(YouTube Link)

Researchers at the University of Tokyo are developing tangile holograms -- or rather, a system that uses sensors and Nintendo Wiimotes to give the impression of physical contact by holograms:

A retroreflective marker is attached on the tip of user's middle finger," the researchers explain on their website. "IR LEDs illuminate the marker and two Wiimotes sense the 3D position of the finger. Owing to this hand-tracking system, the users can handle the floating virtual image with their hands."

In the video, the researchers demonstrate how a user can dribble a virtual bouncing ball, feel virtual raindrops bouncing off their hand, and feel a small virtual creature crawling on their palm. The researchers hope that the technology will have applications in video games, 3D CADs, and other uses.

Link via io9

This gadget, developed by the Japanese toy company Takara Tomy, will allegedly translate a dog's barks:

The gadget can tell you if your dog is sad, joyful, alert to danger, needy, happy or frustrated.

The £129 gadget can be placed on the dog’s collar and includes a receiver which would translate the dogs’ barks. The translated bark is displayed on the receiver which also plays in audio phrases like ‘I feel sad’ or ‘Leave me alone’ (no phrases about desiring a juicy steak?) the toy will hit the Japanese market on August 27th

Note that the device will only translate a dog's barks into Japanese, so those of you not fluent in that language may wish to get some help when using it.

Link via Geekologie

Mark Northeast is a UK-based food artist who creates sandwiches in the forms of unique images, such as the caterpillar above, to encourage kids to eat a varied diet. He hopes to soon come out with a photobook of his work.

Link via Urlesque

Although it's pricey at $3,500, this kitchen gadget will churn out 200 pancakes in one hour. The manufacturer is marketing it toward convenience stores and cafeterias, but I'd say that there'd be a strong demand from individual homes.

http://www.chefstack.com/machine.html via Popular Science

Researchers at the University of Bristol have developed a helmet that helps visually impaired people make use of echolocation to find their way around:

The system takes real-time imagery of local obstacles, be they stairs, walls, or trees, as well as moving objects like cars and other people, and alerts the wearer using the sounds perfected in the Spanish echolocation system mentioned above.

The helmet uses stereo headphones to denote where the objects are relative to the wearer, and the volume of the sound indicates the distance. The device has a 60-degree range of vision, and can identify objects as far away as 15 feet. The researchers are also currently looking to integrate GPS data into the rig, so that users can use it to plot specific courses.

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-08/navigation-helmet-creates-sound-maps-blind

Bill and Amarins Harrison and their three children are on a lengthy family vacation. They plan on riding their custom-made bicycle to Florida, and thence to Alaska and back again:

They departed Renfro Valley on Saturday. Their immediate destination is Oak Ridge, and then on to the Atlantic Coast by way of the Carolinas. From there, they’ll travel to Florida, head to the Southwest by way of the Southeast (hoping to spend the winter months peddling through warmer environs) and will eventually travel up the Pacific Coast to Alaska.

They figure on arriving in Alaska in August 2010. They’ll stay there for one year, then head back to Renfro Valley, arriving back home sometime in late 2012....

“Risk-taking is what made this country great,” he says. “It wasn’t politics or religion. It was about risking to go around the next bend in the river or over the next mountain. If we still took those risks today, this would be a better world.”

http://tnhunting.com/cumberlands/?p=1834 via Instapundit

(College Humor Video Link)

Deceptive Deceptions is Dan Meth's latest short film, this time tying together all modern conspiracy theories.  What do the JFK assassination, actor John Candy, NASA, and Wyoming have in common?  This video explains it all.

Films by Dan Meth previously featured on Neatorama:
Toy Movies
Association Professionals Through the Ages
Internet People

Hershel McGriff, an old NASCAR champion from yesteryear, started racing at the age of 17 in his family's sedan and last competed in 2002. But he just returned and competed at Portland International Raceway, finishing 13 out of 26:

The odds were against him before the race started. Although he automatically qualified as one of 26 drivers in a race that had 28 spots, he had to start at the back of the pack and one lap down because of changes he made to the car after the qualifying session. He replaced the carburetor.

"I really didn't have a lot to lose," he said. "I did not want to go out there and flop around."

He certainly didn't, said Inglebright.

"There were a lot of other cars out there that were a lot slower," the winner said. "He did a great job."

Inglebright suggested that any concerns about an 81-year-old's reaction time in a dangerous sport do not necessarily apply to the youthful McGriff.

"I followed him for a little while and I couldn't get around him," Inglebright said.

Link via Ride Fast & Shoot Straight

At the recent DefCon hackers' convention in Las Vegas, a fake ATM deceived many hackers in attendance:

An organizer for the conference said security authorities seized the device. It’s not known how long the ATM was in the hotel or whether it was placed there by a DefCon attendee to catch his fellow hackers or simply by an outside criminal group trying to target conference attendees.

Witnesses say the kiosk was well-placed to avoid surveillance cameras....

Markus said it was clear to him the ATM was fake when he looked at the smoked glass on the front of the machine and noticed something funny about it. When he beamed a flashlight through the glass, instead of seeing a camera behind it, he saw the PC that was set up to siphon card data.

The ATM had been placed right outside the hotel’s security office.

Link via Crunch Gear

Craftster user UpKnitCreek created this Legend of Zelda-inspired Link outfit for a friend's baby shower. For authenticity, she (he?) even put leather soles on the booties and wrapped the whole thing in a wooden chest that looks like one from the game. More pictures at the link.

Link via Crunch Gear

How will the world end in the immediate future? Slate has a both serious and fun look at this question, allowing users to suggest up to five of one hundred forty-four possible problems that could bring about the end of America and/or the world. These include alien invasion, a swine flu epidemic, and Vermont achieving independence, among many other options.

The application focuses primarily on the United States and its demise, but many problems you could throw into your chosen apocalypse would impact the entire world (e.g. asteroid collision).

What nightmare scenario do you choose?

Interactive Feature Link

Article Link

Christopher M. Danforth and Peter Sheridan Dodds, statisticians at the University of Vermont, analyzed song lyrics, blog posts, and speeches for certain emotional keywords in order to discern the collective moods of the American people over time:

Still, the University of Vermont study presents what could be a complementary measure, and it provides a few decent cocktail-party nuggets along the way. Dr. Dodds and Dr. Danforth downloaded the lyrics to 232,574 songs by 20,025 artists released between 1960 and 2007, from the Web site hotlyrics.net. From another site, wefeelfine.org, they pulled more than nine million sentences that used some form of the verb feel — as in “I feel relieved” — from 2.3 million blogs from 2005 to 2009. They also analyzed State of the Union speeches going back to George Washington’s. They then rated the psychological charge, or “valence,” of a significant subset of the words on a 10-point scale: from triumphant (8.82) and love (8.72) down to disgusted (2.45) and suicide (1.25).

Some of the findings were expected. Sept. 11, 2001, was rock bottom, for instance. Others were less so: the day that Michael Jackson died also lowered people’s mood significantly. The high-water mark was the day President Obama was elected, when the word “proud” was predominant.

Christmas and Valentine’s Day regularly popped as positive times, although words like “guilty” were associated with Christmas and “waste” and “lonely” with Valentine’s Day.

Link via Hit & Run

Dodds and Danforth's Peer-Reviewed Article

(YouTube Link)

Forty-one people gathered at a Bensons for Beds furniture warehouse in Tewkesbury, UK to break the mattress dominoes record. That means leaning on an upright mattress and then falling over backwards, causing someone behind you on a mattress to fall over backwards, and so on.

Link via The Corner

The Toy Zone has pictures and descriptions of fifteen weapons or defensive systems that historians have found sketched in the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. These include a tank, cluster munitions, and mobile walls. The picture above is of a pivoting radial barrage canon found in the Codex Atlanticus.

Link via Ace

From the people who brought you There, I Fixed It, Don't Judge My Hair is a photoblog of disasterous hairstyles, cuts, and colors.

Link via Double Plus Undead