I haven’t bought anything on a vending machine in a VERY long time, unless you count the times I’ve used machines that dispense train tickets — and that would probably be twice in a little more than a year.
So this video of a vending machine in Japan using a Touch Screen is very interesting to me. Is there a practical reason they would need to switch regular vending machines to these touch screens? I can’t think of any reason at the moment, then again- it’s nearly 5am. This sort of posting always happens at this time of night/morning.
One of the most tiring things on technology blogs is to read comments from people. It’s been specially tiring when Apple fans start blasting Samsung/Android posts, and viceversa. Though I must admit The Next Big Thing Commercial [1] was pretty funny. However, there was always something in common for the both of them, they could piss on Nokia.
Mori Now Building Group is celebrating ten years of something, so they’ve opened a website called Tokyo City Symphony where you’d be able to experience Tokyo at a 1:1000 scale 3D map projection.
For a few couple of years already, people have been calling on the death of printed paper. And in all honesty, I rarely print stuff for myself — a vast majority of printed documents refer to letterhead letters, which I usually just send on PDF by email. But if I’m printing something, it’s got something to do with branded documentation.
We’ve talked about e-paper [1], digital newspapers, and Samsung’s flexible screens [1] are coming. People are supposedly using smartphones and are all over iPads, as sales for PCs are down dramatically as times flies by. Yet, people apparently still print stuff. At least that’s the premise for this project:
For a long time, people have been playing around with interactive tables [1][2][3][4][5], though I don’t know anyone who can afford one. The guys from Fujitsu Laboratories seem to be aiming at consumer-range products. And though it may sound and look cool that you can turn all your printed documents into something digital and interact with it, wouldn’t it mean that your page with video included has already been digitally design?
Of course, there ARE elements in our everyday life that aren’t digital — doodled post-it notes (I can’t think of anything else other than notes). The rest, they wouldn’t have been embedded elements on your digital source document. The question is, why print it?
It’s crazy how technology has developed in the past 20 years. The latest consumer craze? 3D printing, of course! It hasn’t only been featured on shows (with a special mention on The Big Bang Theory), but it’s been used in a broad variety of ways [1]. Miniatures of yourself [1], your face in chocolate [1], miniature of yourself in gummy [1], or candy [1].
Its most striking use, because of its practicality, was how they used 3D Printing in the making of ParaNorman. Technically speaking, it was that usual “wow, why didn’t anyone else think of this before?” Printing the many faces needed to be able to animate your stop-motion movie. It gets the consistency so your animation doesn’t get blotches, and you get incredible detail (I LOVE THE LIGHT GOING THROUGH NORMAN’S EARS).
The question that arises is- if they print the faces needed to animate, once they’ve done the movements in a CG environment. Is it stop-motion? Mixed media is more common than ever. There was a lot of special effects in ParaNorman, especially in its incredibly visual last arc, but the film is still considered stop-motion. So how much use of the computer do you need to have for it to not be stop-motion?
A while back a GORGEOUS Dior commercial featuring Grace Kelly, Dietrich and Monroe, alongside a slinky Charlize Theron was invading my TV and doing rotations on my YouTube ads. That was one of the only commercials I didn’t mind breaking my viewing.
Alongside with visual effects magicians, they managed to bring back classic on-screen beauties… and now, they’re latest project has been bringing back Audrey Hepburn. From the still up there, it looks PRETTY uncanny. Apparently they found the perfect Hepburn double, and did their magic twitching details to make her look IT. Sadly, we can’t watch the commercial for Galaxy Chocolate, which has only been licensed within the UK and Ireland territories.
The Tokyo Shimbun (東京新聞) has developed an application for children to help them read their newspaper — difficult kanjis and all — by translating kanji into easy to read hiragana and other augmented reality features enhanced with animation and stuff.
I don’t think the Tokyo Shimbun realized that they’ve developed a tool for foreigners to read their newspaper. xD
3D printing is expensive — but cool — and apparently Japan is setting itself to test 3D printing photo booths so you can all make tiny models of yourselves!
