adiVerse Virtual Footwear Wall

adidas (note the lack of caps) and Intel have teamed up to create this virtual interactive footwear wall. The wall recognises if you're male or female, delivering you a selection of shoes that suit. You can then dive in and explore the shoe from every angle, and even the marketing campaign behind it, although I'm not too sure why you'd want to do that.

A very nice example of how interactivity can be used to enhance the retail experience.

Thanks Sheena for the link.

3D Printing: Closer Than You Think

The costs of 3D printing are dropping rapidly, making the idea of bespoke 3D objects more possible by the day. Companies such as Freedom of Creation are leading the way in producing 3D objects for industry. One area they're particularly excited about is the fashion industry:

"[Imagine] I can measure your body, in 3D, and I can make you perfectly fitting garments in the future without any sewing and stitching, making the needle and the thread obsolete."

3D printers are cheaper and more available than most people think. This RepRap machine costs £300, quite a contrast from earlier machines that cost in the region of £20, 000.

There is huge potential here for the rapid prototyping of products and objects and it can only fuel the fire of agencies exploring the development of in-house products.

Thanks to Ed for the links.

More info here on BBC News.

A USB Key In A Wall

Aram Bartholl is mortaring USB drives into the walls of New York. Each drive invites whoever is brave enough to push their laptop into a wall, to share and download files. Bartholl has residency at EYEBEAM, an incubation studio for art and technology.

Very simple, and very interesting.

The Clone Tool for Video

Diminished Reality is a piece of software that can delete an object from live, full-motion video.
Developed by researchers at Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany, the software uses technology similar to the smudge tool in photoshop to first reduce the quality of an image, remove the image, and then improve the result incrementally until it has returned to full resolution.

Brilliant.

Vein ID

Shown at RetailTech 2010, Hitachi's finger vein authentication technology was used with a Coke vending machine as a form of payment. Basically you stick your hand in, it reads your unique finger pulse, which then authorises a payment on your credit card. This may be more secure, but it could also mean someone will want to cut off your fingers when they're robbing you.