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Night of the Living Dead gets textual reinterpretation
While we highly doubt producers would allow movie goers to actually dictate the dialogue in their films with in-movie text messages, a demonstration of such hilarity was recently shown at the Wired NextFest. Essentially, the original Night of the Living Dead was broken down to "500 frames that visually told the story from beginning to end." Participants were encouraged to send in texts, which showed up in the order that they were received in specified speech bubbles throughout the film. Granted, this whole process sinks in much better if you see it in action, so be sure to click on through to catch a videoed demonstration.[Thanks, blahblah]
The bicycle-powered supercomputer
In an attempt to illustrate the low power requirements of its latest Linux-based supercomputer, a company called SiCortex put together a demonstration showing the massive number-cruncher performing billions of calculations per-second while a team of between eight to ten bicyclists pedaled to keep it going. The NextFest presentation was a ploy to showcase the small power consumption of the new machine, and to point out that energy conservation for both system power and cooling are major issues facing manufacturers and end-users. As the custom Trek bikes churned out 260-watts of power each, Dr. John Mucci -- the company's CEO -- said, "Ten years ago, this analysis was impossible on even the biggest computers, and now it's being done on a bicycle powered machine," then added, "Ten years from now, we'll probably be doing it right down at the docks as they unload the ships." Which sounds kind of weird, but isn't.[Via I4U]
HD video: Robots, robots, robots (and other stuff) at Nextfest 2007
You saw the Nextfest 2007 gallery, now see the video. In our highlights reel we've got (in order): Keepon dancing Multi-touch Collaboration Wall by Perceptive Pixel FT by Kyoto University Atlas Devices rope ascender Outerspace by Andre Stubbe and Markus Lerner (Berlin University of the Arts) Albert Hubo "dances" to Yeah! by Usher + Lil Jon + Luda Recon Scout by Recon Robotics Kiyomori samuraibot by TMSUK Laptop_Orchestra by LIMITEAZERO Will the real Zou Ren Ti please stand up? Bipedal transport by Waseda University, TMSUK Shadow dextrous hand by Shadow Robot Co. E-TAF automatic door by Tanaka Seisakusho Morpho Towers by Sachiko Kodama (EUC), with Yasushi Miyajima (Sony CSL) The embedded player is after the break, download links are below. We dare you not to get robot fever.[MP4] Download in HD (490MB)[MP4] Download in wide VGA (165MB)[AVI] Download in HD (498MB)[AVI] Download in wide VGA (137MB)
