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Google's Project Glass trackpad gets swaddled in patent protection
Remember when Sergey Brin was on The Gavin Newsom Show showing off Project Glass' right-sided physical trackpad? Today, that element of the tech was given the official thumbs-up by the US patent and trademark office. Legally-trained minds in the audience concerned about the appearance forming prior art, take it easy -- the patent was filed five days before the Google chief took to basic cable to demonstrate his pet project to the current Lt. Governor of California.
Project Glass revealed to have physical trackpad along right arm (video)
Sergey Brin has appeared on The Gavin Newsom Show on Current TV to drop a few more enticing hints about Project Glass. While showing the presenter a picture he'd taken with the AR glasses, he revealed that the prototype is controlled with a trackpad running down the right* arm. He also talked about the device's genesis in Goggle's (pun intended) X Lab, which he described as an "advanced skunkworks" where "far-out projects" are developed -- it's also the department that occupies most of his time. While the units he and his colleagues have been wearing are very rough prototypes, the Google co-founder shared his private hope that the tech will make its way to general release next year. You can catch the extract in full in the video after the break. *Right for the wearer, left for the observer. It depends entirely on your perspective.
Will Wright's 'Bar Karma' TV show formally announced
Will Wright and ex-Nickelodeon president Albie Hecht have teamed up with Current TV to create a new show -- this much we knew. Now we know what it's called: Bar Karma. According to the announcement, the series will put viewers "in control via an online application," which runs on technology created by Wright, called "Current TV's Creation Studios." Through this app, users (who register via the site) weigh in on "a rough outline" for the week's show and are able to contribute "storylines, plots and have direct communication with the production team." Viewers browse and merge ideas, voting on final proposals, before the production team turns the audience's vision into a 30-minute episode. "We will be taking our cues from the viewers, working with them and then quickly producing high quality, original content," said Hecht. "This is truly a paradigm-changing project that will showcase the creativity of the general public in shaping a television series." Bar Karma is set to premiere sometime in early 2011.
Will Wright's Current TV show shooting pilot this week
Will Wright and his Stupid Fun Club have a handful of projects in the works -- this much we know. And today, one of those projects became a bit more official: a television show for Current TV. According to a Current TV representative, Wright is working on "an original show" for the network. The pilot is being filmed this week just across the East River in Brooklyn (if you also happen to be in Manhattan). The show is presumably the not so well-guarded project that was detailed earlier this year, "The Creation Project," which reportedly relies on user-created storylines. (Wright has at least one more TV project in the pipeline.) We invite you to tell your own stories from the set photos seen in the gallery below. %Gallery-99976%
iPad inside, but what was going on outside?
We were all glued to our computers watching the latest feeds of what was happening inside at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco on January 27th, but what was going on outside? Thanks to Current TV's infoMania Tech Reporter Ben Hoffman (who was never going to get through the doors under any condition), we now know. Check out their segment below, it's worth it alone for the pestering Hoffman gave to our sister site's Editor-in-chief, Joshua Topolsky.
Resident Evil 5 blood drive captured on video, lampooned
Last week, large-hearted gamers who attended Capcom's Resident Evil 5 blood drive event in downtown Los Angeles learned a very valuable lesson -- altruism won't protect you from the slings and arrows of comedic television personalities. Ben Hoffman, a correspondant for Current TV humor-news program InfoMania, got a chance to interview a few RE5-crazed hemoglobin spillers at the event, who were largely unaware that he was surreptitiously making fun of them.As incensed as we should be at this flagrant display of disrespect, it's actually sorta funny in a Triumph the Insult Comic Dog kind of way. Judge for yourself -- you can watch the whole segment on the Current TV site.
Cinemassively: Current TV talks about A Virtual Recession
Current TV viewer and contributor, Vasilis Siskos, created this look into the virtual economy of Second Life. Curious as to whether the real life recession trickled down into the virtual world, he asked some experts, including Robert Bloomfield, of Metanomics, John Zdanowski, or Zee Linden, the CFO of Linden Lab, and Alliez Mysterio, of d'Alliez Estates. They had some interesting insight on the situation, but ultimately felt that it wouldn't be a problem, as crafty residents would find what worked better next and adapt.[Thanks, Kai!]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Found Footage: Gates vs. Jobs
This PG-13 cartoon (there is just a tad of saucy language, you have been warned) depicts an epic battle between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in iWorld. Definitely worth a watch, if only for the Finder's song.[via Buzz Patrol]
