Bionic Contact Lenses - Real Holographic Displays for the Eye

Bionic eyes! For the first time, researchers have developed a safe contact lens that can give humans vision like Superman. The lens has an imprinted circuit and lights which would display graphics similar to the Terminator and or the eyes of Bionic Woman.

These characters have “bionic eyes to zoom in on far-off scenes, have useful facts pop into their field of view, or create virtual crosshairs,” UWNews explained. “Off the screen, virtual displays have been proposed for more practical purposes—visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.”

Imagine the uses for heads up displays for every thing from flying to playing a game.
"Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside," said Babak Parviz, a UW assistant professor of electrical engineering. "This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's extremely promising." The results were presented today at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' international conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems by Harvey Ho, a former graduate student of Parviz's now working at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. Other co-authors are Ehsan Saeedi and Samuel Kim in the UW's electrical engineering department and Tueng Shen in the UW Medical Center's ophthalmology department. (uwnews.washington.edu)

Paying by fingerprint at the supermarket

Customers of a German supermarket as well as many U.S. retailers will soon be able to pay for their shopping by placing their finger on a scanner at the check-out.An Edeka store in the southwest German town of Ruelzheim has piloted the technology since November, cutting out on time otherwise wasted scrabbling for coins or cards.

Paying with your fingerprint
many companies plan to equip it's stores with the new technology.

Retailers say : "All customers need do is register once with their identity card and bank details, then they can shop right away".

The technology is based on comparing the shopper's fingerprint with those stored in its database along with account details. Some retailers say that they were confident the system could not be abused. The chance of two people having the same fingerprint is about one in 220 million.

Yet, the security of the systems largely remains a question mark. Security and privacy experts worry that pay-by-fingerprint schemes could lead to hard-to-combat identity fraud and greater threats to civil rights.

"What are their security practices and how much more extraordinary are they compared to a ChoicePoint, a LexisNexis, or a CardSystems?" said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. ChoicePoint, Reed Elsevier's LexisNexis, and CardSystems Solutions have all had high-profile incidents where consumers' financial and personal data has been leaked.

"Stealing a credit card number is one thing," she said. "But if your biometric is stolen and can be reconstituted, then that is a big problem."

Both Pay By Touch and BioPay pledged that their customers' security and privacy are of paramount importance.

Both companies require customers to physically enroll and link their fingerprint and customer ID number to one or more financial accounts. Social Security numbers are not used and accounts are only identified by the last few digits of the account number. The merchant never sees any of the information and nothing is left behind, said Donita Prakash, vice president of marketing for Herndon, Virginia-based BioPay.

"It is the least amount of information left behind about you for any of the possible ways of completing a transaction," Prakash said. "Nothing physical passes to the merchant that could be skimmed, and it's not leaving your body."

Moreover, neither system uses the actual fingerprint to identify the user, but creates a template of the fingerprint--generally a set of numbers measuring specific features of the print. The data format reduces transmission time, but also makes it impossible to reconstitute the original fingerprint, said Larry Hollowood, chief security officer for Pay By Touch.

So what are your views of this adaptation of technology? People are still weary. In a world of an ever growing case of identity theft. Will this change things? or just cause other crimes to evolve.. Are you willing to let just anybody have access to your finger print?

Guitar Hero III "Review"

Hey Scranton are you ready to rock? "thats where I'm From"
So I said, Scranton, are you ready to rock?” Oh sorry, I am still in rockstar mode after playing Guitar Hero III. It is very easy to slip into this mode and start to believe that you are a rockstar after playing Guitar Hero III for a few hours. The game lets you pretend you are the lead guitarist in a rock band or bassist in two-player cooperative mode and jam to a large list of great rock songs. Some of the songs in Guitar Hero III include -
* "Slow Ride" – Foghat
* "Talk Dirty to Me" – Poison
* "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" – Pat Benatar
* "Story of My Life" – Social Distortion
* "Rock and Roll All Nite" – Kiss (Encore)
and more. I will guarantee you have heard most or all the regular songs in the game and you should enjoy jamming to them unless you don’t like hard rock music. If that is the case then Guitar Hero III may not be for you. If you have played the original Guitar Hero 1 & 2 on PlayStation 2 then you will feel right at home with Guitar Hero III. Guitar Hero III is very similar to the originals, but with more features and new songs for you to master.

The music and sound effects in Guitar Hero III are top notch as you would expect, since the whole object of the game is to play music. Most of the songs are sung and played by cover bands instead of the originals, but RedOctane and Harmonix did a great job of finding bands that sound very close to the originals and unless you really know the song you may have a hard time telling the difference on a lot of them. There are not a ton of sound effects besides the music, but they all fit well with the game and I have nothing bad to say about them.

The graphics are also well done and enjoyable to look at while watching someone else play the game. I say this, since while you are playing you will not have time to take your eyes off the notes streaming down the screen to see the band members jamming in the background. I don’t think Harmonix created new graphics for the Xbox 360 version, but they were able to use the power of the Xbox 360’s graphics processor to make them look cleaner than the PS2 version of Guitar Hero II. Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 also has more songs than the PS2 version.

The basic gameplay of Guitar Hero III is the same as in the original Guitar Hero's and also Frequency and Amplitude for PlayStation 2 that were also developed by Harmonix. If you are familiar with any of these games then you will feel right at home. If you haven’t played any of them then here is the basic idea, dots come down the screen in five different columns that are color-coded and match the buttons on the neck of the guitar. As the notes travel past the circles at the bottom of the screen you have to make sure you are pressing the correct color coded button and then stroke the strum bar on the body of the guitar. You can also shake the whammy bar while holding long notes for bonus points. This is the basic concept, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially on the harder levels where you have to use all five neck buttons and switch between the different cords while strumming to the beat. This is as close as you are going to get to playing a real guitar without buying one and taking lessons. Guitar Hero takes air guitar to the next level and anyone that has ever pretended to play a guitar while listening to their favorite music will enjoy this game. On top of the controls above if you do well enough you will have the option to enable “Star Power” for bonus points by moving the guitar’s neck vertical like a real rockstar.

Playing the Training mode at first will help you learn the basic techniques that will help you succeed in the game. After you have gone through the training you can enjoy Easy mode to unlock a bunch of songs and practice the basics, but it is not until you move up to Medium mode and above that you will be able to unlock even more songs and earn money from the concerts you perform to buy more songs, guitars, characters, and guitar paint schemes. The Xbox 360 version also has downloadable content that lets you expand the game even further after you have beaten all the songs included on the disc.

What else can I say? If you like rock music, always wanted to be in a band and/or enjoy playing air guitar then you need Guitar Hero III. I Myself am a musician and and find that Guitar Hero is very addictive and will keep pulling you back for more. Playing with a friend in co-op mode is even more fun as you both get to play at the same time playing lead and bass guitar. So there ya have it. Although I don't own the game myself, I have been playing it at a multitude of friends houses as well as hinting around about my birthday coming up ;) In closing I would have to say that this is a must try. But be aware! if you try it, you Will buy it!!

The (HD-DvD) battle is nearing an end.

Those who chose the Blu-ray format can start to get excited — it looks like the Sony-led technology may win the war with HD-DVD thanks to an announcement by Warner Bros. that the studio is going to stop producing videos in HD-DVD.


I'll still argue that anyone buying these players, especially Blu-ray, is getting ripped off — the current prices are quite ridiculous. and is like spending $1,000 for a regular DVD player a few years ago. It was interesting to see Toshiba-led HD-DVD drop its player prices to $100 at Wal-Mart during the holidays.

It's the studios, however, that will decide this war. Blu-ray already had the advantage, with titles offered from seven of eight major studios. And of those studios, Disney, Fox, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM were all exclusive to Blu-ray. Universal was the only exclusive HD-DVD format until it was recently joined by Paramount.

The decision by Warner Bros. reflects the same arguments by Blockbuster Video — the war is being decided by the consumer.

"A two-format landscape has led to consumer confusion and indifference toward high definition, which has kept the technology from reaching mass adoption and becoming the important revenue stream that it can be for the industry,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, in a news release.

"Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray, and we believe that recognizing this preference is the right step in making this great home entertainment experience accessible to the widest possible audience. Warner Bros. has worked very closely with the Toshiba Corporation in promoting high definition media and we have enormous respect for their efforts. We look forward to working with them on other projects in the future.”

Um, yeah. Such kind words are proving to be of little comfort to the folks at Toshiba, which decided to cancel a dog and pony show at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

And who can blame them? Line up the various players, and the picture becomes clear: Blu-ray is emerging as the winner, no matter how many HD-DVD players have been bought to date.

Despite this development, my advice remains the same: Don't buy either format until this war is settled once and for all.