Comcast Is Bringing Skype to TV Soon you might be heading to the television to take a call instead of the phone. Comcast has partnered with Skype, a video-calling service that was recently purchased by Microsoft, to offer the service for TVs sometime next year. Subscribers who rent a video kit from Comcast will be able to use their TVs to make and receive calls from other Skype users — regardless of whether those people are also using a TV for the call. The kit will also come with a remote that has a keyboard to allow chat. Although Skype-enabled TVs have been available since last year, this is the first time that Skype will be available to Comcast subscribers regardless of which TV they own. Comcast hasn't yet announced what it will charge for the kit, but presumably it will be less expensive than purchasing a Skype-enabled television. "Your television is ringing" might become a new household phrase. [via Associated Press]
Robots learn to walk like a senior citizen - tech - 22 December 2010 Video: Robot moves like a senior citizen Today's humanoid robots are able to run, somersault and even dance – now comes a robot that walks like a senior citizen. It leans on objects in its environment for support to help it move around and complete tasks. Robots, and more importantly roboticists, are looking at objects in the wrong way, thinks Sébastien Lengagne of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba. "Roboticists usually just see objects as obstacles to be avoided," he says "But they can help us." Lengagne and his colleagues are developing a system to allow humanoid robots to use their entire bodies, and any surrounding objects, to help them move around cluttered environments and complete complex balancing tasks without getting stuck or falling over. "If I ask you to look below your desktop, you will put your hand on the desktop for support," he says. The team's robot, HRP-2, acts more like a human. Sidlebot More From New Scientist
www.readwriteweb.com/archives/code-free_augmented_reality_in_under_5_minutes_video.php Augmented reality guru Bruce Sterling shared a fascinating video on his Wired.com blog Beyond the Beyond today that shows a developer building an AR application without any programming language in just shy of five minutes. Using the Mac-based visual design app Quartz Composer and few additional plugins, the developer (apparently a Russian named Vladmir, according to his YouTube account) quickly assembles the application using Quartz's visual Yahoo Pipes-like interface. The video embedded above is pretty easy to follow despite being a screencast of a complex design application. The developer simply drags and drops a few elements onto the screen to initialize the video input device, recognize a marker, and incorporate a 3D model of a teapot. The experience itself is not the impressive thing - fans of AR have seen webcams place objects on black and white makers for a while now.
Flying Car Gets Green Light From Feds Flying car company Terrafugia, whose website conveniently includes a pronunciation guide (say it with me: “Terra-FOO-gee-ah”), has announced that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has granted the company specific exceptions regarding their Transition vehicle. The Transition aims to fulfill the dream that we’ve been promised since the earliest days of prognostication: The flying car. Unlike other projects like the Skycar, the Transition is meant to function as both a street-legal car and a light aircraft. The idea is that you could drive it from your home, right onto the airfield, and take off. But to balance the requirements of the stresses of flight, the Transition needed heavy duty tires and a heavy-duty polycarbonate windscreen. For Terrafugia, receiving these exceptions is a great accomplishment but it is by no means the last hurdle for the Transition. (Terrafugia via Geeks are Sexy)
Someday, This Robot Will Run Faster Than Us All