If this trailer is any indication, The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones may be a very interesting movie indeed. Based on the book of the same name written by Cassandra Clare, it is the first volume of The Mortal Instruments series, which means if it does well there are more stories ready and waiting to join it on the big screen.
While this is a nice little astronomy video, it isn’t really about the stars at all. When you go to the 100,000 Stars web site the really interesting thing is the demonstration of WebGL. Currently WebGL is implemented by default in the latest release of Chrome, and it is available in Safari, Firefox, and Opera, but you have to turn it on to use it (get activation instructions). I am sure no one is going to be shocked or surprised that WebGL also requires a fairly robust and recent graphics card, and even with that you may need to grab the latest drivers for it. While this should work on most tablets, smart phone implementation is still problematic.
Ready to learn how to run your own brainwave controlled robot? Yes, I know a real robot would have its own self-contained intelligence system rather than being teleoperated, but still this is pretty cool. This report from DigInfo is about a joint French and Japanese robotics project that could grant freedom undreamed of to paraplegics and other physically challenged folks. Of course, it is also the path leading to the kind of world made popular in the Bruce Willis movie Surrogates, but every advance comes with a potential dark side attached.
This tasty little video was created by Alyse Miller and Phillip SimonWhile they were attending the Ringling College of Art and Design working in the Computer Animation Program. It’s nice to know there continue to be original ideas constantly popping up in the independent animation field, and some talented people to execute them.
The folks over at Scientific American posted about tomorrow night’s Nova program What Will the Future Be Like, because it is hosted by one of their columnists/scientists. As you can see from the video they shared, Augmented Reality is one of the approaches they investigate. Yes, there are a lot of AR Apps already available, but we have barely scratched the surface on what is possible. I am setting my DVR for the program, just in case they don’t stream it after.
I am sorry to report the only new genre film I am aware of this week involves vampires who shimmer in the sun, instead of bursting into flames the way they were meant to. They would, taking the cellulose film stock with them, if there was any justice in the world. Yes, I mean The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. This should be a good weekend to see something released in the last few weeks that I missed, though.