Dip and Squeeze: Heinz Reinvents the Ketchup Packet
Feb 22nd
For years, we who partake in fast food have been stuck with a dilemma when it comes to dunking our fries in ketchup: We’d have to empty the packet onto the paper on the tray. Or put it on a napkin that may have already been touched by lord knows who. Tasty, tasty way to catch H1N1 perhaps!?
Thankfully, the good people at Heinz have–after 30 years–heard our plea. They have redesigned the ketchup packet, and there shall be much rejoicing in the streets.
The new packet can be opened in not one, but two ways. The end can be torn away so the ketchup can be a topping on, say, a burger (or Cap’n Crunch, if that’s your thing). But the really cool part is that the other end rips away to create a dunking container for fries, one of the most popular applications for ketchup.
Seattle ketchup enthusiast Jonathan Fuchs told me he loves the new design. "This is progress," he said. "I think the world is becoming a better place."
Maybe it’s not the most radical of designs–McDonald’s has had dunking containers for its McNuggets for years–but it is noteworthy that a corporation like Heinz looked at the design of one of its best-known products and determined it was time for a redesign.
It’s good to know that my children will never know a world where you have to smear ketchup on a napkin to enjoy your fries.
See the original article at Crave and CrunchGear.
Wii Headtracking Creates 3D Window Display
Feb 22nd
Johnny Chung Lee is the PhD student from Carnegie Mellon University who has been rocking Nintendo fanboy hearts pretty hard by making the Wiimote do some spectacular feats. We first saw him track his fingertips on the screen for a "Minority Report" type of interface. Then he created an interactive whiteboard. Now, he’s managed to create a headtracking simulation through the Wiimote, creating an amazing 3D window on the world.
The mod requires you to wear the sensor bar (or any IR-emitting headband, Lee makes some sweet goggles) and place the Wiimote by the screen (it’s hooked up to a laptop with a TV-out for this demonstration). Essentially, your head becomes the mouse peeking through a 3D room, and the gameplay implications would be incredible.
Anyone else thinking that Nintendo should pay this guy whatever he wants to make some awesome games? Or, you know, Sony and Microsoft could always grab him up, too. These ideas just use the Wiimote’s IR—technology that isn’t exactly cutting edge stuff.
See the original article at Gizmodo.
NYC mayor: Coney Island ‘is coming back, big time’
Feb 17th
NEW YORK — State-of-the-art new rides including a roller coaster and a pendulum will open this summer at Coney Island to jump-start the resurgence of the famed Brooklyn amusement park, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Tuesday.
"Coney Island is coming back, big time," Bloomberg said at a news conference near the boardwalk where the decades-old Astroland rides were dismantled in 2008.
The new rides are being created by Zamperla, the world’s leading manufacturer of mechanical rides, based in Altavilla Vicentina, Italy.
Luna Park at Coney Island will open on Memorial Day weekend with 19 rides. Among them will be the Air Race, which sends riders swinging and soaring around a control tower. It will be the ride’s global debut.
Also promised are games, live entertainment, and concessions including Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand, which opened in 1916, pioneering America’s concept of fast food.
By the summer of 2011, Scream Zone at Coney Island will offer two roller coasters, go-carts and a human slingshot launching people more than 200 feet into the air.
Central Amusement International of Parsippany, N.J., is investing about $30 million to build and operate the park. The company signed a 10-year lease for about 6 acres of land including the former Astroland site, paying the city $1 million plus part of gross receipts.
"We will have rides that will flip you, turn you, launch you, drop you, splash you and make the mayor want to lose his lunch," said David Galst, a CAI spokesman.
Not all of Coney Island’s old amusements were scrapped.
Barbie Video Girl Features A Built-In Camcorder
Feb 16th
Besides pursuing a career as a computer engineer, it seems Barbie is also considering espionage as a side gig. The Barbie Video Girl Doll, which was just unveiled at Toy Fair, features a video camera ‘hidden’ in Barbie’s necklace that can capture up to 30 minutes of footage. But what’s more disturbing is the LCD display fused to her back that allows you to play back those videos.
Now I know Mattel has never been that concerned with anatomical correctness in the Barbie line, but I’m pretty sure they’re taking some real creative licenses here. There’s also a USB port hidden somewhere on the doll, not exactly sure where, that allows the videos to be downloaded to a PC and/or uploaded and edited on Barbie.com. The whole idea just seems kind of creepy to me, probably even more so if there was a Ken version, but don’t let me stop you from picking one up in July when they’ll be available for about $50.
See the original article at OhGizmo!.
Avatar sparks 3-D makeover for action classics
Jan 11th
Hollywood is preparing to re-release some past hits, including Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 3-D following the record-breaking success of Avatar.
Studio executives are drawing up schedules of popular films that will be “retro-fitted” with 3-D technology after the science fiction blockbuster, directed by James Cameron, last week became the second highest grossing movie of all time.
A 3-D version of Avatar has driven ticket sales to more than $1.14 billion (£700m) in just three weeks; only Titanic, Cameron’s 1997 epic, has made more money at the box office.
Rival studios had been waiting to see if Avatar took the 3-D experience — albeit using special glasses — beyond the popularity of animated tales such Monsters vs Aliens.
Experts now predict that 3-D will become the new multiplex standard within five years. This will be as dramatic a shift as when the “talkies” killed off silent movies in the early 20th century.
Retro-fitting a screen classic with 3-D imagery could take as little as four months, using software to manipulate a digital copy of the film.
Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, said last spring that he wanted to reissue the trilogy in 3-D if Avatar persuaded enough cinemas to put in new 3-D projectors. Last week technicians at Weta, the production company that had worked on the trilogy, said they had experimented with 3-D battle scenes and proclaimed them to be “gob-smacking”.
The Lord of the Rings is expected to be re-released after Jackson has finished producing the two-part version of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit over the next two years. This would mean that a 3-D version of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the trilogy, could be in cinemas by Christmas 2012.
It may be beaten to the screen by a revamped version of Star Wars. George Lucas, the director, spent $13m filming the original in 1976, added special effects in 1997 and 2004, and will now spend another $10m to change it into a 3-D spectacular.
“George cannot leave it alone,” said an associate. “He is salivating at the opportunity to play with it again. This time the Death Star is really going to explode all over the audience and leave them gasping.”
Read more at the Times Online (UK).
Avatar: yes, it changed everything after all
Jan 4th
A review from Gizmodo…
Put simply, Avatar is the most visually fantastic film I’ve ever seen. It will be hailed as the groundbreaking 3D release of its time while setting a new standard by which all blockbusters are measured. Yes, it’s that good.
I’m not going to talk about plot (or that I thought to myself, Dances with Wolves in space more than once). I’m not going to talk about dialog or pacing (or that the limited narration was totally unnecessary). There are other reviews, more reviewy type reviews, that have all that covered. I’m not going to spoil anything, either. Heck, I’m not even going to talk about Avatar…not just yet.
Japanese researchers develop see-through goldfish
Dec 29th
TOKYO (AFP) – First came see-through frogs. Now Japanese researchers have succeeded in producing goldfish whose beating hearts can be seen through translucent scales and skin.
The transparent creatures are part of efforts to reduce the need for dissections, which have become increasingly controversial, particularly in schools.
“You can see a live heart and other organs because the scales and skin have no pigments,” said Yutaka Tamaru, an associate professor in the department of life science at Mie University.
“You don’t have to cut it open. You can see a tiny brain above the goldfish’s black eyes.”
The joint team of researchers at Mie University and Nagoya University in central Japan produced the “ryukin” goldfish by picking mutant hatchery goldfish with pale skin and breeding them together.
“Having a pale colour is a disadvantage for goldfish in an aquarium but it’s good to see how organs sit in a body three-dimensionally,” Tamaru told AFP.
The fish are expected to live up to roughly 20 years and could grow as long as 25 centimetres (10 inches) and weigh more than two kilograms (five pounds), much bigger than other fish used in experiments, such as zebrafish and Japanese medaka, Tamaru said.
“As this goldfish grows bigger, you can watch its whole life,” he said.
Meanwhile another group of researchers who announced in 2007 they had developed see-through frogs said they planned to start selling the four-legged creatures, whose skin is transparent from the tadpole stage.
“We are making progress in their mass-production. They are likely to be put on the market next year,” said Masayuki Sumida, professor at the Institute for Amphibian Biology of Hiroshima University.
Sumida said see-through tadpoles and adult frogs would be available in the first half of next year in Japan for laboratories and schools and as pets, with a price tag expected to be below 10,000 yen (110 dollars) each.
He also wants to sell the creature abroad.
Animal rights activists have pressed for humane alternatives to dissections, such as using computer simulations.
Sumida’s team produced the creature from rare mutants of the Japanese brown frog, or Rena japonica, whose backs are usually ochre or brown. Two kinds of recessive genes have been known to cause the frog to be pale.
While goldfish are easier to keep, frogs are higher forms of life and therefore preferable for experiments, Sumida said.
See the original article at Yahoo! News
New Yorkers beware! New cockroach hits the Big Apple
Dec 24th
NEW YORK (AFP) – New Yorkers are used to fighting each other for space, but there may be a new contender in town according to a Rockefeller study that appears to have uncovered a new species of cockroach.
“The cockroach is genetically modified. Species don’t differ more than one percent, this cockroach is four percent different, which suggests it is a new species of cockroach,” Professor Mark Stoeckle, an expert on genomics and DNA barcoding at Rockefeller University, told AFP.
“We think that the museums of natural history in Paris or New York could be interested.”
The previously-unidentified creepy-crawly was uncovered as part of a project undertaken by two high-school students, Brenda Tan, 17, and Matt Cost, 18, under Stoeckle’s supervision.
In their roles as “DNAHouse investigators,” the pair trawled New York apartments, stores and street, collecting 217 specimens between November 2008 and March 2009.
They took samples from supermarket food, the remains of an insect found in a box of fruit, a feather from a duster, dried dung and a cockroach and matched DNA sequences using the Barcode of Life Database and GenBank.
The American Museum of Natural History laboratory identified 170 genetic codes, leading the researchers to identify 95 different animal species, including some that were unexpected.
“A feather from a duster yielded ostrich DNA. A delicacy labeled ’sturgeon caviar’ instead turned out to be from the strange-looking paddlefish. A popular Asian snack was revealed as giant flying squid. Bison DNA was found in a dog biscuit,” the pair wrote on the Rockefeller University website.
In fact, they found that 16 percent of food items were mislabeled, including cheeses labeled sheep’s milk that were actually made of cow’s milk, a potentially dangerous labeling error for those with allergies.
But perhaps the biggest surprise for the researchers was the discovery of “a genetically distinct ‘mystery’ cockroach that might be a new species.”
“By appearance it looks like the American cockroach (Periplaneta americana) but it is genetically different from other American cockroaches in the databases,” the researchers said.
Andrew W.K. wins again
Oct 29th
If you can watch this without laughing then you have more self control then I do. Those who have met Andrew shouldn’t be too surprised.
See the original post at Fail Blog.
Site moving servers
Oct 8th
There will probably be some weirdness today as I move the site from a remote host running standard WordPress to a platform running WordPress MU. Hope this works!
