Mike the Headless Chicken
This is not a hoax: Following a non-lethal decapitation, Mike the headless chicken, later nicknamed “Miracle Mike,” lived for approximately 18 months. Seen here in 1945, a little over one month after the beheading, Mike’s body poses with his head.
Janus, the Two-Headed Tortoise
In 2007, visitors to the Geneva Museum of Natural History are fascinated by Janus, a two-headed Greek tortoise, on his 10th birthday. He’s named after the two-headed Roman god.
The hustle and bustle in Los Angeles is over for this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show, which closed Thursday, and the future of video gaming can be summarized with one word: Motion.
After letting Nintendo’s Wii have most of the motion-sensing fun for some time with its revolutionary motion-detecting sensor, this year Microsoft and Sony showed their own initiatives to get players moving.
‘Make the Controller Disappear’
Microsoft’s innovation was introduced by movie director Stephen Spielberg, who proclaimed that interactive entertainment’s next step is “to make the controller disappear.” Microsoft’s Project Natal — pronounced “nuh-tall” — uses speech and facial recognition,
along with navigation by bodily motion, for game control.
The system combines a RGB camera, a depth sensor, a multi-array microphone, and a custom processor running proprietary software. It is compatible with any Xbox 360 system.
“It can recognize you just by looking at your face,” Microsoft said, “and it doesn’t just react to key words, but understands what you’re saying.” And, again following Nintendo’s lead of including the family, Microsoft set the bar for using its system quite low. “If you know how to move your hands, shake your hips, or speak, you and your friends can jump into the fun.”
“Clearly,” said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret, “Nintendo’s success with the Wii has resonated with the industry.” He added that, if Project Natal “can be delivered to the market in a timely fashion,” it could be “potentially a huge thing.”
Nintendo, which began the motion craze, previewed its soon-to-be-released Wii Motion Plus, which enables smaller hand motions and better targeting for players. It is also continuing to expand the Wii into new directions with, for instance, the Wii Vitality Sensor, which detects the pulse in your finger and could be used for relaxation feedback — or, as Nintendo’s president suggested to…
Hotel de Glace, Quebec, Canada.
From mountainous dens to underwater abodes, the following destination hotels offer more novel and memorable experiences than your typical Ramada Inn.
Ice Hotel
Built every winter only to melt in the spring, Icehotel in Sweden is constructed entirely from ice and snow; that includes the walls, fixtures, and furniture. Luxury suite for two. Icehotel, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden.
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Hulu may go from offering free online access to TV shows, movies and clips to a fee-based model, according to an executive from News Corp. Hulu is a joint venture between News Corp., NBC Universal, and Disney.
Over time, paying for some of the content on Hulu is a logical thing, said News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller during an Internet Week event earlier this week. Miller, who was formerly at AOL, prefaced his comments by saying he won’t attend his first Hulu board meeting until Monday, June 8, so his opinions are his own.
“I don’t see why over time that shouldn’t happen,” Miller said. “I don’t think it’s on the agenda for Monday {but} it seems to me that over time that could be a logical thing.”
“It was essentially a throwaway comment and more a reflection of whether they would,” said Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. “The question is what they’ll pay for what content and under what consequences.”
Money, Money
Celebrating its first year recently, Hulu went from being in beta to offering users access to online videos, television shows, and clips from various providers of content and has had tremendous growth. In the past year, the company has gone from 50 content partners to more than 130, has grown the number of advertisers from 30 to 175, and has increased the number of streams from 63 million as of May to 308 million.
Although the service has gained a lot of momentum, and has been backed by top players, including Fox, MGM and Sony Pictures Television, moving from a free model to a fee-based model may put the brakes on Hulu’s momentum.
“Of course you’ll have to pay for it,” posted one blog poster with the screen name bloominoctober. “Hulu was too much of a good thing to…
Sunnyvale, California, June 2, 2009 — IP Infusion, an ACCESS company and provider of intelligent software for Next Generation Network (NGN) equipment that enables service providers to offer state-of-the art Ethernet services, today began shipping its ZebOS Network Platform version 7.7 software which supports PBB-TE functionality.
ZebOS 7.7 provides full support for MPLS and for Carrier Ethernet, allowing router and switch OEMs to lower their software engineering costs. ZebOS 7.7 provides breakthrough time to market for equipment manufacturers in delivering next-generation transport hardware and allows customers to develop and promote their own brand.
“The demand for internet bandwidth is exploding, driven by Web 2.0 applications, IPTV and the new generation of smartphones,” said Koichi Narasaki, president and CEO, IP Infusion. “Carriers and providers are looking to upgrade their networks so they can provide and manage services at a lower cost per bit. ZebOS 7.7 is targeted at filling the needs of equipment manufacturers and service providers faced with these challenges.”
Specific features in ZebOS 7.7 include:
• Support for OpenSAF, the industry’s leading high-availability (HA) middleware
• Hardened implementation of BGP Route Server for deployment in Carrier Networks utilizing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware
• Enhanced resiliency for IP routing with the support for Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
• Ability of MPLS solution to support pseudowires across multiple Packet Switched Networks (PSNs)
• Complete non-stop forwarding (NSF) functionality for IP and MPLS
Besides a comprehensive suite of robust, standards-based software products, IP Infusion provides professional services to assist customers in their product development and deployment support. With a strong product portfolio and professional services, IP Infusion can ensure the most efficient time to market advantage for customers.
About ACCESS
ACCESS CO., LTD. is a global company providing leading technology, software products and platforms for Web browsing, mobile phones, wireless handhelds…
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