Giant holocube displays full-size holographic people

This six foot tall holographic display system is large enough to display people at pretty close to life size. It could be your big screen holographic TV and your first holographic phone system, all in one.

With a 70" diagonal display, Holocube's holographic projection booth is capable of displaying full-size three-dimensional people, as long as they're fairly short. The display is transparent at the back so that you can walk around it and get the whole 3D effect, and at full 1080p resolution, it's essentially like having some kind of real person standing there inside a box that they can't get out of, which is how I prefer all of my social interactions anyway.

A hands-on with the long-awaited Playstation Phone

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Engadget just got a hands-on with the long-rumored Playstation Phone, officially called the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, and it looks pretty slick.

This slider phone runs Android, has a 4-inch touchscreen and a 1GHz processor. When you slide the bottom part of the phone out, instead of the expected keyboard, you get Playstation controls (you can use the touchscreen for typing and dialing). It all in all looks like a solid device, especially for serious mobile gamers. With the iPhone's touchscreen being what holds it back from being a real-deal mobile gaming console for anything more than casual games, this solves that problem swimmingly.

Look for more details when Sony officially announces this bad boy.

Via Engadget

Can you name these 20 geeky things that happened online in 2010?

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If you're the type of person who wastes spends hours online everyday just looking at stuff educating yourself, then all of that time spent could finally pay off. Illustrator McBess has created this cool drawing that shows 20 things that happened online in 2010, and he wants to know if you can figure them all out.

After several minutes of staring I could only name a few, but then I never waste my time looking at irrelevant stuff online (cough, cough). Remember, McBess is based in Britain, so some of the 20 could have been bigger deals in the UK than in the US.

Alas, this is not a competition, and the only prize on offer is bragging rights among your geeky friends for your profound knowledge of Internet memes. There are however a few posters of the drawing going to Sysygy's Twitter followers

2010-2011 will go down as the greatest tech years ever

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No other two-year span in the history of consumer electronics has both wrought and promises as much radical change as last year and this new year. While there may have been years with one or two significant product introductions and advancements — 1920: the first radio broadcast, 1939: the introduction of TV, 1947: the invention of the transistor, 1982-83: the introduction of the CD and launching of the first cellphone systems — no two-year span has been as chuck full of potentially behavior-changing technology in television, digital imaging, car electronics, gaming and especially cellphones. There is so much happening on so many fronts, even I'm having trouble keeping up with it all.

But we can narrow our time frame even further — more like 18 months, from the near simultaneous introductions of the first 3D HDTVs and the iPad last spring to AT&T's pending launch of its 4G LTE network sometime this summer. In between — a series of stunning technological leaps.

Here's what I think has and will make 2010-2011 the most memorable tech years ever.

My seemingly hyperbolic pronouncement about 2010-2011's tech primacy does not come lightly. I am the unofficial historian for the Consumer Electronics Association (the folks who throw CES), am an elector to CEA's Hall of Fame and have written many of the inductee bios, and have written extensively about tech history, such as the development of video recording, the cellphone and the top 10 technological advancements of the last decade for American Heritage of Invention & Technology magazine.

The modern era also tends to lend itself to "most fruitful ever" because of the sheer range of technologies, but that doesn't minimize how much tech change we've experienced and will experience this year.

Of Tabs, Tape…

In the wake of the ridiculous success of the iPad and, to a lesser degree, Samsung's Galaxy Tab, everyone suddenly thinks they, too, can sell tablet PCs. Yes, 2011 will be the year of the tablet, but not in a good way. BlackBerry, Coby, Creative Labs, Dell, Lenovo, Motorola, NEC, Sylvania, Toshiba, Viewsonic and Vizio were among the familiar names unveiling Android-based tablets at CES, along with a bunch of companies neither I nor likely you have ever heard of or will hear from again. Aluratek? Augen? Cydle? Enspert? Gentouch? Naxa? Noah? Sungale?

Where's Acme? I'm sure Wile E. Coyote (super genius) wants to buy a tablet PC, and there's nothing like brand loyalty.

Madness.

Do any of these companies think we want to buy a tablet PC? No, we don't. What we want is an iPad. And even if we didn't want an iPad, how is anyone supposed to differentiate between these dozens of look-alike Android tablets? And with so many Android tabs to choose from, even anti-Apple consumers, drowning in a sea of competing Android tab specs, are likely to throw up their hands, surrender to the inevitable, and buy an iPad — if they buy any tablet at all.

And the same goes for all the no-name companies thinking we need ereader choices beyond Kindle, Nook or even Kobo.

2011 will be the year of the tablet and ereaders, all right — the tablet/ereader holocaust. What a stupid waste.

In the meantime, say goodbye to the end of videotape. No major camcorder maker makes tape-based models for the first time since the Sony Betacam was introduced in 1983.

And while there may be nothing to watch on TV in 3D, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, DXG and Aiptek all will be selling 3D camcorders in 2011, with models ranging in price from $300 for the DXG-5F9V (May) to $2,000 for the JVC GS-TD1 (March).

…And TV — at Home…

Speaking of TV, our home boob tube is morphing into a more intelligent and sophisticated companion, although it may take another year or so for all the radical changes to seem normal.

We've had "connected" or "smart" TVs for more than a year, but they've been segregated — the Web widgets were one thing, TV was another. And according to NPD, even though sales of connected TVs are booming, less than half of them were actually connected.

Google attempted to desegregate the TV and Web environments with its Google TV platform last October. But Google has had to re-jigger its user interface, which was universally condemned by critics and users.

If Google can't get its interface act together quickly, they're leaving the door open to a certain company in Cupertino. Apple says it has sold a million of Steve Jobs' "hobby," Apple TV, and last September, the company has made a deal with electronic program guide supplier Rovi. Maybe, just maybe, Apple will introduce a true Apple TV, an LCD HDTV with a big widescreen, internet access to iTunes and apps, built-in Blu-ray player and DVR, and an interface any blue-haired grandma could suss.

Now that the Web is regularly sharing space with regular TV, we're going to need a bigger TV. With Web widget menus taking up a third of the available 16 x 9 HDTV screen real estate, two TV makers,Vizio and Philips, will start selling ultra widescreen 21 x 9 HDTVs. Cinemascope and Panavision 2.35:1 films can be viewed with no black bars above or below, and, more importantly, widget menus can take up a third of the vertical screen real estate leaving a full 16 x 9 area left for simultaneous TV watching.

…With Glasses…

Also shooting themselves in the foot are the 3D HDTV manufacturers. Less than a year ago, they introduce an "active" 3D technology requiring battery-powered glasses retailers can't seem to explain or demonstrate.

Then, at the just concluded CES, JVC, LG and Vizio all introduced "passive" 3D HDTVs that use the same simple 3D glasses you use in a movie theater. But even unpowered passive 3D means you're essentially wearing sunglasses indoors. And, according to Larry David, the only people who wear sunglasses indoors are blind people and assholes.

So a few folks like LG, Sony and Toshiba also showed off glasses-free 3D, like that's going to happen any time soon. It's not.

But 3D is here. 3D HDTVs happen to also make the best 2D HDTVs. There are a growing number of 3D Blu-ray movies available — and by the end of this year nearly all Blu-ray players will be 3D capable — including a 3D Avatar Blu-ray you can buy sans a Panasonic 3D HDTV (which, by the way, is the best HDTV of any kind available), and more and more networks will be broadcasting 3D, especially big sporting events.

In addition, we'll be seeing a lot more 3D games, especially now that Nvidia has unveiled 3DTV Play software and the 3D Vision kit, which not only turns more than 500 regular 2D PC games into 3D, but lets you play 2D PC games in 3D on any 3D HDTV when your HDTV is connected to one of the growing number of HDMI-connected Nvidia GeForce-equipped laptop PCs from Dell, HP, Toshiba and Asus. A list of convertible 2D games is available on Nvidia's Web site and the game packages themselves will be marked "3D Vision Ready."

Sony already is combining 3D on the PS3 with its new Move, which along with Microsoft's Kinect and the existing Nintendo Wii, is making gesture-control the most important gaming advance since the move from cartridges to CD. And both Texas Instruments and Vizio have shown a "dual view" 3D — wearing 3D glasses, each player will see a different view of the same game, handy when setting strategies on-screen.

So, yes, regardless of how ridiculous 3D HDTV seems now, 2011 will be the year 3D comes of age, stupid or not.

…And Away from Home

And finally, more than a year after adopting the standard, Mobile DTV may finally be coming to a laptop or iPad/iPhone/iPod near you via antenna dongles, MDTV-equipped cellphones, portable DVD players, and dedicated portable TVs.

This round-up represents only a fraction of the technological changes coming in 2011. I'll have more next week.

Here is why the "suggest to friends" link disappeared

If you haven't noticed yet, the suggest to friends link has been removed from all facebook page. As much as this frustrated me, I know it has caused havoc over the facebook network. I do believe the link will be back along with a face lift for facebook pages. Here is some evidence I found.

Update #2: The push appears to have been accidental. A Facebook spokesperson tells us, “While we are always experimenting with new features internally we are not making changes to Pages right now. Organizations invest a lot of time on their Facebook Pages because millions of people find them useful everyday. We remain committed to providing ways for Page owners to customize and control the experience on their Page. If we do make changes, we will provide partners with advance notice.”

Update: Pages have been reverted back to the old style, and a new tweet from Facebook suggests that the mass transformation may have been unintentional or caused prototype features to get accidentally pushed as well. “Also, some internal prototypes were exposed to people and resulted in us disabling the site briefly. It’s now back to normal,” reads the tweet. We’ve reached out to Facebook for additional clarification.

Facebook ceremoniously launched its new Profile Pages less than two weeks ago. Today, Facebook has gifted Page admins with a similar holiday surprise — a big facelift and feature overall to Pages.

Here’s what’s new: Pages now match Profiles and Place Pages in style and design, there’s a new left-hand menu that has been introduced to replace tab navigation and Facebook Questions have been integrated into the experience.

Facebook has also included a new feature that lets Page admins quickly switch between accounts. The Account menu option in the upper left-hand corner now includes a “Switch Accounts” option, as seen below. Admins can click it to pull up a menu to log in to any of the other Pages they have access to.

Today’s Pages transformation was to be expected, as we initially got wind of the pending changes when the new Profile Pages went live. Still, the unannounced push comes as a bit of a surprise.

CES 2011 : Walkthrough

Here is a highlight reel of CES. You'll feel like you were there.

Samsung goes see-thru with its transparent OLED prototype

As well as being full of products that are launching this year, CES is full of futuristic, crazysexy tech that may (or may not) see the light of day at some point in the near future. And Samsung's transparent laptop has got to make its way to the consumer. I mean, it's not like we've never seen transparent screens before — sadly it's usually only in the movies and shows like 24. (For a perfect example, the trailer for Date Night features Mark Wahlberg's insane computer rig.)

Samsung's 14-inch lappy boasts a huge 40 per cent transparency when turned off, compared with the piddling 25 per cent that most tech companies manage. The Korean company is touting it as the first and largest transparent OLED prototype, and it really is pretty awesome, don't you think?

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Scientist plan on cloning a REAL Snuffaluffagus

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Guys, Jurassic Park is coming true! Well, a much less dangerous and exciting version of it, at least: scientists say they should have a cloned woolly mammoth within four years.

The process will involve taking a cell nuclei from the skin or muscle tissue of a mammoth, insert it into the egg cell of an african elephant and then use said elephant as a surrogate mother for the 600-day gestation period. They're close enough to being able to do this now that they say they could get an elephant gestatin' within two years. After that, it would just be a waiting game for those 600 days. And then, finally, we can all get the pet woolly mammoths we've always dreamed of.

'Biggest' news at CES: 152-inch Panasonic plasma

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You read that right. A plasma HDTV 152 inches large measured diagonally. 6.5 feet tall, 11.5-feet wide. The size of nine 50-inch sets. And it's real. Panasonic was using it to demo its 3D inside a presentation room, and a factory to mass produce them will be online in about a year.

What was showing were several ultra high-def clips in a format called 4K, which is technically 4096 x 2160 pixels - that's 8 million pixels, four times the resolution of today's puny 1920 x 1080p 2 million pixel displays. It even has a wider 17:9 aspect ratio.

No word on price, but there is a market for this beyond the Sultan of Brunei - commercial settings, Hollywood studios, small theaters, for instance. But five, 10 years from now, our walls could very well be adorned with a screen this size - or it could be the wall. Remember, 10 years ago, a then huge 50-inch panel cost $15,000.

How to peek into Area 51 using Google Maps

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Thanks to the internet, the concept of a government secret has been rendered little more than a quaint James Bond plot device. For example, in decades past, the public only had conjecture and hearsay to feed its curiosity about the inner workings of the US government's shadowy military base on the southern shore of Nevada's Groom Lake, a site better known as "Area 51."

But today, thanks to technology like Google Maps, we can all achieve a clear birds-eye-view of the secret facility conveniently linked with user-submitted telephoto images supplying a ground level perspective. Now anyone with a smart phone can be treated to an unobstructed view into the secret military installation that — officially — doesn't even exist.

So, c'mon, X-File with me.

Starting Your Tour

The base at Groom Lake, sometimes referred to as "The Dreamland Resort," has been used by the Air Force since WWII as a testing ground for all kinds of experimental aircraft. However, the government only tacitly acknowledges the facility's very existence. The airspace over the area is restricted and the perimeter is littered with signs warning that "photography is prohibited" and the "use of deadly force is authorized."

Which might be considered overkill if there was just a bunch of rocks and tumble weed.

Fueled by the base's secrecy, Area 51 has become a focal point of the UFO conspiracy community. Theories range from reverse engineering of the crashed UFO at Roswell to the setting of actual intergalactic sit-downs with visiting extraterrestrials. The conspiracy factory has been further energized by local reports of unusual phenomenon spotted in the skies over the area.

So, are there alien autopsies being performed at a secret UFO chop shop somewhere in Area 51? Last summer, a handful of retired contractors who claimed to have worked at the facility came forward with tales of advanced technology programs being carried out in a vast underground infrastructure built below the base. But sadly, the retirees had no tales of extraterrestrials or any spaceship teardowns. Bummer. But kindly retired contractors be damned, I'm still curious! And thanks to Google, we have been given a partial window into the mysterious desert base.

Area 51 may be one of the easiest nonexistent military bases to find. Simply type "Area 51" as a location search on Google Maps. Make sure you click on satellite view and there it is. (The results even come with the requisite jackass "reviews" of the location commenting how well the staff treated them after their UFO crashed nearby):

View Larger Map

Where to Look

As you can see, the satellite image doesn't reveal anything all that Spielbergian. Area 51 is a sprawling dessert complex with various runways. There's a network of large nondescript buildings (possibly hangars) littering the area along with a few planes sitting outside and several cars parked about. There are a few roads leading in from the vast rocky brown Nevada badlands.

One strange feature arises as you search to the south of the main complex. Here, you will find this character etched into the desert floor out of roads and buildings:

This is the aerial view (located at: +37° 12' 48.15", -115° 48' 41.79") of some weird assortment of mounds and paths. To me, this shape somewhat resembles a toaster lying on its side inside a geometrical prison. It is interesting to note that you could only see this very definitive figure from the air. Could this be Area 51's own version of the Nazca lines created to guide alien visitors or other futuristic aircraft? Or is it just a normal example of infrastructure that an overactive imagination might construe as an imprisoned cartoon toaster? For now, we can allow alientoastergate to fester in the UFO supposition machine.

If you switch over from satellite view to map view, this whole segment of the Nevada dessert becomes part of a vast monotonous gray block. This is how Google renders many military or government facilities in map view. Either Google has been asked to remove the data, or the topographical void is the result of a dearth of public info. Either way, the satellite view of these facilities, including Area 51, remain crystal clear.

Which seems like kind of an oversight.

From a cursory overview, there are no signs of vital national interest that would need concealing from Al Qaeda or the Chinese. Still, the Google Street View car probably wouldn't be welcome to drive around the facilities thus giving the world the ability to virtually explore every pathway. However, Google has allowed for other makeshift "street views."

Time to Cheat

The map of Area 51 also links to several Panoramio photos taken from around the perimeter of the facilities looking in. Panoramio is a company purchased by Google in 2007 that adds a layer of user-submitted, geographically-tagged photos to Google Earth and Google Maps. On Maps, you can locate these images by dragging the little person icon who lives on top of the zoom bar over to the actual map (works on both satellite and map views). Hold it there a moment and various dots will pop up around the area. Drag the little figure over the dot and you will be shown a thumbnail of an image geotagged to that location. Drop the little figure there and you'll be linked to the full-scale image. (Alternatively, you can just click on the "More..." tab on the top and click the box marked "Photos".) In Area 51's case, you can find linked photos that people took of the base from around the surroundings via telephoto lens, giving you a more comprehensive eye level perspective of the area.

Here's a long panorama shot of the Area taken in 2008 by user "Kenny Jaysson Avello...." One Area 51 Panoramio poster, "macbic110274" comments that a friend who wishes to remain anonymous took the long distance photos from nearby Tikaboo Peak, which overlooks the valley in which the base is located. (Tikaboo is currently the closest vantage point the public has into Area 51 after the government closed two closer areas in 1995 due to increased attempts by the public to capture images inside the facility).

These long distance shots show the sort of infrastructure you might see at an airport anywhere around the world, as well as a bevy of satellite communication dishes scattered throughout. From this vantage point, many of the buildings are as boring and non-descript as they are from the birds-eye-view. Scenic charm was not a priority for whoever designed this place.

Even the Tikaboo Peak images around the main hub of Area 51 fail to provide anything truly sci-fi-tastic. However if you veer to the south of the main facilities, you will find this captionless image that user "Las Vegas 666" snapped in 2003 that shows either an aerial chemical trail or some kind of vehicle traveling down the road or runway in the distance. One commenter chimes in with "spooky." I'll give it that much.

So, there you go, an upclose look at the notorious Area 51. While it sadly doesn't present any earth shattering proof of extraterrestrial encounters, it does offer a window on how technology really has leveled the playing field, giving the general public an unfettered view into a secret government facility — a view that only a decade ago would have been unfathomable.

Still no little green men, though!