Green Screen Tech Comes Home

I just saw the commercial for Yoostar(tm), which is basically a home green-screen video set-up with software that puts you into a movie or television scene.

It looks like a great concept, but right now there's only a limited catalog of scenes available. You only get 14 scenes when you purchase the system; the rest are available to download for a few bucks each. It's also pretty constraining; you can only upload your scenes to the Yoostar site or view them using on your computer using the proprietary Yoostar application. If you were hoping to YouTube your best Elwood Blues impression or burn Gramma's role as Blacula to DVD, you're out of luck.

Still, I'm excited to see yet another tool of video professionals being made affordable enough ($169.99 at Best Buy) for amateurs, and I can't wait to see what the hackers do with it. In the meantime, enjoy this clip, with Snoop Dogg whoring himself out at Tommy Chong, Marlon Brando & others.

Holy Crap I Want This

Commodore 64 Original Hardware Laptop

"This is a fully functional Commodore 64 laptop using actual hardware, specifically the C64C motherboard which was one of the last and smallest revisions. It uses a Gamecube power supply in place of the original power brick.

For storage there’s a device called the 1541-III DTV to “emulate” a floppy drive using an SD card. (Click here for more info) The SD card is formatted FAT-32 so you can dump disk images on it using a PC, and read it with the C64 - pretty cool!"

Demo Video:

In case you were waiting for it:

We can do holograms now.

Concrete Screen

Despite the web site's Star-Trekky promise of "transparent concrete", it’s basically just a slab of concrete with fiber optic cables embedded within.

Still pretty cool, though, and because the cables can transmit natural light as easily as a projected image, it's conceivable that it could be used to install “windows” in below-ground offices and apartements.