Holograms you can feel

via Core77 on 8/6/09

Totally nuts! Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed holograms that provide tactile feedback. It's one thing to see a three-dimensional ball floating in space but quite another to actually feel it, and that's the promise of this latest technology, which will hopefully revolutionize interface designs of the future.

The trick is to combine motion tracking (via Wiimotes, of all things) with ultrasonic waves, which can be tuned to provide tangible feedback at a focused point in space. It's difficult to describe in text, but that's why we have YouTube; check this video out to see what they're developing.

Samsung's Animated, Flexible OLED Passport

via Gizmodo by John Herrman on 6/19/09

Announced last year, this technology sounded more than a little bit pie-in-the-sky. A flexible OLED passport? With video capabilities? And it's powered wirelessly? Yet here it is, captured in full sight, on video.

And I'll be damned if it doesn't work perfectly. Alongside a static picture, this e-passport displays a rotating photographic avatar when placed near a power source. OLED-Info thinks the card is pulling power from an RFID reader, but given that the display is full-fledged 320x240, 260k color OLED panel that's playing video, I tend to think there's a more powerful type of inductive charging going on here.