Here’s a gift idea for the whole family. The Mattel Mindflex game uses players’ brain waves to levitate a foam ball, which can then be moved through an obstacle course. A player puts on a headset and then uses powers of concentration to raise the ball. A dial is used to move the obstacle course, requiring the player to raise and lower by alternating concentration and relaxation, causing the ball to pass over, under and through different obstacles. A jet stream of air keeps the ball afloat, but brain waves are required to initially raise and lower it. The headset works by measuring brain activity in the left frontal lobe. The instruction manual that comes with the game provides information on different techniques to both focus and relax your brain. You can get this game for about $150 on Amazon – just click here.
WarMouse has announced the release of the OOMouse, a multi-button mouse designed to be used with multi-functional applications like Adope Photoshop and Microsoft Office. The patented design of this mouse features 18 buttons and support for customization of up to 52 key commands. The mouse also has an analog joystick. The customizable key commands allow users to limit mouse movement by eliminating the need to move the mouse pointer to an on-screen button or icon to execute a command.
OOMouse comes with default profiles for 5 OpenOffice.org applications. These profiles can be customized according to individual user preferences. Default profiles for 20 other software applications and games are also provided. Up to 63 profiles can be store in the mouse’s memory at one time. The mouse will retail for $74.99 — visit the OOMouse website for more information.
ComiXology has announced the release of Marvel comics on the iPhone, available through their free Comics app. The initial release consists of 71 Marvel comics, including X-Men, Captain America, Marvel Zombies and X-23. Each issue is $2 as compared to $3 for the actual comic book versions. Read more about it at the comicXology website: www.comixology.com
The highly-anticipated Motorola DROID is schedule to be released November 6. A mysterious commercial depicts a series of UFOs crashing to earth in scenes reminiscent of old-school science fiction movies. The ad gives no hint about any of the features of the new Android phone but it definitely adds to the buzz. See the commercial in this DROID video:
Have you ever had a page of text such as an old resume or letter that you need in digital form, but your only recourse seemed to be to retype it? Now there’s an online solution called Online OCR (for “optical character recognition”) that can turn an image of a printed page into fully editable digital text. You start by uploading an image in one of the supported formats, which include JPT, PDF and TIFF. Documents up to 1 MB and 5 pages long can be converted without creating an account. If you create a free account, you can purchase credits for longer and more advanced conversions, and you can preserve the layout of your original document. Supported output formats for your converted document include Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word or Excel, HTML, RTF or TXT. You can find out more at the Online OCR website.
The Olympic medals for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic games will have a unique design and be made from an unusual material. The gold, silver and bronze medals will be made from metal salvaged from tech gadgets like keyboards, computers and televisions. A company named Teck Resources is recovering the metal from components such as circuit boards and cathode ray tubes. Several hundred medals are being produced for the games, and they will also be unusual for their design, which will feature modern Aborigine artwork and a wavy rather than flat surface. Find out more about the medals on the Vancouver 2010 website.
All Tech Considered recently reported on Tim Tate, an artist who creates reliquaries for our electronic age. Each bulb-shaped glass container is decorated with blown glass and contains a tiny working video screen that plays a video created by Tate. He had a vision for how he wanted the art piece to work, but before he could continue he worked with an optics company to create the tiny screen, which runs without a dvd player or other standard video playback mechanism. The screen has few moving parts, just an on/off switch on the bottom of the glass bulb. Tim Tate is co-founder of the washingtonglassschool.com
This month, Facebook announced that it now has 300 million users and is generating enough revenue to cover its costs. That makes Facebook the largest social networking site on the Internet. Analysts say this could lead to an initial public offering in the near future, though CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not committing to that happening anytime soon. Facebook was born in a Harvard dorm room 5 years ago and has now grown into one of the top Internet destinations, with membership tripling in the past year alone. Zuckerberg says the company is now exploring ways to boost performance and handle additional membership growth.
Orlando, Florida is home to not only Walt Disney World but to several Universal Studios theme parks. Soon it will also be home to Harry Potter and his wizard friends. According to an Associated Press report, Universal will be opening a new theme park called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at its Islands of Adventure resort. The Harry Potter park is schedule to open in Spring of 2010. Attractions will include a “Forbidden Journey” ride that will take visitors on a tour of scenes from the Harry Potters books. In addition to the audience of American Harry Potter fans, the park is planning on attracting some of the 1 million annual Orlando area visitors from the U.K.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, Plastic Logic demonstrated its ultra-thin, large-screen document and book reader. This device is large enough to display 81/2 by 11 inch documents in full-size. The company is positioning itself to compete with other eBook readers on the market, which is currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle. See the PlasticLogic eReader demo in this YouTube video:
