[From ESPN’s The Gamer blog] [Image: Hans Smith’s Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes will be featured in “MLB 11: The Show.”] Association for Disabled Virtual Athletes debuts in ‘The Show’ By Jon Robinson Jan 24, 2011 Hans Smith pitched his way through an up-and-down rookie year for the Cardinals last season. Don’t recognize the name? That’s because Smith is a virtual athlete who spent an entire season playing as himself in “MLB 10: The Show.” But Smith is anything but your average gamer. The 25-year-old baseball fanatic suffers from cerebral palsy, making it impossible for him to play the game…

[From The New York Times; more information and a 1:13 video are available here] Appearing Virtually at a Store Near You … By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN Published: January 18, 2011 Sexy may not be the first word that comes to mind to describe Barnes & Noble, but the sex appeal of the bookseller rose considerably this week among some readers of Esquire magazine. Beginning Tuesday, Brooklyn Decker, who was voted the sexiest woman alive by Esquire readers recently and is featured on the cover of its February issue, began appearing at the stores to pose for photographs with fans.…

[From PC World] Kinect Hack Makes Robot Mimic Its Master By Elizabeth Fish, PCWorld  Jan 17, 2011 Here at GeekTech, there have been a lot of great hacks for Microsoft’s Kinect, but this robot one has to be the best. This humanoid robot has been programmed to copy your every move via the Kinect. It does this by using the Kinect (connected to a PC) to map the human body; it then sends that data to Japanese robot Website V-Sido. Thanks to the Kinect and V-Sido, the robot-to-human coordination is pretty flawless.…

[From Korea JoongAng Daily; information about the exhibition from the Museum is available here] [Image: Kang Young-min’s “Hillerova’s Faces” (2008) is part of the “Chasm in Images“ show at the Seoul Museum of Art.] Exhibition shows us spaces real and virtual January 5, 2011 In a small black box on the first floor of the Seoul Museum of Art, which is holding an exhibition called “Chasm in Images,” viewers may feel like they are in a horror movie. White screens installed here and there seem to bulge with vague human shapes, as if someone were hiding behind each of them.…

[From Computer World] Elgan: When the iPhone feels your pain Smartphones are smart, but tomorrow’s gadgets will have emotional intelligence By Mike Elgan January 17, 2011 Computerworld – We love our gadgets. But they treat us with an indifference that sometimes feels like contempt. They’re like cats. But soon, they’ll act more like dogs — perceptive of how we feel, and reacting to our moods by joining in on our elation or treading lightly when we’re angry. Such capabilities are nearly inevitable, either sooner or later, because the trajectory of interface design is always toward making machines increasingly “human-compatible,” which…

[From BusinessWest, “The Western Massachusetts Business Journal”; the web site for the Smart+Connected Communities Institute is here] ‘Smart+Connected’ Cisco Program Is Bringing the Future to Holyoke — Now Posted on 04 January 2011. Along several different social and economic fronts, Holyoke is transforming itself from an industrial center — it’s still called the Paper City — to a technology-driven hub with a major emphasis on all matters ‘green.’ One of the key drivers in this transformation is a series of pilot programs that are part of Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities initiative, which is building a framework for modern, network-driven city services.…

[From Search Engine Journal; a 0:50 minute video recorded at CES is here] The Google Earth Treadmill: A New Way to Explore the World Bob Young January 14, 2011 If you stepped out onto my balcony right now, you’d see your breath fogging up instantly. Your fingers and toes would probably go numb within a few seconds. If you spat, it might turn to an icicle before it hit the ground. It’s for this reason that I usually find myself less fit during the winter; I hate going outside when it’s this frigid, and my main method of exercise is…

[From The New York Times, which features additional images] [Image: Kora Van den Bulcke walks around her exhibit “RealTime UnReal.”] When Pictures Leap to Other Screens January 13, 2011 By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN “Why have a Museum of the Moving Image at all?” is the question that readily comes to mind before visiting the new, improved, expanded incarnation of this venerable institution in Astoria, Queens, which reopens its doors on Saturday after a $67 million face-lift that might even put Hollywood cosmeticians to shame. Yes, the fact that the Marx Brothers’ antics and Rudolph Valentino’s gaze were committed to celluloid by…

[From Wright State University Newsroom] [Image: Wright State biomedical engineering graduate students Srikar Karanam and Jenny Davis worked on the project to help make the avatars as culturally authentic as possible.] Wright State researchers to create culture-specific virtual humans for Army January 10, 2011 Jim Hannah You’re a freshly minted high school grad strolling down the street of your small Ohio hometown, giving a nod to the village barber, your former coach and the girl next door. The next thing you know, you’re a rifle-toting soldier. And the streets you’re walking are those of Afghanistan, where you encounter people who speak Pashtu…

[From New Scientist] Smart contact lenses for health and head-up displays Lenses that monitor eye health are on the way, and in-eye 3D image displays are being developed too – welcome to the world of augmented vision 10 January 2011 by Duncan Graham-Rowe Magazine issue 2794. The next time you gaze deep into someone’s eyes, you might be shocked at what you see: tiny circuits ringing their irises, their pupils dancing with pinpricks of light. These smart contact lenses aren’t intended to improve vision. Instead, they will monitor blood sugar levels in people with diabetes or look for signs of…

[From PC Magazine] iRobot’s AVA is an App-Ready Robot A new telepresence robot combines mobility smarts, location awareness and even apps. By: Lance Ulanoff 01.06.2011 LAS VEGAS–Imagine your iPad. Imagine it on a robot. Now imagine that robot is a 5-foot-tall, self-navigating bot that can use the interface and app capability of your favorite portable device to create a new kind of telepresesence automaton. Roomba manufacturer iRobot has gone beyond imagining to developing a working prototype called AVA, perhaps the first practical mobility platform.…

[From DVICE] Watch live sports from on the field with Japan’s 3D VR tech By Evan Ackerman Jan 8, 2011 For their 2022 FIFA World Cup bid, Japan promised us that they’d have 3D fields that we could watch live games on while flying around in virtual reality. Japan didn’t get the 2022 World Cup, but they’re making the technology a reality anyway, and here’s what it’s going to look like.…