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Mosoro Bluetooth LE iOS accessories improve your golf, if the weather's right
So far the appcessories -- yeah we said it, APPcessories -- we've seen include some good ideas, and some less so. The Bluetooth LE 3D-Sport and Weather offerings from Mosoro fall into the former category (if they make their way into a shipping product that is). The 3D-Sport is a motion capture device you attach to sports equipment. The on-board accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer beam motion data to your iOS device, where it can be analyzed by Rocky-style Russian coaches to see where your throw or golf swing is going wrong. The latter is a mini weather station that reads temperature, humidity, elevation, and barometric pressure to tell you the conditions where you are right now. More usefully, it nabs your GPS location and uploads it all to Mosoro's aptly named "Cloud" Server that presumably maps out some crazy real-time crowdsourced weather report. Both also use Bluetooth 4.0's low energy technology so they won't need to see a charger for a long time. Now we just need a company that likes collating personal data, perhaps with a weather service, to snap this one up... any takers?
ZScape 3D holographic prints take maps to the next dimension, sans spectacles
As the video above shows, Zebra Imaging's so called ZScape prints pull off some pretty amazing 3D visual effects despite being based on old school hologram technology. These prints are made using a variety of 3D data sources -- think AutoCad and the like -- that are then rendered as thousands of holographic elements by recording laser light onto a single film-based material. The resulting images are easily viewed without glasses or spinning mirrors, and just require a run-of-the-mill halogen or LED light source to reveal 360-degree, full color representations -- akin to what a physical model might look like. Fancier versions can also be made using overlays and layering techniques to show more information. To date, over 8,000 ZScapes have already been developed for the US military, but surprisingly their prices range between $1,500 for a 12- x 18-inch version to $3,500 for the largest 2- x 3-foot size, making them relatively obtainable for those not on Defense Department tabs. If the video of Seattle pulling an Inception above didn't impress you enough, be sure to check another embedded video after the break.
Vortex entertainment system promises simulated 3D, real headaches
Australia's 3D Visual is looking to bring the wonders of 3D a little closer to home with its Vortex home entertainment system, providing an ample supply of hype to go along with it. So what exactly does this " portal into the future" consist of? Well, at the core is a fairly decent Windows XP-based PC, packing a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 processor, 2GB RAM, NVIDIA 6800 GTOC graphics card, and two generous 300GB hard drives spinning at 7,200 rpm; a projector provides the display. The 3D part of the equation comes in the form of some apparently standard issue shutter glasses -- the very same technology that's been kicking around since the days of the Sega Master System. To round out the set , 3D Visual's also seen fit to include a couple of wireless controllers and a ton pre-loaded PC games (either 90 or 150 depending on the paragraph you read), which either means that you can look at paying quite a premium for that convience (they haven't announced a price yet) or 3D Visual's going to be hearing from some dissapointed customers when they discover they've got a hard drive filled with demos. [Via Slashdot]
