iSleight of iHand
Great use of technology, timing, and sleight of hand, though I wouldn’t exactly label it as “magic.”
via Woot
Leica Lenses Sliced in Half For Science!
Pictured above is a Leica Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm lens cut neatly in half. Call it death of a lens. I call it an interesting display on the intricate mechanical workings of a camera lens.
These were actually made by Leica students as a graduation project and boxed as a “cutaway model” of the lens.
This also gives you a good mental image of what you can potentially break if/when you drop your lens.
Thanks for the link, David!
via PetaPixel
Siftables
Imagine the letter blocks we used to play with as kids. Now imagine that these blocks are interactive computing devices that react to you and each other in a smart way. Now you’ve got a Siftable.
This is something that I would definitely buy for my kids. Think of the possibilities!
Thanks for the link, Mike!
via TED Talks
Musical Performance in the Information Age
When I think of the intersection between music and the internet, two projects immediately come to mind that succinctly represent that coupling. Here are their introductions followed by sample performances:
The Introductions
The YouTube Symphony Orchestra
YouTube was leveraged as a tool for auditions for this project. What I find neat about it is the accessibility that it allowed. Non-professional musicians from all over the world, who normally would never pursue anything this grand, were able to audition out of the comfort of their own home. After, what I imagine, was a lengthy discernment process, the lucky chosen performed in a concert in the Sydney Opera House (which of course, was live-streamed on the internet).
Eric Whitacre took this idea a step further and actually pieced together all of the audition videos to make a virtual choir. I can only imagine the thousands of hours of work that went into the mixing of this.
The Performances
What are the final products of such colossal endeavors? Here are two samples:
Doodling Infinity Elephants
Vi Hart is my hero. This is how you make math fun to learn.
Her YouTube videos went viral and now she is being featured in the New York Times.
Bravo, Vi… Bravo.
via Vi Hart
A Practical Flying Car
This is the most feasible implementation of a flying car that I’ve seen to date. I’d say this might be of practical use in the bay area or down in the Los Angeles area, but only if I was the only one to have it. Most drivers have a hard enough time with the XY-axis… adding a Z-axis is potentially disastrous. 
Nice find, Tim!
via EAA
3D Printed Concert Flute
Object fabrication technology isn’t quite at Star Trek levels yet, but I have to admit that I am completely floored by this flute that was created using a 3D printer at the MIT Media Lab (which I had the honor of visiting).
via Engadget
Scale of the Universe
I love scale diagrams–especially interactive ones. Click here to stretch your mind.
Light Field Photography with a Plenoptic Camera
I’ve been keeping my eye on plenoptic lenses since I saw this Stanford Research paper on the topic back in 2005. In layman’s terms: with a Plenoptic Camera, you’ll never take an out-of-focus image again. Using a special lens composed of an array of micro-lenses, more information is captured than your usual camera setup (see image below from Laptop Magazine):
Special software takes the above image and resolves it into a traditional photo. The kicker is, though, the user can choose where the focal point is during this post-processing step. It’s pretty amazing and will revolutionize photography as we know it. Here’s a video demo:
Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera [Stanford University]
Never Take an Out-of-Focus Picture Again: Adobe’s New Plenoptic Lens Tech [Laptop Magazine] via @AngeloAlcid
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