It’s the work of Chris Weibert, who’s also known as ChristopherTalosian on YouTube. The whole thing was jury-rigged together using everyday items. The water vapor is produced by an ultrasonic humidifier that’s been hacked onto a laminar flow nozzle, which in turn is made out of a bunch of drinking straws. Now that’s a cool use of straws. The humidifier came from a thrift store, while the fans came from computers.

The thin, even sheet of vapor mist is able to catch light projected onto it from the rear, giving it an effect not dissimilar from the original projected Leia in A New Hope. Now he just needs to build the projector into an R2-D2 robot and it’ll be perfect.

[via Mike Senese via Make:]

The new gear includes the Beam Touch and the Photo Booth. Beam Touch lets the iPad user shoot their own photos and video over to a projector and allows them to control the content remotely. I would assume the projector in question is the one that Holocube uses for its hologram system.

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The other new product is the Photo Booth. This thing looks like an ATM and it lets users print out pictures they take on the spot and share them in a sort of real world social network.

The Photo Booth can also be connected to web applications so images captured could automatically post online.

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There is no word on when either of the products will be offered and they are both aimed at businesses not consumers.

The screen on the device is now 70-inches, and is powered by a computer that runs a dual core Intel processor at 2.8GHz. The video content from the device is stored to a 40GB SSD that can store 18 hours of uncompressed digital video.

The computer is dedicated to the running of the Holobox alone and will do nothing other than run the hologram system. It uses a projector that has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 and 600 cd/m2 brightness. Exactly how much this thing will cost is unknown, but it won’t be cheap.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via Yanko Design]

Zebra Imaging calls these prints ZScapes. Above is an example, which is one of the more obvious applications for the technology – a map. Zebra Imaging claims that there are more than 360,000 3D images in that panel. Of course it’s even more jaw-dropping in person, but we’ll have to settle with semi-awesome video:

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Naturally ZScapes can be used for more than just maps –  you can make a hologram of pretty much anything. Here’s another demo. Currently Zebra Imaging charges $1,500 (USD) for a 12 x 18 in. print, and $3,500 for a 2 x 3 ft. one, which is the largest size available. Pretty cheap for something so practical. Check out Zebra Imaging’s website for more info.

[via Engadget]

The signage is split into two panels: the one on the right is an LCD panel which constantly scrolls through ads, much like the ones we see today, but it’s actually a touchscreen, with a single pathetic additional function – allowing people to scroll or select which ad they’d like to see. Now the panel on the left, that’s more high-tech: it’s a simulated “holographic” panel that displays everything from a store map to a preview of actual items on sale, and it can even beam coupons to (smart)phones. Watch as Intel’s resident nerds awkwardly explain their baby:

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Mr. Stock’s remark at 1:00 has to be the most dismissive “very nice” I have ever heard in my entire life. That’s just cold. Speaking of colds, won’t a public touchscreen be a prime lot for germ fiestas? You can read more about Intel’s project on their website.

[via istartedsomething]

Well the Light Touch is probably 5 times weaker than Microsoft’s computer – it’s running Adobe’s Flash Lite app on top of Windows CE – but still! Touchscreen anywhere! Light Blue Optics calls the technomagic behind the Light Touch “Holographic Laser Projection”: “Using holographic algorithms, we transform the image we want to project into sets of diffraction patterns, which are shown on a tiny microdisplay. When laser light illuminates the microdisplay, the projected image is formed by diffraction.”

The Light Touch can project a 10.1″ display at 35 lumens for “typical symbology content” (static images?) and outputs 15 lumens of brightness for video content. It has an IR optical sensor that supports multitouch, a standard 3.5 mm audio out (and you’ll want to use this because the built-in speaker is mono), composite video in,  WiFi (802.11 b/g only), micro USB out, 2 GB of internal memory with support for up to 32 GB micro SD, and a rechargeable battery.

I think Light Blue Optics is trying to market the Light Touch for commercial or industrial use, as shown in the picture above. But I think a consumer version is inevitable; I just hope that it’s reasonably priced and that it’s easily customizable, and barring that, easily hackable/modifiable. WANT!

Check out Light Blue Optics’ website for more details.

[via Uncrate]

Mundie’s sample office setting eschewed the keyboard, mouse and even the monitor. His desk was a multi-touch surface computer, and the walls were monitors as well, capable of displaying “a virtual window or collection of digital photos to a corkboard of sticky notes or various workspaces.” That’s nice, except I hope that in the future we’ll still have real views and not “virtual windows”. Mundie also showcased a Project Natal-like tech, wherein he put himself in the middle of an architectural demo. Imagine being able to see and walk through a life-size model of your house before it’s actually built. The future is going to be awesome. To those who can afford it anyway.

[via Crave UK]

Named for its similarity to clocks which appear in train stations around Europe, the Station Numbers Hologram clock was designed by Dutch designers Ruben van Boxtel & Reinier Buijs for Karlsson.

And while I’m not really sure that the display counts as a true hologram, there’s definitely some sort of lenticular printing illusion used to produce the effect. And if simple black on white isn’t your thing, the clocks are also available in white on red and white on black versions with stainless steel accents.

You can find a wide variety of Karlsson clocks – including these ones – over at UK retailer ClockCo for £30 (appx. $59 USD) each.

The video is pretty boring except for the fact that it’s a guy on stage talking to two holograms of people who are in other countries. In fact, they look so realistic that it took me a while to figure out that they were holograms. I kept advancing the video to look for the hologram part. So I think that’s proof-positive that this is fully legit.

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This is really heartening because there are so many things from the 70s and 80s that we were supposed to have in the future, and we still don’t have them. Hello, hoverboards? Robot servants? Flying cars? Vacations on the moon? Robocop? And all we got is the Internet. OK, OK, actually the Internet is way cooler than all of those things I just named. But still, I’m glad someone’s ticked one of these “future” technologies off the list and put it squarely into the present.

[via ajb{log}]