The gTar was launched as a Kickstarter project. It has actual strings, and uses sensors to relay what you are playing to a custom iPhone app, which is supposed to help people learn to play the guitar more easily. The array of integrated LEDs along the fretboard will light up to show you how to play. Each note is relayed to the iPhone, which then produces the sound. There’s even a feature called SmartPlay that mutes incorrect notes. (They could also call this “Cheat mode.”)

It’s more of a learning tool than a replacement for a real guitar, though it does offer a “free play” mode where you can play it once you’ve built up your confidence. In just a couple of days, the project raised the necessary $100,000 to be fully funded. There are still 34 days left. Will it do $10 million like the Pebble smartwatch? You’ll need to pledge at least $399(USD) to get yours (the introductory batch of 200 already sold out for $350.)

Created by Rob Sanchez, Ryan Rogowski and Kipp Bradford, the Tabber is a kit which can be attached to the neck of your guitar, using an array of bright LEDs to illuminate the appropriate finger points along the frets of your guitar. What’s really cool about the Tabber is that you can connect it to your smartphone, and have it light up based on the chords programmed into an app. This lets you learn on the go, and without being tied down to a computer or video game console.

The Tabber will work with either electric or acoustic guitars. It’s currently in the prototype stages, and raising funds for a production run over on Kickstarter now. While the prototype still looks a little bulky, the production version will be extremely slim and not interfere with fret fingering at all. A pledge of $150(USD) will get you all the parts to build your own Tabber, while $200 or more will get you a fully-assembled Tabber kit.

To give you an idea of what the degree offers, here are some of the class titles: How to Make Small Talk: Small Talk Leads to Big Talk, Networking with Grace and Charm, Dress with Success:Maintaining a Professional Wardrobe after the Interview, Say What?!?! Tops for Effective Communication and Accepting that Most People Don’t Understand Quantum Physics Jokes. Just kidding guys.

A student earns a charm credit for each class he attends and will be conferred with a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree in Charm depending on the number of charm credits they earn. In other words, all you have to do is show up for a 15-minute class and you can get a degree, a condition that no doubt millions of kids wish would apply to normal degrees as well.

MIT students who think that they are already charming are wrong won’t automatically qualify for the degrees – they still have to attend the classes. MIT students, practice smiling and giving firm handshakes and head to your school’s website to learn more about the Charm School.

[via HLN via Geekologie]

The experiments were conducted by researchers at Boston University (BU) and at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan. The task to be learned has to have a high visual component – fortunately, many if not most of our tasks have a high visual component. In simple terms, a person who’s good at the task is then put in an fMRI machine and asked to visualize the task. The person’s brain activity is recorded and then re-enacted in the student’s mind. After being taught the pattern enough times, the student’s brain becomes familiar with the pattern and the student becomes better at the activity. Watch the video below for more details (you can watch it here with captions).

So does this mean that in the future, our schools will have fMRI machines instead of desks? Will we even need schools? Will we be able to download LeBron James’ hoops skills from the comfort of our home and then be basketball geniuses after a power nap in the ol’ fMRI? Or will this be the key to making the robots-enslaving-man part of The Matrix real? What if this has already happened? I need to lie down. And passively learn the truth while lying down. Thanks, science.

[via National Science Foundation via i09 and DVICE via Geekologie]

I think that this video of a 1-year-old girl shows what is changing for kids today and the traditional publishing industry moving into the future. The traditional print publishing world has been living on borrowed time for a while now. Current and future generations of children are growing up with the expectation of interactivity.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

To these kids, print publications are like broken iPads, just like this little girl. I imagine when these kids hit 5-years-old and start to read books at school, they may be forced to read printed books, but their preference will be for the interactive gadgets they grew up on. Many schools are already going to these interactive tablets and notebooks to save money on printing and improve interactivity. What do you think, is this video further indication of the impending death of print, or just that babies like to grab things?

[via Gizmodo]

Even the set-up is a bit DS-like. Users write on a whiteboard, using ordinary markers; a webcam then takes an image of the written word or phrase. The real magic is done by the software, which “analyzes the image and interprets the handwritten words into different output modalities.” In other words, what you write is what you get.

Unfortunately, the demo video doesn’t go into detail about the capabilities and the limitations of the software, like the number or kinds of languages it can interpret, the types of words (adjectives, proper nouns, adverbs, verbs) it can interpret, the number of words it can recognize, or if the virtual objects can be made to interact like in Scribblenauts.

Nevertheless, this is an awesome project, and preschool and elementary teachers will no doubt fall on their knees and cry buckets of joyous tears if and when WYWIWYG comes out, because it’s a clever way of capturing the attention of kids and motivating them to learn. After all, you can’t make green poop appear if you don’t know how to spell “green” and “poop”. You can watch the demo video at the Interactive Multimedia Lab’s website; be sure to check out their other projects as well.

The scientists’ next goal is to get the Einstein robot to socialize, and eventually robot tormentors tutors.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Marian Bartlett, a facial recognition expert who was a part of the experiment, said that the aim is to use robots to conduct one-on-one tutoring, which she says can improve learning “by as much as two standard deviations.” Sounds like they want our kids to go insane.

[via Wired]