[From CNET’s Crave blog; a 1:43 minute video is here]    March 27, 2010 Moo-Tube: Russian cows get LCD TVs by Tim Hornyak A farm in Russia has turned its cows into TV junkies by installing high-tech LCD televisions in a barn. The farm in the Moscow region began its Farm 2.0 experiment earlier this month in an attempt to boost milk quality. The lack of open spaces and visual stimuli during winter apparently gives cows the blues, affecting milk. The farmers decided to find out whether TV can make the animals any happier.…

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog; a 4:17 minute video is here]   Monday, April 12, 2010 New Computer Interface Goes Beyond Just Touch Manual Deskterity combines a touch with the trusty pen. By Erica Naone Touch screen interfaces may be trendy in gadget design, but that doesn’t mean they do everything elegantly. The finger is simply too blunt for many tasks. A new interface, called Manual Deskterity, attempts to combine the strengths of touch interaction with the precision of a pen.…

[From MIT Media Relations; a 1:42 minute video is here]   MIT Media Lab unveils ‘Surround Vision’ New system would let TV programs spill off the screen and into the living room for immediate release: April 9, 2010 contact: Jen Hirsch – MIT News Office email: jfhirsch@mit.edu call: 617-253-1682 written by: Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Surround sound technology uses multiple speakers to extend the world of a TV show or movie beyond the edges of the screen: the audience can, in effect, hear what’s happening just off-camera. Researchers at MIT’s Media Lab have developed a system…

[From WSAZ-TV in West Virginia; the story features a 3 minute video]    Apr 7, 2010 The Future of Mine Safety Training Days after one of the worst mining disasters in U.S. history, one group is hoping to change the way coal miners get their safety training. Brad Myers HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ-TV) — Just days after 25 miners died in an apparent mine explosion in West Virginia, the push is already on to take safety training for miners to the next level. “One of the tragedies of having a disaster of this sort is to see the human suffering,” West Virginia…

[From the New York Times] TV Sports In 3-D, Masters Does Have Extra Dimension By RICHARD SANDOMIR Published: March 31, 2010 If the test footage shot recently at the Augusta National Golf Club is an authentic gauge, the Masters in 3-D will look terrific. Only a few thousand early adopters with 3-D television sets will be able to see the tournament in this manner, but they will be fortunate: one look at Augusta in 3-D will make high-definition seem obsolete.…

[From Gizmag] First advanced prototype revealed for the Australian bionic eye By Loz Blain March 31, 2010 Researchers at Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) have produced a prototype version of a bionic eye implant that could be ready to start restoring rudimentary vision to blind people as soon as 2013. The system consists of a pair of glasses with a camera built in, a processor that fits in your pocket, and an ocular implant that sits against the retina at the back of the eye and electronically stimulates the retinal neurons that send visual information to the brain. The resulting visual…

[From the Pink Tentacle blog; watch a :42 minute video here] [Pictured: Geminoid F and her human counterpart, wearing outfits by fashion designer Junko Koshino] Geminoid F: Remote-control female android 05 Apr 2010 Researchers from the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University have teamed up with robot maker Kokoro Co., Ltd. to create a realistic-looking remote-control female android that mimics the facial expressions and speech of a human operator. Modeled after a woman in her twenties, the android — called Geminoid F (the “F” stands for female) — has long black hair, soft silicone skin, and a set of lifelike teeth that…

[From The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Tweed blog] April 2, 2010 Our Math Class Was Never Like This Matthew Weathers, the Biola University faculty member whose Halloween stunt made us smile last fall, has done it again for April Fools’ [watch the 2:13 long video here]…

[From Jaunted (“The Pop Culture Travel Guide”)] Tour Pennsylvania’s Civil War Trails From Inside Google Earth April 2, 2010 at 5:05 PM | by Omri If you’ve ever wanted to tour Pennsylvania’s historic Civil War sites but can’t imagine navigating the perennially-unfinished death trap that is the Turnpike, we’ve got good news! A new project spearheaded by the Pennsylvania Tourism Office aims to deliver the state’s Civil War Trails right to your desktop, blending Google Earth technology, historical information, and incredible high-def GigaPan panoramic photos. The images are so detailed that you can literally zoom in on gravestone inscriptions, to…

There are now three ways to receive ISPR Presence News via email: Individual items (NEW): Each item is sent in a separate e-mail message, with the topic identified in the subject line. Daily digest: A single digest of News items each weekday (at 10 am EST) (the current format of ISPR Presence News) Weekly digest (NEW): A single digest of News items each Saturday (at 10 am EST) containing a list of links to the previous week’s News items To subscribe to any of these services, click here (to unsubscribe to any of them, follow the link at the bottom of…

[From Pocket-lint (“the largest independent gadget news and reviews site in the UK”)] The touchy feely future of the user-interface FUTURE WEEK: How the machines will come out and meet us in 2015 31 March 2010 12:00 GMT / By Dan Sung The user interface is big business right now. In truth, it always was, but it’s taken the mass popularisation of the iPhone to bring it the public agenda. Until then, a good interface was one which you didn’t notice. If no one mentioned it, then it was doing its job. It was allowing the user to perform the…

[From Beet.TV (“The root to the media revolution”); the story features a 2 minute interview segment] Thursday, March 25, 2010 Cisco “Live” on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” in Broadcast Debut NEW YORK — Cisco Systems, which has a big* video teleconference business with a product called TelePresence, is entering the broadcast world with the MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who is using the system to conduct remote interviews. Unlike most conventional remote interview set-ups where a guest listens to questions in a an earphone, the TelePresence system displays both participants on large screens without latency between speakers, creating a virtual face-to-face conversation…