[From Discovery News] What Does Your Avatar Say About You?  Analysis by David Teeghman Thu Jul 29, 2010 The website Second Life lets users create a completely new identity in virtual reality. Tall people can become short and animals can pretend to be humans, because on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. But even with the range of possibilities to completely change your online personality and become all you ever dreamed of, you won’t. Researchers at Concordia University in Canada report in the journal Psychology and Marketing that online avatars usually reflect the personality of their creators.…

[From The Montreal Gazette] Age now, save more for later By DOROTHY LIPOVENKO, Freelance Shortly before the Great Bull Market of the 1990s topped out, advance warning came of a most unusual birthday gift. A television makeup artist with a deft hand for special effects agreed to sit me in her chair, dip into her pots of magic, and “age” me. Turns out a sneak preview of version 70.0 is more prescient than anyone could have imagined. New research suggests that showing someone how they’ll look when they’re old (through digital tinkering of the face) can add up to extra…

[From CNN] The robot that visits your cubicle By John D. Sutter, CNN July 30, 2010 (CNN) — When Trevor Blackwell, CEO of a company called Anybots, wants to know what his employees are up to, he sends a robot to their cubicles. “I can see if people are busy on something — and then won’t interrupt them,” he said this week. “Or, you know, if they’re doing something that looks interesting, or if they look stuck, I’ll have a conversation with them.” This isn’t your standard “Office Space” conversation. Blackwell boots up a “telepresence robot” — which looks like…

[From Christopher Mims’ Mims’s Bits blog at MIT’s Technology Review] Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Adding Temperature to Human-Computer Interaction An experimental new game controller adds the sensation of hot and cold to users’ experience of a simulated environment Touch interfaces and haptic feedback are already a part of how we interact with computers, in the form of iPads, rumbling video game controllers and even three-dimensional joysticks. As the range of interactions with digital environments expands, it’s logical to ask what’s next: Smell-o-vision has been on the horizon for something like 50 years, but there’s a dark horse stalking this race: thermoelectrics.…

[From DigInfo TV; a 1:35 minute video is available here] Head-mounted Mobile Video Communication System 28 July 2010 At Wireless Japan 2010, the Nakajima Laboratory at the University of Electro-Communications exhibited a mobile videophone that enables truly effective communication, using a head-mounted display and various sensors. “We think that a weakness of ordinary videophones is, they don’t let people make eye contact. That’s a big defect in terms of effective communication. We’ve created something that overcomes that defect.” This system has acceleration and position sensors built into a head-mounted display. A microcomputer detects the vertical and horizontal motion of the…

[From TechNewsDaily; more information is available here]   Real Cookies Butt Heads With Virtual Ones By Stuart Fox, TechNewsDaily Staff Writer 28 July 2010 LOS ANGELES — Between the crunch, the buttery feel in your mouth and the rich taste, cookies seem pretty perfect already. But they’re not quite perfect enough for Takuji Narumi of Tokyo University. Here at the SIGGRAPH computer animation and interactive technology conference, Takuji and his team unveiled their Meta Cookie system, which uses virtual reality to try to control the flavor of a cookie. The Meta Cookie system takes advantage of a principle that any…

[From Coolest Gadgets; more information and a 0:38 minute video are available at Helium and Japan Trend Shop] ChouChou Electric Butterfly by Mark R [July 28, 2010] I saw this the other day, and I’m not certain why I didn’t report on it then. Normally, I’m all over the cool robot gadgets. I then watched the video […]. Not to be a spoiler, but it features a butterfly in a jar. If you’ve ever put a butterfly in a jar, then you know how it moves when you strike the top. That is what you will see in this video, except…

[From The Philadelphia Inquirer] Posted on Tue, Jul. 27, 2010 Second Life avatars give disabled at Inglis House new experiences By Carolyn Davis Inquirer Staff Writer In the blockbuster movie Avatar, lead character Jake Sully, a paralyzed military veteran, wakes up in a virtual body to find that he can stand and run and dig his toes into the earth, which he does with animated abandon. “This is great,” Sully says as he disconnects himself from medical equipment and stumbles out of a laboratory. It is great – and not just for Jake. The ability to create a cyber version…

[From Inside HigherEd] The Human Element March 29, 2010 Douglas E. Hersh’s close crop of auburn hair and neatly trimmed goatee are clearly visible in an expandable window on my desktop. So are his light tweed blazer and matching tie. On a table behind his desk sits a purple orchid, lending color to his office — 2,600 miles away from mine. The technology that allows me to see Hersh’s face as he speaks to me is not new. But Hersh, dean of educational programs and technology at Santa Barbara City College, believes it may hold the key to solving an…

[From Network World] Cisco TelePresence used for virtual dance rehearsal Connects dancers in Shanghai and New York By Anuradha Shukla, MIS Asia July 07, 2010 Young dancers in Shanghai and New York are preparing for a National Dance Institute production by leveraging Cisco TelePresence. National Dance Institute is a not-for-profit organisation that uses arts to engage children and motivate them towards excellence. The performers are using the technology to prepare for the production before they meet face-to-face. Smart connected life For the rehearsal, the dancers from Shanghai Children’s Palace and the choreography team leveraged the Cisco TelePresence suite in the…

[From designboom; more information and a 2:13 minute video are here] Jinha Lee: Beyond  While touchscreen devices are more ubiquitous than ever, really only allow users to draw in two dimensions. Beyond is a concept that allows users to sketch in three dimensions of an interactive surface developed by Jinha Lee and Hiroshi Ishii of the MIT Media Lab. The system utilizes a collapsible input device for direct 3d manipulation. The small pen-like tool collapses into the digital world when pressed against the screen, giving the illusion that it is inside the virtual space. By moving the pen around the…

[From Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York] [Image: A medical student from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is shown testing the new haptically-enhanced virtual surgery simulator.] Designing Touch-Sensitive Virtual Reality Tools To Train and Test Tomorrow’s Surgeons Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Researchers Receive $2.3 Million NIH Grant To Develop and Validate Virtual Reality Hardware, Software for Training and Certifying Laparoscopic Surgeons Published July 15, 2010 Minimally invasive surgery is increasingly common and effective for operating inside the human abdomen. In these laparoscopic procedures, which use slender, handheld tools inserted into the body of the patient, the skill of the…