[From NewsOK] Kayakers head indoors U.S. Championship Machines will simulate rowing BY ED GODFREY The Oklahoman Published: February 19, 2010 Oklahoma City will be the site Saturday for the first U.S. Indoor Kayak Championship at the Cox Convention Center. About 40 top kayakers from as far away as Washington and Hawaii will be competing in the inaugural event. The Cox Center will not have an indoor water course. Instead, the kayakers will be paddling in virtual reality.…

[From the University of Alabama’s UAB Reporter Online] Visualization cube offers infinite educational possibilities Posted by Traci Bratton on 2/18/2010 12:55:00 PM Imagine if a recent amputee could learn to ski without risking serious injury. Or a bomb squad could disarm explosive devices with no risk of casualties. Or doctors could perform flawless surgical procedures before they ever touch a patient. The Enabling Technology Laboratory in the UAB School of Engineering is such a place — a virtual-reality environment that can be used for a host of creative applications. This “visualization cube” is the latest expansion of the school’s computer…

[From MIT News] Feeling the way Robotic device developed in MIT’s Touch Lab can help visually impaired people navigate around a virtual model of a real building. Anne Trafton, MIT News Office November 23, 2009 For many people, it has become routine to go online to check out a map before traveling to a new place. But for blind people, Google maps and other visual mapping applications are of little use. Now, a unique device developed at MIT could give the visually impaired the same kind of benefit that sighted people get from online maps. The BlindAid system, developed in…

[From Aggie Town Square (“Utah State University’s Meeting Place”)] Aggies use virtual-reality programs for research by Jesse Fowers January 27, 2010 Several researchers at USU are collaborating with Intel Labs to conduct their research in a 3-D virtual environment. Biology doctoral student Arron Duffy is using ScienceSim, a “virtual land-grant” program offered by Intel, to model how population genetics are affected by the unique life cycles of fern plants. Intel hosts hundreds of virtual acres of land on its powerful servers through a Web application called OpenSim, which is an open-source version of the popular social media video game “Second Life.”…

[From CISCO] Duke University Extends Global Learning With Cisco TelePresence Lecture Hall Custom-Built Virtual Lecture Hall Provides Fuqua School of Business Students With Access to World’s Most Influential Leaders and Extends Classroom Environment DURHAM, N.C., and SAN JOSE, Calif. Feb. 10, 2010 — Duke University and Cisco today unveiled a first-of-its-kind virtual lecture hall for students enrolled in Duke’s Fuqua School of Business in Durham, N.C.  Custom-built using Cisco TelePresenceTM technology, the new lecture facility provides business school students with access to professors, business leaders and guest lecturers located around the globe, extending the in-person classroom environment across campuses and…

[From The Washington Post] Heavy Rain, the PS3 Exclusive That’s Not a Game Matt Peckham PC World Sunday, February 14, 2010; 12:19 AM Remember the phrase “interactive movie” tossed around in the 1990s when games like Myst and The 7th Guest and Gabriel Knight were in the headlines? Heavy Rain, Sony’s PS3-exclusive noir murder-mystery, may be the first game worthy of what those words actually mean. As overused phrases go, “interactive movie” is a doozy, right up there with “virtual reality.” It’s also historically misleading. What we used to call an “interactive movie” looked nothing like an actual movie. Even the…

[From the Plastic Pals blog] Wearable Robot Hitches A Ride on Human Meat-Puppets Here’s an unusual robot project from the Tsumaki Telerobotics Laboratory (Yamagata University); a Wearable Robot. The experimental model (Telecommunicator T1) seeks to provide gestural presence that you don’t get from a cellphone conversation. A person connects to the small robot through the internet, controlling where it looks by simply tilting their head. Arm gestures, such as waving, are also possible though limited by the current hardware. Anything the robot sees is transmitted to the operator via goggles, who can speak and hear through the robot’s speaker and microphone.…

[From Wired] Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes By Chris Suellentrop January 25, Wired Feb 2010 The situation was desperate for the Denver Broncos. On the first Sunday of the National Football League’s 2009 season, with only 28 seconds left in the game, they trailed the Cincinnati Bengals 7-6. The ball was on the 13-yard line — their own 13-yard line. On second down, Broncos quarterback Kyle Orton heaved the ball downfield, only to see a Bengals defender deflect the pass away from the receiver. And then something remarkable, close to miraculous, happened. Instead of falling to…

[From Free-Press-Release.com; watch a local news segment on this topic from NBC 15 in Madison, Wisconsin here] Speed Skating “Avatar” Racers Debut at Vancouver Olympics By Bruce Winkler on February 5, 2010 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 5, 2010 — The world’s first Virtual Reality Speed Skating avatars will be unveiled by RA Sports, LLC at the Winter Olympics Pavilion in Vancouver, where, onsite participants will race virtual avatars on-line, in real time, against competitors in both Holland and London. The “skaters” will utilize new Speed Skating Simulators equipped with inertial sensors allowing them to race their on screen avatars down the track…

[From MIT’s Technology Review Editors blog; see a 3 minute video of Siri here] Friday, February 05, 2010 An Intelligent Software Assistant Debuts By Erica Naone Last year, we selected the “intelligent software assistant” Siri as one of our top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2009. Now, you can try the software out for yourself, as the app has be added to Apple’s app store. Siri, which the company’s CEO Dag Kittlaus describes as “the mother of all mashups with a big brain in the front,” tries to perform all sorts of useful tasks based on simple voice or text commands.…

[From the News section of the ABBAWORLD web site] 25 January 2010 Dreams Come True at ABBAWORLD – Perform Live with ABBA on Stage! In what promises to be one of the most exciting and spectacular features of the upcoming ABBAWORLD exhibition, the audience will be able to sing and dance together with the Swedish supergroup ABBA on stage. With the high definition holographic video system Eyeliner, ABBA returns to the stage through a holographic illusion of the group for the visitor to interact with. Senior director of production Mats Daleskog of Touring Exhibitions, the company behind ABBAWORLD, says, ‘‘We were…