New Atlas

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MIT's BeeMe giant social experiment puts a human under internet control

Rich Haridy October 29, 2018

This Halloween scientists at MIT’s Media Lab are embarking on a massive social experiment. Called BeeMe, the project will let internet users control a real human actor. New Atlas reached out to Niccolo Pescetelli, one of the creators behind the experiment to find out exactly what is about to happen.

BeeMe is a social experiment designed to find out whether internet users can join forces to ...

Good Thinking

Magik Book catalog syncs with digital content on a tablet

Paul Ridden June 21, 2018

Augmented reality can bring a book to life by pointing a smartphone or tablet camera at coded objects on a page and viewing the results on the smart device's screen. Magik Book has created its own spin with brochures that sync with a tablet and launch digital content when a page is turned.

The Magik Book augmented brochure technology has been developed as a marketing tool for use in ...

Around The Home

This floating cloud lamp is a mini thunderstorm for your coffee table

Rich Haridy August 7, 2017

Brooklyn-based designer Richard Clarkson has been experimenting with artificial cloud designs for several years now. His latest invention is the Floating Cloud – a magnetically levitating ambient lamp that flickers through different colored LED modes in response to the sound in a room.

The general lamp setting offers a cloud illuminated as if shot by a bolt of lightning

Environment

Netflix launches interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure" TV shows

Michael Irving June 22, 2017

Before "interactive movie" video games there were Choose Your Own Adventure books. Streaming video technology has now allowed Netflix to embrace the concept and release its first interactive "branching" narrative program that gives viewers a say in how the story progresses.

Netflix has launched its first interactive episode, starring Puss in Boots

Digital Cameras

Garmin enters the spherical camcorder market, with the VIRB 360

Ben Coxworth May 24, 2017

Although GoPro may have already announced its intention to do so, Garmin has beaten it to the punch by releasing a 360-degree spherical actioncam of its own. Called the VIRB 360, it shoots footage at a resolution of 5.7K/30fps, automatically stitching it together into a 4K/30fps interactive video.

The Garmin VIRB 360 will be available starting next month

Digital Cameras

GoPro's Fusion spherical camera will put viewers in the action

Ben Coxworth April 20, 2017

If you have trouble deciding on the best angle from which to shoot your videos, then you might like what GoPro has in the pipeline. The company's Fusion camera shoots 360-degree panoramic footage that the viewer can subsequently pan and tilt within, to view the action from different perspectives.

The one and only teaser image of the Fusion

Electronics

Motion-sensing wall panels animate boring interiors

Adam Williams December 21, 2016

Until activated by motion, the Lumes wall panel from Australia's ENESS looks pretty standard. But once brought to life, an integrated LED array can display images and relatively complex animations. The first real-world application of the Lumes panel is at Cabrini Hospital in Malvern, Victoria.

ENESS is looking to add touch sensors to the Lumes system

Telecommunications

Ultrasound tech gets TVs talking to smartphones

Ben Coxworth October 17, 2016

A group of Korean entrepreneurs are looking to make interactive TV-viewing even simpler. Their Soundlly system transmits an inaudible ultrasound tone along with TV broadcasts, which allows users' mobile devices to serve as "second screens."

Soundlly sends information from TV broadcasts to mobile devices, via ultrasound

Good Thinking

In the Faroe Islands, Street View has become Sheep View

Stu Robarts July 13, 2016

One of the ever-more limited places Google's Street View cars have yet to visit is the Faroe Islands. Aggrieved that her home country, which she says is "the most beautiful place on earth" is missing out, Durita Dahl Andreassen strapped a 360-degree camera to a sheep and created Sheep View 360.

Sheep View 360 is part of a wider campaign to bring Google Street View to the ...

Architecture

Huge motion-sensing building installation is off-the-wall

Stu Robarts July 12, 2016

If you're tired of boring building walls, Manhattan-based experiential design firm ESI Design has a solution. The firm has outfitted Terrell Pace in the US capital Washington, DC, with 1,700 sq ft of interactive media displays that react to activity within the building.

Displayed content is said to "ebb and flow based on activity within the building, such as ...