philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Robochef, for making Chinese cuisine without shaking a heavy frypan

By rotating the wok, Robochef heats it more efficiently. So this machine can achieve lower running costs than conventional automatic cookers. Currently, two models are available: a table-top gas type and a new, integrated induction heating (IH) type. The gas type costs 898,000 yen.

See the full story here.

Tissot modeled using augmented reality

Retro iPhone case

Next time you want to be the center of attention of a party, you don’t have to whip out the latest Optimus 3D or Nintendo 3DS – just show off your iPhone 4. Wait, doesn’t everybody already have one now? They might, but we’re pretty sure they don’t have an iPhone 4 that looks like a cellphone that came straight out of the 1980s. The folks over at iwantoneofthose.com are selling the80s Retro iPhone Case that’s bound to turn some heads the next time you show it off at a party – something that’s not hard to do, since this case won’t let your iPhone 4 fit into but the baggiest of jeans. Besides encasing your iPhone 4 in a protective shell, it’ll probably ward off thieves looking for a phone to steal, though you can easily use it as a weapon if such a situation arises. The 80s Retro iPhone case is on sale for $21 here.

‘Thinking cap’ makes you better at art, math Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20031404-71.html#ixzz1DfLa4jxD

Professor Snyder told AFP that the device could come in handy "if you wanted to look at the world, just briefly, with a child's view, if you wanted to look outside the box."

Originally, the professor studied accident victims who suddenly burst out with creativity, and unusually gifted beings not dissimilar to Dustin Hoffman's character in "Rain Man."

What he discovered led him to create a device that suppresses your current knowledge bank in order to free your creative impulses.

Read the full story with video here.

Business tips from “The Demon” Gene Simmons

Gene Simmons – rocker, reality TV star and self-styled marketing genius – may be the shrewdest businessman to have donned face makeup and six-inch heels.

When you sit there to talk to somebody (in a pitch), you better learn the two most important things: learn how to speak English correctly – it’s the language of money – and learn good people skills. Learn to communicate as well as you can so people give you more money. It’s actually a profoundly simple idea.

“Never listen to any one particular piece of business advice. What that really means is you have to take successful peoples’ lives and experiences into consideration, but then you have to apply your own situation to that. Because there are no ‘10 rules’ for success.”

Read the full interview here:

Google Beats Bing at “Jeopardy!”

It may not be a serenely voiced automaton in the vein of HAL, but an old-fashioned Google search will net you the right answer to a Jeopardy!question nearly 70% of the time.

Search engine guru Stephen Wolfram conducted a test where he fed 200,000 Jeopardy! questions verbatim into various search engines:Google, Bing, Ask.com, Wikipedia, and Russia's Yandex.com. ...

According to the New York Post, Google narrowly edged out Ask.com to become the winner in the first category. Google had the correct answer in the first page results 69% of the time, Ask.com 68% of the time, and Bing 63%. Wikipedia fared dismally with a mere 23%.

Full story here.

Invisible tanks could be on battlefield within five years

Armoured vehicles will use a new technology known as "e-camouflage" which deploys a form "electronic ink" to render a vehicle "invisible".

Highly sophisticated electronic sensors attached to the tank's hull will project images of the surrounding environment back onto the outside of the vehicle enabling it to merge into the landscape and evade attack.

The electronic camouflage will enable the vehicle to blend into the surrounding countryside in much the same way that a squid uses ink to help as a disguise.

Full story here.

CPU with beer

For the gamer who just doesn't want to get out of his chair, nVidia showed a prototype desktop computer with a 5 gallon beer cooler on top at CES 2011.

Consumer Electronics Show: USC group helps shape future of entertainment

(Phil Lelyveld note: this is what I've been up to for the last few days)

Entertainment executives who can’t attend the Consumer Electronics Show can get a virtual eyeful of the technology that is shaping the industry courtesy of an innovative online project undertaken by the University of Southern California.

USC’s Entertainment Technology Center for the last three years has sent a team of multimedia reporters to Las Vegas to highlight products of interest to companies such as Disney, Sony and 20th Century Fox. The goal is to deliver in-depth, real-time product analysis to executives’ desktops before the rest of the herd gets on board.

But don’t worry, members of the public also can log in to Flickr to see a lightweight version of the industrial reportage featuring photos and profiles of products that could in the future affect their entertainment viewing habits.  They can also view more information here.

The idea behind it, explained David Wertheimer, the CEO and Executive Director of USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, is “to help studios and technology companies who are interested in where entertainment is going, how it’s changing, and distill and deliver the information to executives and people at all levels of a company.”

The team of a dozen reporters attends product launches and panel discussions, and scours the show floor for products that could capture the imagination of the ETC’s corporate membership, which also includes Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, Paramount and LucasFilm.

Company executives, Wertheimer said, may be too busy attending meetings at the show to get that information firsthand, or could still be at their desks in Los Angeles or New York.  Information delivered to executives includes product analyses, pictures and video posted to a blog, a daily email, and further information posted to Twitter and Facebook.

Products most of interest to the ETC’s reporters this year include Internet and 3D TVs, “sidecar” boxes that can deliver Internet apps or Netflix and Hulu to a TV set, and the burgeoning tablet PC industry.  Wertheimer sees apps based on Google’s Android platform as particularly noteworthy, alongside gestural interfaces.

“We’ve learned that people really value contextual information. The great thing about what we do is we don’t just report, ‘Here’s a great cool new thing.’ You can get that at other places. We supply people in the entertainment business with what products are interesting and how they can be used to shape the business.

“Over time we’ve gotten good at targeting the way we describe products and keeping it short and to the point.”