An interesting new pool table called the Obscura CueLight is making waves for its unique use of video technology to enhance the player’s experience.

Currently set up at the Esquire Ultimate Bachelor pad, the Obscura CueLight is quite an amazing demonstration of technology. It uses sensors and motion detectors to manipulate images as you move the balls around the table. While the table is currently set up to reveal a hidden image, that’s just one potential use of the technology. It can also be configured to trail flames behind the balls, or even project a pool of water on the table that ripples as the balls move over it.

The good news is that the system itself only costs $80,000. It just happens to be mounted on a table that costs $125,000. So the question is, would it work on the $75 table you picked up at a garage sale?

There are a ton of possibilities with this setup.

via ChruchGear — Coolest $200,000 pool table ever

Update: Here is another video with some different effects.

After years of speculation, Newegg has finally opened is virtual doors in Canada. I’m not sure how their prices compare to other Canadian retailers yet, but you can go see for yourself: Newegg.ca.

Haven’t I seen these guys before somewhere?

To further test their hardiness, Ingemar Jönsson of Sweden’s Kristianstad University and colleagues launched two species of dried-up tardigrades from Kazakhstan in September 2007 aboard ESA’s FOTON-M3 mission, which carried a variety of experimental payloads.

After 10 days of exposure to space, the satellite returned to Earth. The tardigrades were retrieved and rehydrated to test how they reacted to the airless conditions in space, as well as ultraviolet radiation from the Sun and charged particles from space called cosmic rays.

The vacuum itself seemed to have little effect on the creatures. But ultraviolet radiation, which can damage cellular material and DNA, did take its toll.

Tough little guys aren’t they? For another photo, one that actually makes the tardigrades look like “bears”, see here.

‘Water bears’ are first animal to survive space vacuum via Water bears in spaaaaace! at Blog Futurismic

Google has released a web browser of their own. Dubbed Chrome, the program is set to compete with Mozilla’s Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Wired Magazine has an interesting article detailing the people and rationale behind Google’s newest endeavor.

Being very happy using Firefox, I have yet to try Chrome, but you can download it for yourself here. So far, the reivews seem to conclude that while Chrome is simple and fast (or not so fast), it still has a long way to go if it wants to compete with Firefox and IE8. We will have to wait and see what the future holds for the browser market as Chrome matures. This could end up being yet another instance of Microsoft’s competitive edge slipping away.

The exhibit is full of retro gadgets, as you’ll see below, but the most interesting to me were the bisected lenses and cameras, the insides of which show the precision of a CAD drawing. Read on to see sawn-off gadgets, the origin of digital cameras and a secret doorway just for horses.

Gallery of Sawn-In-Half Cameras | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

It’s been a long, leak-filled wait, but Apple finally took the wraps off its 3G iPhone. Thinner edges, full plastic back, flush headphone jack, and the iPhone 2.0 firmware — Apple’s taking a lot of the criticisms to heart from the first time around. Obviously 3G is at the forefront, but they’re also making sure it’s available all over internationally, works with enterprises, runs 3rd party apps… and does it all for cheaper. Apple claims its 3G speeds trounce the competition, with pageloads 36% faster than the N95 and Treo 750 — and of course it completely trounces the old EDGE data speeds.

Battery life isn’t getting put out to pasture though, with 300 hours of standby, 8–10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio. GPS is also a go. Apple is using A-GPS, which supplements regular satellite GPS data with info from cellular towers for faster location. (WiFi data is also worked into the mix, which should give users a pretty solid lock on where the heck they are on this planet.) Unfortunately, as expected there’s no front-facing cam, and while its edges are thinner than before it’s still about a millimeter thicker at the center (12.3mm over 11.6mm before). Apple hopes to launch in 70 countries this year, with the black 8GB going for $199 and 16GB for $299 in black or white. (Both price points require a contract, of course.) Apple will be hitting the 22 biggest markets, including the US, on July 11th. More info after the break.

The second generation iPhone will also be available in Canada on July 11. Pricing for the device itself is rumored to be similar to the US, however, the cost of data and voice plans may be far higher.

See Engadget for all the iPhone coverage you need.

Update: One of the main conserns about the iPhone in Canada has been the forcasted cost of data rates. Rogers has hinted that there may be some changes in the works for their data pricing.

Update 2: The pricing for Canadian iPhone owners has been released. Very dissapointing. I won’t be purchaising one at those prices. Rogers should learn that gouging the consumer is not the way to keep customers on their system in the long run… I guess a 3 year contract helps with that.

A very interesting shot…

May 6, 2008—After 9,000 years of silence, Chile’s Chaitén volcano (pictured on May 3) is erupting with lava, ash—and lightning (full story).

Since the volcano awoke on May 2, it has continued erupting intermittently, blanketing the area in ash and forcing more than 4,000 people to flee.

The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a “dirty thunderstorm.”

The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms. (More: “Volcanic Lightning Sparked by ‘Dirty Thunderstorms,’ Study Finds” [February, 2, 2007].)

National Geographic News Photo Gallery: PHOTOS: Chile Volcano Erupts With Ash, Lava, Lightning

People spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars on Monster cables. There is no way to justify paying that kind of money when even the audio snobs can’t hear a difference.

A group of 12 self-professed “audiophiles” recently couldn’t tell the difference between Monster 1000 speaker cables and plain old coat hangers. Yeah, coat hangers. The group was A-Bing different cables, and unbeknownst to them, the engineer running the test swapped out a set of cables for coat hangers with soldered-on speaker connections. Not a single one was then able to tell the difference between the Monster Cable and the hangers, and all agreed that the hangers sounded excellent.

Audiophiles cant tell the difference between Monster Cable and coat hangers — Engadget