These are my links for January 5th through January 15th:

• 25 Years Of Graphics History: A Farewell To ATI, In Pictures –
• Epoch Converter – Unix Timestamp Converter –
• The Naked Coder | Sarah White Consulting –
• Cheaper Than Dirt – America’s Ultimate Shooting Sports Discounter –
• TF2 Launch Options List – Steam Users’ Forums –
• LIRC – Linux Infrared Remote Control –
• Partial solar eclipse and transit of the Space Station from Oman –
• cRPG Guide, Read if new to cRPG – www.c-rpg.net –
• cRPG & Strategus forum on TaleWorlds –
• TaleWorlds –
• cRPG Mod – Mount and Blade –
• Ultra-Mini Nano USB 2.0 802.11n 150Mbps Wifi/WLAN Wireless Network Adapter –

An eon in modern time ago (a year) I posted a small extrinsic blurb about the upcoming Microsoft technology dubbed Photosynth.  I thought the link explained and showed it better than I could, so no need for a further post.  But now it is released, and now it deserves the shoutout.

This is a simple “synth”. It was taken by some guy in Austin on his cameraphone. He took a few shots of the 360 bridge (a pretty noticeable landmark), just across the river from where I used to work at Origin. I think this shows the power of Photosynth. First of all, this was easy to find, I just did a Photosynth search for Austin, and it was the first choice. Second this was only a few short photos in a cameraphone. This isn’t the Taj Mahal demo with 400 shots with a $5000 DSLR camera. No, this is normal guy with possibly time on his break from work to snap a few shots through a window and upload them. You can still zoom in on them and skirt all around his view.. and it captures his view amazingly well.

That’s all I have to say, except one more thing, kudos to Microsoft to allowing embed code. Normally that wouldn’t get kudos, because every website on earth has some free embedable content on it nowadays, but kudos for finally coming around. (but an iframe? seriously?)

Technology from the University of Wisconsin to “print” images in the air with a cascade of water droplets. They call it AquaScript.

The Youtube comments suggested exactly what iw as thinking… that this is a really neat technology, but the true genius of it would come out if they had a matrix of valves (instead of a line) and thereby created 3-D images.

I’m still boggling at the idea to give them Teddy Bear heads. The Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot (BEAR) is under development for the US military to rescue wounded soldiers from the battlefield.

Gary Gilbert, from the US Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Centre in Frederick, Maryland, said that the teddy bear appearance was deliberate.

“A really important thing when you’re dealing with casualties is trying to maintain that human touch.”

A cool effect that really only looks good from one angle: Transparent Screens