BirdBox Studios has released a fun little interactive holiday short on YouTube this week. Using your mouse you can click to make a series of choices, choosing one of three hedgehogs to sing a carol and then picking out their music, clothes, or other props. Depending on the choices you'll make you'll arrive at a very different ending and it's worth going back and playing the short again and again, just to see each of the funny outcomes. 

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With the holidays coming upon us many retailers are launching their traditional Christmas storefronts, filling large windows with animatronic characters and moving toys. Last Sunday Saks Fifth Avenue in New York delivered a more modern twist with this spectacular transformation of their building front using computer mapping to create an animated 3D projection. 

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The day might come when you can upload the dream you had last night to YouTube for others to see. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley have developed a method where they can scan the mind of a person watching a movie and record what they see from their brain. The feat is performed using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which scans the brand for activity, and computational models that have been created to "decode" the visual signals created in the mind. The video below shows the results from sessions where volunteers were asked to watch Hollywood movie trailers. While the images are a bit muddy at this early stage, the success at any scale is incredible.

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For several years now webcams have shipped with special face-tracking features that can give a user access to a number of virtual disguises. False mustaches, round glasses, even the ears of cats have been donned by giggling teens across the internet, but software engineers Kyle McDonald and Arturo Castro have taken the technology further with celebrity masks, allowing themselves to take on the appearance of Brad Pitt, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson. As you can see in the video below, the effect isn't perfect, but it's close enough to be creepy in the way one set of facial features can "stick" to another's. 

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Since they first appeared in the 1989 hit, Back To The Future II, Marty McFly's futuristic, self-lacing running shoes have become a bit of an obsession to sneaker fans, enough that shoemaker Nike has been inundated with mail asking them to work on making them a reality. Well, the year is now 2011 and a limited run of the fiction-turned reality runners are now on sale. There are, naturally, a few twists.

 

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What would it be like to be cosmic in size, to view our Earth like something you can walk around or turn about in your hands? To view it from all angles, not as a map or a photograph glued to a ball, but as a living thing in motion? This coming September 7th the Museum of Natural History in Halifax, Nova Scotia will unveil a new model of our planet created with unprecedented accuracy. It's a room-sized construct of advanced technology called The Blue Marble that arrives from the  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States and will become a permanent exhibit for the museum under the name Science on a Sphere. 

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So this one robot says to another..... well, actually, watch the video below and you'll see.

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Wry and bemused, Tom Waits addresses the idea of online privacy this week by releasing a YouTube gag video, embedded below. His first album was released nearly forty years ago and as he prepares for his latest release, Bad As Me, in October, he has to contend with the realities of Facebook, Twitter, and Bit Torrent where a small army of users are quick to unofficially spread out details for anything new, putting an emphasis on being "first" over actually savouring or understanding the content.

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A company Japan claims to have invented the world's first "gel transferring" machine. The SWITL by Furukawakikou Co., Ltd uses a teflon scoop to effortlessly slide under gelatinous substances like ketchup or thick sauces, lifting them and holding them up intact and undisturbed as if they were a solid. Demonstrators quickly pick up lines of condiments, sliding them and placing them back as if they are pancakes. While the immediate implication might be a wonder device for cleaning up spills, the company is believes there's a serious application for the baking industry in better handling of ingredients that normally would fall apart in the hands of workers of machines. I've included their demonstration video below and to most people I've shown it to, two words come to mind - 'dog poop". 

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With an iPad and a shoebox Gary Katz has recreated large scale venues such as a drive-in theatre and a cinema, now he's aiming for the big time with a stadium rock show. His iPad Concert Kit sells for $9.99 online and gives you all the crafty parts to build a rock venue around your tablet screen, complete with moving audience. You can see the results in the movie below. You just have to find the right concert footage to match.

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