Tag: WEBCAM

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... While other companies have been providing movie-streaming services for several years, Nintendo managed to get in the game this March, and now Best Buy appears finally set to jump on board, as well. The electronics distributor recently acquired the rights to the familiar and established CinemaNow name, and will initially provide ...

The legal haranguing over the Lower Merion School District's use of computer tracking software may be winding down. And, while the school administrators don't escape unscathed, a report has found no evidence of a concerted effort to "spy" on students. The report, commissioned by attorneys for the district, does find serious flaws with the school district's privacy policies, and even hammers ...

While they can have a conversation, visually impaired people miss out on the most important part -- facial expressions. But a new system could change the blind's perception. According to Popular Science, a student -- as a thesis project at Umeà University in Sweden -- has developed a potentially groundbreaking technology that uses a Web-cam and a computer to transmit a series of vibrations, ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... We've previously written about what could now be considered "antique" game consoles, along with their cartridges, fetching auction prices that put our yearly salaries to shame. Well, now some guy has sold a copy of a hard-to-find Atari game called 'Air Raid' for $31,600. Apparently the game, one of only thirteen known copies, kind ...

London-based streetwear design label Cassette Playa recently presented its Autumn/Winter 2010 collection, incorporating augmented reality software and projections into the show. The label claimed that the idea of video game avatars figured heavily into this season's concept; as the consumer dons an outfit, she essentially becomes a new character. For the show, each of the analog looks contained ...

Share The smiley emoticon, as we've already made clear, is perhaps the most annoyingly ambiguous glyph in our entire digital lexicon. Whether it pops up in texts, e-mails, or IMs, the smiley forces us to go digging for contextual clues that might tell us whether or not the person on the other side was really smiling, or if there was some ulterior, passive aggressive subtext at work. Well, now ...

Highlights from this morning's other big tech headlines.... The Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania recently attracted the attention of the nation's news media when school officials allegedly spied on students through webcams on school-issued laptops. Subpoenas have now been issued because of the incident, as federal investigators have reportedly requested a wide variety of computer ...

If accusations made by a suit filed against Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School District on behalf of Harriton High School student Blake Robbins are true, we can't imagine a single valid defense for the school system's actions. According to the court documents, Robbins was disciplined last November by assistant principle Lindy Matsko for "improper behavior in the home." As evidence of this ...

When University of Arizona student Matt Bunting was assigned a class project to build a robot, he naturally wanted to do it on the cheap. To complete the assignment, Bunting (a lifelong robot enthusiast) used spare parts from previous creations to build a spider-like bot. But the resulting "Frankenstein" garnered the student more than just an A in his engineering class. According to Fox News, ...

Sometimes, albeit rarely, what initially seems like wasting time on the Web can turn out to be anything but that. Case in point, a German woman who had only wanted to enjoy a beautiful view via a webcam recently became a long-distance lifesaver. According to the Associated Press, an unidentified woman was recently watching a live webcam broadcast of the sun setting over the North Sea when she ...

If you're like us, the words "peeping Tom" summon images of a creepy guy staring through a bedroom window. But that's lo-tech voyeurism. These days, peepers are getting more hi-tech (and scary). According to NBC DFW, a Texas woman claims that a Dell customer support agent remotely accessed her Web-cam, without her permission, while she sat in front of her laptop. Dianne Annunziato, who lives ...

Augmented reality technology has really caught fire this year, touching upon everything from movie promotions to sharpshooting games to John Mayer videos. So what's the next augmented frontier? In the immortal words of Mars Blackmon, "it's gotta be the shoes." At least that's what Adidas thinks. The company, according to Wired, is gearing up to launch a new augmented reality sneaker that ...

After a video (after the break) that demonstrates a problem with Hewlett-Packard's (HP) webcams exploded on YouTube, the manufacturer is reexamining its software while handling a PR nightmare. In a video posted on December 10th, a black male and a white female show how an HP computer's facial-tracking software fails to recognize the black man's movements. Yeah, you know where this is headed. ...

Growing up, there was no better way to ease into a good night of sleep than with Mom or Dad reading a bedtime story. But in today's fast-paced, mobile world, parents aren't always home to read to their children. According to Tech Flash, a new online service hopes to revitalize bedtime stories -- no matter how many miles might separate parents and kids. For a fee of $6.99, 'A Story Before Bed' ...

In between his hectic schedule of making beautiful women swoon with his trademark dulcet tones, and making sure that his eyes are never more than 50-percent open, John Mayer, amazingly, has found time to revolutionize online music videos. His latest single, "Heartbreak Warfare," from the album 'Battle Studies,' introduces what's being called the world's first "augmented reality music video," ...