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Controlling Games Without a Controller
Microsoft revealed its answer to the Nintendo Wii and its innovative Wiimote at its annual E3 press conference. Dubbed Project Natal, it does away with controllers entirely, allowing the user to interact with the game simply by moving his or her body. Users don't even touch any hardware. Analysts have speculated that the project owes its existence to Microsoft's acquisition of Israeli start-up 3DV Systems.
The technology features both a motion-sensitive camera and microphones to allow voice commands. Microsoft's demo included two games. One, patterned after Breakout, lets users propel balls at a wall to break blocks by throwing or kicking them at the target; harder throws or kicks give the balls more energy. In action, it looked as if the game could provide a real full-body workout. The second game showed the technology's more artistic side, allowing users to paint a scene with hand gestures and voice commands, and even to combine in poses to create shapes that would then be filtered onto the completed masterpiece.
So when can we expect to see this innovative technology in our homes? Microsoft just released the software development kit, so expect it to be a while yet. Even then, analysts think that the new control system, which the software giant has said would be compatible with all Xboxes, will cost nearly $100. But the system has wider applications; one part of the demo showed how one could use it to page through menus and make selections. Someday, perhaps even ordinary computers (as opposed to gaming systems) may be equipped with such a system, eliminating the need for a hard mouse or keyboard.
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Bouncing Off the Moon
It's been 40 years since man first set foot on the moon, and an average person still can't go there...but a human voice can travel there and back. And now, a major project is underway to send lots of human voices there and back. Dubbed Echoes of Apollo and launching on June 26 and 27, the project links parabolic antennas around the world in a great global moon bounce. A signal will be sent from one location on earth, bounced off the moon, and received at another location on the planet.
The World Moon Bounce Day might even see more radio dishes pointed at the moon at once than during Apollo 11's historic mission. Participating dishes located in the US, Australia, and Europe will stop their regular space work to track the moon. Voices being bounced from the earth will make the round trip in less than three seconds.
Bouncing human voices off the moon isn't new; ham radio operators have done it, and so did President Eisenhower in 1959, to send a congratulatory message to Canada when that country opened the Prince Albert Radar Laboratory. But larger dishes offer better reception and few ham operators can match the 150-foot dish at the Stanford Research Institute in California, one of the project's participants. If you're interested in being heard, you might want to check with Wired; the site has secured a transmission spot for a single 140-character message. So perhaps an average person still can't visit the moon, but at least we can tweet it.
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Using the Internet to Monitor Life on Earth
You may have heard of the Encyclopedia of Life and its project to describe all of the world's species online. The Smithsonian-based organization just kicked off another project: linking thousands of computer databases and web sites containing nature-based observations. The EOL hopes the system, when complete, will serve as a guide for everything from the effects of climate change to the locations of crop-damaging pests.
James Edwards, head of the EOL, anticipates the project will take ten years to complete. The organization has its work cut out for it; the problem won't be finding the data, but sorting and organizing it. People throughout the world already log their observations of nature online, including rare bird sightings and the dates when plants bloom in the spring.
To help the project get off to a good start, about 400 biology and technology experts from 50 countries met in London at a conference organized by the Encyclopedia of Life for the purpose of discussing its plans. Importantly, as with the original EOL, this project will remain free rather like Wikipedia, it will allow everyone to access and contribute to its data. Wide-ranging benefits of this system, when complete, could include early warnings of the arrival of crop-destroying pests, tracking shifts in the range of malaria-causing mosquitoes, averting plane accidents by getting a better handle on bird migration routes, and more.
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