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Touchscreen interface for seamless data transfer between the real and virtual worlds - Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a next generation user interface which can accurately detect the users finger and what it is touching, creating an interactive touchscreen-like system, using objects in the real world.
posted by KokuRyu on Apr 17, 2013 - 18 comments

President Obama recently announced a big new effort to map and understand the human brain. [more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns on Apr 8, 2013 - 22 comments

From the mid 40s to the mid 50s Coronet Instructional Films were always ready to provide social guidance for teenagers on subjects as diverse as dating, popularity, preparing for being drafted, and shyness, as well as to children on following the law, the value of quietness in school, and appreciating our parents. They also provided education on topics such as the connection between attitudes and health, what kind of people live in America, how to keep a job, supervising women workers, the nature of capitalism, and the plantation System in Southern life. Inside is an annotated collection of all 86 of the complete Coronet films in the Prelinger Archives as well as a few more. Its not like you had work to do or anything right? [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb on Nov 1, 2012 - 41 comments

The Hathi Trust, a partnership between 66 universities and 3 higher education consortia, is breathing a little easier now that Judge Harold Baer, Jr. of New York's Southern District has found that the Trust was within its fair use rights to allow Google to scan member library holdings, and then making the resulting files available for the reading impaired, and for use in search indexing and data mining. While this is excellent news for the educational institutions involved, it doesn't completely exonerate Google's role in the scanning project. It's notable that just last week Google abandoned it's own fair use claim in settling a different case involving the same book scanning project. Of the four factors used when considering fair use cases, Judge Baer ruled on the side of the Hathi Trust on all four.
posted by Toekneesan on Oct 11, 2012 - 6 comments

Here are some free tools for rescuing infected Windows systems: Windows Defender Offline Beta - Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 - BitDefender Bootable CD - Avira Bootable CD - How To Geek provides instructions for scanning a system from an Ubuntu Live CD.  For more info, click through.... [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Dec 21, 2011 - 43 comments

Andrew Davidhazy is a professor in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has been doing fantastic and creative things with photography for decades, presented in photography exhibits and articles in scholarly and popular magazines. He explains the rolling shutter effect (previously) and provides an introduction to panoramic, peripheral and scanning photography. From there, we get into an informal catalogue of slit-scan video artworks and research (previously), from this video clip (possibly NSFW, with moments of distorted nudity) from The Fourth Dimension by Zibigniew Rybczinski (prior work on MeFi). If you're looking for less mind-bending and more stunning, Prof. Davidhazy also works with high-speed photography.
posted by filthy light thief on Jul 27, 2011 - 6 comments

Still clinging desperately to those reading-things of yours made from dead trees? While you're at it, scan the damn thing and make your own e-book. (My prediction is that there are copyright issues here that the manufacturer is ignoring, but that will come back to haunt them.)
posted by anothermug on Jan 13, 2011 - 48 comments

The Brain Unveiled: A new imaging method offers a spectacular view of neural structures. Diffusion spectrum imaging, developed by neuroscientist Van Wedeen at Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data in new ways, letting scientists map the nerve fibers that carry information between cells.
posted by srboisvert on Nov 24, 2008 - 12 comments

Say hello to the newest police method for human identification: iris scanning. The Alameda County Sheriff's Office is preparing to become the first public agency in the Bay Area to scan the irises of convicted sex offenders.
posted by fandango_matt on Nov 5, 2007 - 31 comments

Closed Circuit TV and Data Confluence
Qinetiq is bringing their CCTV confluence technology, codenamed Praetorian, to the UK. "The system automatically tracks and stitches 3D images with CCTV video, maps and other real-time information. It automatically alerts operators to intruders, unusual behaviour, left objects or anything it is told to spot." And it looks more like a video game than a video feed. This new tech is perhaps not as controversial as Qinetiq's Millimetre Wave Imaging System that allows passive scanning through clothing to detect guns, knives or bombs.
Yes, it is very Big Brother-esque but its also pretty amazing technology too. Qinetiq previously discussed on MeFi here, here, here and here.
posted by fenriq on Aug 12, 2005 - 7 comments

Advanced methods of bomb detection and investigation. New equipment developed to scan cars and people, such as a parking lot device which quickly bathes the car's trunk in invisible neutrons, a procedure that makes materials inside the trunk emit gamma-rays that would indicate the presence of explosives. Also, a bomb disposal robot which take[s] fingerprints before blowing [a] package up.
posted by mcgraw on May 3, 2004 - 17 comments

Ben Kacyras is the inventor of the portable Cyrax 3D scanning camera traditionally used by surveyors for quickly creating "surgical exact" 3D models of large structures. Ben has set a goal to scan every World Heritage Site on Earth and make it available online so that if anything were to happen to a site, an exact replica could be re-built. Example Cyrax pictures. More 3D Camera links and other World Heritage Digitization efforts.
posted by stbalbach on Mar 8, 2004 - 5 comments

Catalogue your personal library... I have a sizeable library, and have long wanted to catalog the whole thing for insurance purposes and for general gee-whiz potential. The prospect of hand entering information for each of the books, though, has kept me from doing anything. Now, thanks to a link at PB's site, I've got the itch again... and something to scratch it.

Note to Mac users: Mac-Barcode has a USB scanner available.
posted by silusGROK on Apr 26, 2001 - 27 comments