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From Autoblog: Video: Translogic visits Switzerland to interview Jetman

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Translogic visits the Jetman

While we’re a little obsessed with cars here at Autoblog, our sister publication Translogic has a good habit of dispensing with terrestrial transportation entirely from time to time. This is one of those weeks, where the video crew has traveled to Switzerland – not to Geneva, but to Bex – to interview the Jetman, Yves Rossy.

Rossy is the first human to fly by means of a jet-powered wing. The Swiss pilot developed the wing over five years ago, and has since flown over the Alps, crossed the English Channel, and last year flew across the Grand Canyon.

Translogic has some great aerial footage of the Jetman, who proves to be a pretty funny interview as well. See the video belowto view all of it, in full HD.

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From Ars Technica: Holey chip! IBM drills holes into optical chip for terabit-per-second speed


IBM researchers have built a prototype optical chip that can transfer a terabit of data per second, using an innovative design requiring 48 tiny holes drilled into a standard CMOS chip, facilitating the movement of light. Much faster and more power-efficient than today’s optics, the so-called “Holey Optochip” technology could enhance the power of supercomputers.

Optical chips, which move data with light instead of electrons, are commonly used for interconnects in today’s supercomputers and can be found in IBM systems such as Power 775 and Blue Gene. Optical technology is favored over electrical for transmitting high-bandwidth data over longer distances, which is why it’s used for telecommunications networks, said IBM Optical Links Group manager Clint Schow.

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From Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now: Video: Microsoft IllumiShare Lets You Play Remotely With Physical Objects

Microsoft IllumiShare Microsoft

IllumiShare, from Microsoft Research (also responsible for holodesks), is a system to allow two people to interact with various objects remotely. It gives cooperative activities like taking notes or creating documents a physicality: You’re not typing in Google Docs, you’re actually writing with ink and paper. Or playing cards with real cards, only your partner is on the other side of the world.

The IllumiShare is really just a cool implementation of a combined projector and camera. When two of them are communicating, each one records what it sees while simultaneously beaming that video to the other IllumiShare setup and projecting what it receives from its brother. Since it uses a regular camera, you can use physical objects like a pen and paper, or cards, or dice, as shown in the video below.

The drawback is that compared to a completely digital experience, you can only control the physical objects that are actually in front of you. So no, this doesn’t allow you to reach through a wrinkle in space-time to manipulate your friends’ cards. But it looks pretty seamless and probably wouldn’t even be all that expensive to make. Microsoft hasn’t implied any release date for it, though.

[via The Atlantic]

from Popular Science – New Technology, Science News, The Future Now