CrunchGear

Images Of The Vuzix STAR 1200 Augmented Reality Glasses
Weekend Giveaway: An iPad 2
Bell & Ross Reimagines The First Wrist Watch
Daily Crunch: Falcon Edition

Images Of The Vuzix STAR 1200 Augmented Reality Glasses

Posted: 04 Jun 2011 06:46 PM PDT

The week of May 16th, Vuzix — makers of military and consumer grade Augmented Reality eyewear — announced their newest line of AR glasses as the STAR 1200. As their press release states, STAR stands for See-Through-Augmented-Reality and describes the killer feature of this new concept — transparent displays. Rather than viewing small, mounted video screens in the eyewear that show you both the “real” and “augmented” content at the same time (transferred from external cameras) the STAR 1200 has transparent displays for the “augmented” content and you view the real world the way you normally would. This is different from previous Vuzix models like the Wrap 920AR which uses camera mounts and displays for all viewing.

This is not really news, since the announcement went out at a couple of recent AR conferences, however I did get a hold of some demo images for you all to look at in case you were not at either of the conferences. These are prototypes and are likely to change as more accurate renderings of the product become available nearer to the planned launch in August.

I spoke with Vuzix CEO Paul Travers and he also let me know that the STAR 1200 contains autonomous motion sensors, so you can connect the glasses with software running on a mobile device (like Layar or Junaio) and use the glasses’ motion sensors to align the augmented content rather then relying on the mobile device’s gyros, etc. This will be more accurate.

So what does it look like when you peer the the transparent displays? The image below shows an example of how the augmented content is overlaid onto your view. Here, a target is placed on the gentleman in the image.

I also received a demo video that was output from the Wrap 920AR glasses. In the video you can see some different augmented content in the shape of cars, ships and, of course, dancing robots. Pretty neat.

At last, you too will be able to look at the world the same way our embattled Governator did back in the day while hopefully doing something a bit more productive than hunting down some chick named Sarah Connor.

Weekend Giveaway: An iPad 2

Posted: 04 Jun 2011 08:47 AM PDT

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think iPads grew on trees or were on sale at TJ Maxx or something with the number of these things people want to give away. Regardless, we have a 16GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 waiting for you in sunny San Francisco, ready to wing its way to your mailbox in a few days. Want it? Thought so.

Here’s how to enter.

Our buddies at Fuze want to offer one 16GB Wi-Fi iPad to one lucky winner. They’re asking you to “like” their “Facebook Page” or whatever an also comment below about what you think the future of teleconferencing will look like. Holograms? 3D printing in sugar? Nude meetings? You decide.

Thanks to Fuze, who describe themselves thuswise:

Fuze Meeting and Fuze Messenger allow people to communicate, collaborate and share content from any device, across any network, anywhere in the world. Fuze Meeting is a mobile and web-based collaboration service that features integrated audio conferencing as well as high- definition, synchronized video and image sharing.

I will pick one random winner on Monday at noon Eastern. Good luck!

Bell & Ross Reimagines The First Wrist Watch

Posted: 04 Jun 2011 08:03 AM PDT

As Bell & Ross retreats into the history of timepieces to create more “vintage, original, and heritage” timepieces, we see an increasingly interesting range of retro designs as only Bell & Ross can do it. This year Bell & Ross has gone all the way back to the origins of the wrist watch with the “WW1.” The name means “wrist watch 1,” but not so ironically sounds like world war I. This is the era when wrist watches really began – so the name sort of has a double meaning.