Color
The basis of most 3D systems is to "trick" our eyes into believing that an image shown on a flat screen has three dimensions, but what if you could throw away the screen entirely! It sounds simply too far-fetched and impossible to choreograph, but that's exactly what researchers MIT's SENSEable City Lab and Aerospace Robotics and Embedded Systems Laboratory (ARES Lab) have created with Flyfire - a cloud of LED-carrying micro-helicopters controlled in synchrony to show unique animated light displays in three-dimensional space. Read More
Taking around four seconds to scan an A4-size document in B&W, this portable wand-type scanner from VuPoint Solutions is designed for copying images from books or documents with thick or fragile spines that don’t allow them to be folded back for placement on a flatbed scanner. It's also useful for scanning pages that are located a long way from your office. Read More
Rather than using e-paper technology just for displays, the research arm of Dutch technology company Philips Electronics has developed a relatively cheap, light, thin and energy efficient means of turning the whole of the surface of a device into a digital canvas. E-skin technology could be used to change the color of a mobile phone when a call comes in, alter the appearance of a kettle when the water is boiling or even be applied to wallpaper so you can redecorate your room at the flick of a switch. Read More
The world's largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, has confirmed it is to enter the e-Reader market with a device called the nook. Powered by Android 1.5 and sporting the now familiar e-Ink text display, the nook also benefits from a 3.5-inch color touchscreen interface for library browsing and book ordering. It allows wireless access to over a million eBooks, magazines and newspapers and purchases can be shared with friends. Read More
DEMO: Xerox 'Color By Words' uses simple language to get great pictures
If you’re not a graphic designer, you may have struggled in the past to get your personal photos looking their best when relying on your printer’s color adjustment settings. Complex color wheels, sliders, brightness and contrast editors, and highlight tools all look handy – until you try to use them. Xerox has devised Natural Language Color Editing technology that allows you to adjust the colors in your printed documents by accessing plain English phrases. A drop-down Color By Words menu on your computer offers phrases like: ‘Make the blues a lot more vibrant’, which will then do just that across the entire document or image. Combining words can form thousands of different phrases to deliver the results you want. You can watch the demo video below or test drive the technology for yourself via the link at the end of this story. Read More
Color matters: GreenSun Energy colored solar technology
One of the most common ways to turn the sun's energy into electricity is by persuading silicon to give up some of its electrons. But it's also quite expensive, so any innovation that helps reduce the cost of solar cell production is welcome. Researchers in Israel have come up with a cell that uses only 20% of the silicon in a standard cell yet yields similar amounts of electricity. It does this by diffusing any light that falls on its surface and sends it off to photovoltaic collector strips on each of its sides. And it doesn't even need bright sunlight to operate. Read More
The release of a new iPhone App is sure to please graphic designers, decorators and artists who work with Pantone colors. Pantone has been the industry standard in color for many years, but carrying around a Pantone book full of color palettes hasn’t always been practical. And they’re expensive books to lose, too. Pantone LLC has launched myPANTONE, a digital app for iPhones that gives designers more flexibility when choosing and working with Pantone palettes. Read More
