Japanese toy maker Takara has created a new gadget called Bowlingual, which analyzes and matches the "woofs" and "barks" of man's best friend with a set of pre-programmed phrases, such as "I'm a little bored, let's play" or "I've had enough." According to Takara, the device detects feelings--including happiness, frustration and sadness--and displays the associated expressions on the terminal's screen. It can also be used to record emotional data from the dog throughout the day--this is for busy owners who want to know how their canine friends spend their time alone at home.
The Soundbug turns whatever it's attached to into a sounding board...even your skull if it's pressed on the back of your head. Based on technology research by Newlands Scientific at Hull University, and marketed by Olympia, Soundbug uses something called Terfenol-D, which was developed by the US military for sonar work.
In William Gibson's Neuromancer the concept was called Cyberspace.
In Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash it was called the Metaverse.
In the past ten years, Virtual Reality projects created by companies like Blaxxun Interactive, Worlds Inc, Linden Labs and others...attempted to take us to special cyber-places, promising us adventures in Brave New Worlds.
January 2003 marks the beginning the of the latest virtual universe, called There...as in "let's go There".
Intended for the Instant Messaging and Chat crowd rather than the techo-geeks and gamers, There has been developed to allow human-looking Avatars to communicate using gestures and facial expressions like smiling, laughing, nodding and even winking, blushing and flirting.
