3-D

Dubrovnik in 3-D:  University of Washington

Using nearly half a million Flickr photos of Rome, Venice, and the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik, a team of computer scientists at the University of Washington's Graphics and Imaging Laboratory assembled digital models of the three cities in 3-D.

Last week, we saw the environmentally friendly battery in which a genetically engineered virus is used to produce the electrodes. To adjust the process as they went along, the scientist simply tweaked the DNA of the virus.

Elsewhere, researchers have come up with a battery that is powered by a drop of blood.

Also in today's links: a musician gets wound up over Google, golfers try to relax, and more.

To me, nobody's got Fisher Price and its 65-year-old View-Master beat when it comes to 3-D. Sure, its paper discs are only capable of conveying still images, but no matter how many so-called 3-D movies, games, ads, or even football matchups I've seen over the years, nothing's come close to duplicating the awe I experienced the first time I ever peeped into those famous red binoculars. So, it was with great anticipation that I test drove the new GeForce 3-D Vision gaming goggles from Nvidia this week.

While we wait for the era of live 3-D broadcasts to work out the kinks , we can rejoice at the era of 3-D advertisements. At the end of the second quarter, viewers with the appropriate set of eyewear will be treated to an entire commercial break in 3-D. But what does it mean if, while wearing the trendy glasses, you still can’t see the SoBe lizards dance around or the advertisement for the upcoming 3-D Monsters vs Aliens movie?

In case you didn’t hear, the first-ever 3-D broadcast of an NFL game recently went down. Don’t worry if you missed it, because your old buddy The Grouse was present to bring you this report from the front lines. Or, the line of scrimmage, as it were.

The NFL hopes to someday bring 3-D football to the pigskin loving public at large. This preview was a demo of what we might someday see play out in movie theaters across the country. That’s right—the game was shown in the same type of movie theaters you’d watch one of those Disney 3-D movies in, which should be your first clue that this was definitely a different way of watching football.