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Magician Makes a Bird Fly Out of an iPad, Muppets Used to Train IBM Staff

by Matthew Zuras on June 2, 2010 at 07:30 PM

iPad Joins Magician
There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web.
  • Uchida Shinya, also known as the Salary Magician, decided to enliven his street act outside an Apple Store with the aid of an iPad. With showman's choreography and some kind of slideshow, Shinya makes smoke and a bird fly from his tablet. What's even more priceless is the dude behind him, completely ignoring the "magical and revolutionary" show. [From: DVICE]
  • People complain about celebrities shilling for mega-corporations all the time. Shameless product placement in Lady Gaga videos! Verizon ads own '30 Rock'! But the nefarious relationship between commerce and culture goes further back, like when Jim Henson teamed with IBM back in the late 1960s to have his then-unknown Muppets lead instruction videos for the tech giant's sales team. [From: Technologizer]
  • Designers Clara Gaggero, Adrian Westaway and Jaako Tuomivara think that learning how to use a cell phone is hard. That's why they came up with the Out of the Box Concept, a book with a die-cut hole for your phone that leads you through step-by-step instructions on each page. We can't really tell if this is good design or not, but it sure seems like a waste of paper. [From: PSFK]
  • Feng-GUI, "a group of artificial vision scientists and interactive designers," were so in love with 'Iron Man 2' that they decided to whip up their own rig to simulate Tony Stark's flights through the atmosphere. A crane, a hang-glider harness, one giant fan and VR goggles were all that were necessary to transform them from mere mortals to proto-superheroes. [From: Geekosystem]

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Tags: bestoftherest, feng-gui, ibm, ipad, iron man, iron man 2, IronMan, IronMan2, jim henson, JimHenson, magic, muppets, out of the box, OutOfTheBox, salary magician, SalaryMagician, top, uchida shinya, UchidaShinya

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