Ever want to visit the International Space Station? Now you can get a tour of the ISS in high definition. The current crew of the ISS has taken an HD camera into space and filmed a tour of the ISS. This video has been posted to YouTube, and we include a link below to it.
The New York Times has published an interactive event tracker for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. You can search for your favorite events, select them to see when they are occurring, and even save them for the next time that you visit the site. Not only that, but you can see previous events to learn who the winners were, in case you missed it.
If that is not enough for you, the New York Times will also take you inside the action with videos describing certain events. For example, using images from Google Earth, they will take you through the entire Men’s downhill run with commentary from Doug Lewis, a former Olympic downhiller. They also have videos on the controversial Luge, the Half-Pipe, and women’s figure skating.
via : 2010 Olympics Tracker
via : Inside the Action
On Februrary 11th, the Airborne Laser Testbed successfully fired its main laser to destroy a boosting ballistic missile. The ABL is a one-of-a-kind Boeing 747-400F that has been modified to shoot down a ballistic missiles during the boost phase. The ABL uses infrared sensors to detect a ballistic missile being launched. After the missile is detected, the ABL uses three low-power lasers to calculate the course of the missile, speed, aimpoint, and air turbulence. The normal turbulence that occurs in the atmosphere can distort a main laser beam. To correct for this, the ABL uses adaptive optics to correct for this. By firing a distorted laser beam, the ABL is using the atmosphere to act like the lenses on a person’s glasses to correct it. The ABL then fires the main chemical oxygen iodine laser that is mounted in the nose of the 747. The laser fires for 3 to 5 seconds which causes the missile to disintegrate. The images to the right show the ballistic missile in boost phase, the engagement from the ABL, and the missile destruction. From the news release:
At 8:44 p.m. (PST), February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.
Visit the site below to see video of the engagement.
via : Airborne Laser Testbed Successful in Lethal Intercept Experiment
ZDNet.com has a post detailing the new 3-D high definition televisions that are now making an appearance at on-line retailers like Amazon.com. The Samsung UN46C7000 is available for preorder today. It is a 46-inch, 1080p LED television with 4 HDMI inputs, 1 component input, 2 USB inputs, 1 Ethernet input, 1 PC input, and 1 optical digital audio output. From the article:
Online retailers are already posting details about the new models, which comprise the C7000 line of 240Hz LED-based LCDs. The 46-inch UN46C7000 is available for pre-order at Amazon.com for $2,599.99 with a release date of February 26. Also available on the same day is the 55-inch UN55C7000 for $3,299.99. There’s also a 40-inch set in the series, but neither Amazon nor other retailers have it available yet. The prices are nowhere near the magic $1,000 price point necessary for mainstream success, but there doesn’t seem to be a huge price premium given the prices for Samsung’s non-3D 240Hz LED sets.
via First Samsung 3D HDTVs available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
Apple is rapidly approaching their next landmark, 10 Billion songs downloaded via iTunes. They’ve placed a counter on their website and announced that the lucky downloader of that 10-billionth song will receive a $10k iTunes gift card. Robert Kosara has written some scripts to download the currently counter data at regular intervals and created some nice interactive javascript visualization on his site with the data.
The bottom part of the visualization shows the number of downloads as a blue area, and the rate of downloads as a line. The pattern in the background has an edge every six hours, so two gray and two white stripes make up one day. The top view is a circular view, with one full round around the circle representing one day. The gray wedges correspond to the gray stripes in the bottom view, plus there are additional lines for each hour to make comparison easier. The lines are color-coded by the day, so the corresponding data in both views can be identified.
No surprise to see a cyclical shape in the visualization, people download more during daylight that midnight of course, but the the circular graph is a clever way of displaying it.
See all the details, with links to download the data yourself, on his site.
via iTunes Ten Billion Song Downloads Visualization | EagerEyes.org.
At MacWorld 2010, attendance was down and Apple was nowhere to be found, but CEI was on the floor demonstrating a new version of EnSight that runs natively on Mac. David Morgenstern with ZDNet writes up his thoughts in a new story:
Just to be clear, this is not a Windows version running in Boot Camp or Parallels, and not an X Application, but a true native Mac OS X application. The relative ease of producing a native Mac version of Caedium along with the existing Windows and Linux versions demonstrates the unique cross-platform architecture embedded within Caedium from its initial conception. Caedium will become one of the few (maybe only) commercial CFD analysis tools to run as a native application on the Mac.
I can attest to Mac’s making inroads in engineering, as they offer more reliability than Windows machines and the “power” of a Linux machine, without requiring you to know how to compile a kernel.
via Engineering: The Mac is coming back | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com.
At the recent TED2010 event, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrating Microsoft’s Bing Maps research in front of the live audience. Starting with the already available aerial view, isometric view, street view and others, he then moves on to showing features in development. This starts with Flickr geo-tagged photo integration, and then moves into their “backpack camera” that enables street-view level imagery in internal spaces. Then he moves onto the most impressive new feature: Live geotagged streaming video from a location, as some of his fellow employees stream video of themselves playing at a local fish market into his browser. An interesting example of a kind of reverse-augmented reality, augmenting a computer display with live video, but very powerful.
Weta has updated their website with around 8 different breakdowns of their contributions to the visual effects of Avatar. Showing the multiple passes and plates used in the shots, they showcase not only their CG work but the motion tracking work used for the mech robots.
Peter Sciretta takes aim at the new Toy Story 3 trailer and dissects it for easter eggs and cameos, and finds an astonishing number in just the trailer! I can’t imagine what he’ll find when the full movie comes out.
The new trailer for Toy Story 3 hit the web yesterday. If you haven’t watched it yet, watch it now here! As you probably know, I’m an obsessive Pixar fanatic and love finding all of the little easter eggs that the animators/designers hide in the films. In the past we’ve taken a look at the easter eggs in Pete Docter’s Up, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E and Brad Bird’s Ratatouille. So I thought we’d take a look at the new trailer and see what easter eggs we could find (with the help of director Lee Unkrich).
From major players in previous movies (Lighting McQueen, Totoro, Ray the Science Stingray) making appearances to previous bit-players getting mainstream attention (Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear), there are dozens of little inside jokes and tributes to Pixar Fans.
VizWorld.com Got an idea for a story? Drop us a line at [email protected] or other means.
Here’s today’s Pixels:
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