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Archive for December 19th, 2010
Short Movie: Helios
Another delightful short movie. This one’s an artistic, futuristic and trippy rendering of the discoveries of Galileo Galilei. Featuring overwhelming geometric visuals and nice ambient music. Really cool.
The date is 1609, Italy, late night at Galileo Galilei’s workplace watching the sky, studying celestial bodies focusing on the moon. He prepares to see this unexplored world with his customized telescope while some of his sketches and notes rest on the floor. After a gentle approach to the telescope, he sees the moon through it, a celestial body full of enigmas and intriguing for any human eye. After a moment, a bright light invades his scene but he does not notice it. This light resembles the silhouette of the invention, this enigmatic form splits into three muses.
Helios – short film from Juan Behrens on Vimeo.
Word Lens: Augmented Reality App Translates Text
I’m not a big Apple, iPhone or gadget slave, but augmented reality definitely holds potential. This new iPhone app is pretty brilliant, for example: it translates words and text it sees on the screen immediately, and does so in the same font style and lay-out as the original text. One step further into a Star Trek world.
Word Lens for the iPhone is one of the most amazing apps we have ever seen. Take a look at this, but put down any hot liquids first.
It’s an augmented-reality, OCR-capable translation app, but that’s a poor description. A better one would be “magic.” Word Lens looks at any printed text through the iPhone’s camera, reads it, translates between Spanish and English. That’s pretty impressive already — it does it in real time — but it also matches the color, font and perspective of the text, and remaps it onto the image. It’s as if the world itself has been translated.
Impressed? You’re not the only one. John Gruber of Daring Fireball puts it best: “[It's] as though near-future time travelers started sending us apps instead of Terminators.”
We’ve tested the app, and it works just as shown in the video. In demo mode, it can rearrange (or blank out) any text in the camera’s field of vision. You need to purchase translation packs to do the actual translation.
In our tests, it worked smoothly, although the words had a tendency to wiggle around a bit, switching between English and Spanish and flipping between alternate translations. You could get the gist of a sentence, but not read it clearly. Holding the camera very steady helped mitigate the “wiggling” effect.
Word Lens is a taste of science fiction, something like a visual version of the universal translator or the Babelfish. Only instead of being a convenient device to avoid movie subtitles, it’s a real, functioning tool.
Word Lens is free, and will do some fancy rearranging of words to show you how it works. The Spanish-English and English-Spanish dictionaries are in-app purchases, for $5 each, and the app runs offline — perfect for when you’re traveling. You can pick your coffee back up, now.
Rock Fans Outraged As Bob Dylan Goes Electronica
NEWPORT, RI—Audience members at the Newport Rock Festival were “outraged” Monday when rock icon Bob Dylan followed up such classic hits as “Like A Rolling Stone” and “Maggie’s Farm” with an electronica set composed of atonal drones, hyperactive drumbeats, and the repeated mechanized lyric “Dance to the club life!” “We came here to see the authentic Dylan, the one with the Stratocaster guitar and signature wild blues-rock band behind him,” audience member Robert Hochschild said. “Then he walks out with these puffy headphones, some turntables, and a laptop? The guy’s a Judas.” When asked later about his musical transformation by reporters, Dylan said he had nothing to say about the beats he programs, he just programs them.
The Sunday Chill Track #2
This picture could have been taken somewhere in The Netherlands today. In fact, it’s the cover of a free single that was released by Beach House on Friday. Since it’s a very laidback and somewhat melancholic track I figured it would work well as this Sunday’s chill track. So kick off your snow boots and listen to I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun:
Free mp3 download here.
