Meditation Room

As of September 2007, Nintendo has sold over 13 million Wii game consoles. This significantly exceeds the number of Tablet PCs in use today according to even the most generous estimates of Tablet PC sales. This makes the Wii Remote one of the most common computer input devices in the world. It also happens to be one of the most sophisticated. It contains a 1024x768 infrared camera with built-in hardware blob tracking of up to 4 points at 100Hz. This significantly out performs any PC "webcam" available today. It also contains a +/-3g 8-bit 3-axis accelerometer also operating at 100Hz and an expandsion port for even more capability. These projects are an effort to explore and demonstrate applications that the millions of Wii Remotes in world readily support.

Brain-Computer Interaction is an enticing idea that has existed for several decades and primarily rooted in the field of neuroscience and rehabilitation engineering. However, it is a relatively new idea to see how the benefits of this technology can be applied to able bodied individuals in the effort to give the computers a better understanding of its user. This is work I did with Microsoft Research shows how a very low-cost EEG device can be used to correctly identify mental and physical tasks of the user with 93% accuracy. Additionally, it presents the idea that motion artifacts can be leveraged to improve classification if you are not trying to claim a neurological basis for the data.

So here to correct this injustice to phenomena everywhere I present the REAL 10 Strangest Things in Space - or at least in my opinion. Feel free to suggest any others in the comments.

This is a wonderful clock concept — a bead drops every 5 minutes.

We’re fans of Twitter around here, in fact many Automatticians have accounts, but while the format appealed to us it really just whetted our appetite for something more, like a way for each of us to share short messages about what we’re doing or working on internally, or private messages between groups of folks.

To-Do Tattoo is a clever temporary tattoo that you can apply to your body to help you remember what needs to be done. Brought to you by Fred, the same guys who make the 500 XL speakers.

Simply, Brijit aggregates the world's best long-form content and abstracts it in 100 words or less, providing busy, omnivorous, and increasingly mobile readers with rich, qualitative summaries as well as better guideposts for what to read, watch or listen to now. We produce these abstracts in concert with our readers, as one community of readers, writers and editors. Think of us as your well-read friend who leads you to that can't miss article, video clip or product.

THE ZERO GUIDE was written to help anyone (with a computer) turn their Guitar Hero controller into a musical instrument. Perhaps you were inspired by The Guitar Zeros, or perhaps you weren't. This guide shows you the technique used by the band, and suggests other avenues that may lead to interesting results.

"Like Glenn Danzig run amok with a MIDI interface, The Guitar Zeros cross gale-force riffage and nerdy electronics know-how to create a dark stew bubbling with art-punk smarts, new wave circuits, and glam-metal heft. Instead of traditioinal stringed instruments, the ironically dubbed Zeros weild Guitar Hero controllers (yes, from the hugely popular PlayStation 2 game) to trigger synthesized sounds created and mapped to the controller's buttons with multimedia software Max/MSP. Before you go writing these guys off as kitsch, consider the sophistication that such a stunt entails. Then forget about their oddball (nay, ingenious) presentation and listen to the music. Solid."