Entries from November 2009 ↓

As Sean Bonner tweeted over the weekend, this may well be the best 17 seconds of your life.

It’s called ProFORMA, or Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition, but it is way cooler than it sounds. The software, written by a team headed by Qui Pan, a student at the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University in England, turns a regular, cheap webcam into a 3D scanner.

Normally, scanning in 3D requires purpose-made gear and time. ProFORMA lets you rotate any object in front of the camera and it scans it in real time, building a fully 3D texture mapped model as fast as you can turn an object. Even more impressive is what happens after the scan: The camera continues to track the objsct in space and matches it’s movement instantly with the on-screen model. Here’s a video of it in action:

It works by generating a 3D point cloud from the image coming through the camera and then uses some clever math to both ignore the occasional occlusion of the model by a hand and to work out where the surfaces are. Then things go over my head, involving a process called Delaunay tetrahedralisation to turn the 2D surfaces into a 3D model.

Like I said: clever math. But imagine, for a second, the uses. Forget Nintendo’s Mii avatars, for instance. Instead you could make a 3D version of yourself, or add your favorite household items into a game of Mario Kart. You could quite possibly hook this rig up to a 3D printer and make fast facsimiles of almost anything. And remember, this is all done using a single camera, just like the one that’s probably staring from the top of your laptop screen as you read this. I want to play with this right now.

ProFORMA product page [Cambridge University via Core77 via BoingBoing]

Those who are active in the field of mobile web design are going to find this site a true source of inspiration. You see, it gathers together salient designs from all over the web in order to give you enough of a thrust when you are designing a mobile-compliant site and hit a dry patch.

When it comes to the actual sites that have been submitted, there is really so much variety at play that if you scratch behind the surface (or just by glancing at the opening screen if your luck is in) you are bound to find something which will set you going.

Read more

Learn more about CSSiPhone.com in Dataopedia.com

Find out how much CSSiPhone.com is worth with Stimator.com

This may be the millionth unofficial launch of the new 360 Wireless N Adapter, but Newegg has the device listed for $100 and on sale…NOW! And it doesn’t look like they’re frantically pulling it. [Newegg via Kotaku]

There are a lot of players vying to become your gateway to rest of the web: Facebook Connect, OpenID, Sign In With Twitter, MySpace ID, and Google Friend Connect just to name a few. It’s Facebook Connect however that seems to be leaving all of the other connect methods in the dust. This includes Google Friend Connect, which without a major social network to back it has floundered in terms of adoption.

Google’s not about to hand over this potentially vital market over to Facebook, however. A few weeks ago, the company simplified the Friend Connect implementation process. Today, the search engine giant has introduced an array of new features that allow users to get to know each other by adding interests, adding the ability to send private messages, and more.

The first part of the new features revolves around what boils down to social networking. For example, site owners can use Friend Connect to ask their visitors about their favorite activities and use that data to help connect people with similar tastes. It also gives the site owner a lot of valuable data.

The other part of the announcement really focuses on getting website owners to adopt Friend Connect. Google touts new options such as building custom newsletters, creating gadgets and links that target the interests of every user, and improving the relevancy of Google ads. The company can launch all the user-based features it wants, but without site owners adopting, it won’t matter.

The push by Google is smart, but Facebook’s built-in social advantage is something the search giant just cannot beat. Leveraging the data and log-ins of 300+ million users is Facebook’s huge advantage, and unless Google can find a way to parry that, these new features, while welcomed, may not help spur a new wave of adoption.

If you want to learn more, Google has created a new overview video of Google Friend Connect which explains both the basics and the new features:

Join the Mashable Google Friend Connect Community

You can join our Frend Connect community using the widget below!

Tags: friend connect, Google, google friend connect