a reality This Singapore-Swiss-American partnership that spans three continents will revolutionise human communication in the 21st century Singapore, 26 January 2010 – Need to have a conference with others thousands of kilometres away? A glass-walled room lets all parties interact as if you were all together at one location. Can’t be physically present for a meeting? Send your avatar which will take on your appearance as well as gestures and even give…

[From The Nevada Appeal; a detailed article about Brock Enright’s “Videogames Adventure Services” is available in The New York Times here] [Larger image available here] Opinion Wednesday, January 26, 2011 Living on the edge of virtual reality By Ursula Carlson For the Nevada Appeal I like the words “virtual reality” because they suggest an alternate world, one that is not real, but that seems almost real. To me it’s like the world we encounter whenever we read a novel, watch a movie, recall scenes from the past or imagine scenes that might occur in the future. But this is not the way…

[From The Denver Business Journal; more information including a 3:09 minute video is available here] [Image: A demonstration of what an engineer sees inside Lockheed Martin’s Collaborative Human Immersive Laboratory] Inside Lockheed Martin’s out-of-this-world virtual-reality lab Denver Business Journal – by Greg Avery Date: Monday, January 24, 2011 – Last Modified: Tuesday, January 25, 2011 The newest advance at Colorado’s Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co. campus isn’t as out-of-this-world as some of what’s made there, but it’s not exactly of this world, either. The Littleton-based division of Lockheed Martin Corp., the Bethesda, Md.-based defense and aerospace giant, this week publicly…