Instantaneous translation technology is one of the oldest staples of science fiction stories, but it’s moving very close to being a reality. One recent manifestation is a device being developed at Carnegie Mellon University which uses electrodes mounted on the face and throat to detect the electrical impulses that fire facial muscles when a person talks, and using those movements to identify the phonemes of the speaker’s mother tongue. The as-yet unattained goal is to convert into the other language ‘on the fly’, so it would be like watching a dubbed movie when someone using the device was talking to you. I suspect Borat is being used as a test subject.

Sometimes the best of intentions can still lead to a remarkably silly idea. Say you wanted to maximise the chance of kids escaping unharmed from the rifle sights of a crazy who was shooting up a school – how would you go about it? Why, by making textbook jackets out of kevlar, of course! To quote the article:

“Crozier says the idea is still in its initial stages and he has no idea how much it would cost to cover the books.”

When he finds that out, I believe the idea will have reached its final stages.

Don’t know about you, but I’m a total sucker for pictures of Mother Terra as seen from space. Lucky for me, then, that the ISS EarthKAM Archive is waiting to feed my jones…

Everyone’s headed for Second Life – the clothing outfitters, the motor vehicle companies, and now the book publishers. Penguin Books seem to be the first big player on the scene, that Doctorow fellow notwithstanding. Their first project was a launch of a virtual version of Neal Stephenson’s seminal Snow Crash, the novel in which the term ‘Metaverse’ was first coined. Now they are working on a proper bookstore, complete with books on the shelves that link to Amazon for your purchasing convenience. If the shopping malls in meatspace seem weird, the meta-mall is shaping up to put them in the shade.

The membrane between reality and its virtual twin is becoming increasingly permeable – things are starting to cross the border. I mentioned fabbing just the other day, and here’s an example of a fabbed object that is more than just a proof-of-concept – the first laser-sintered shoe, entirely produced by 3D printing methods, is a potentially marketable product. Or it will be, once they get the price margins down a little.