THE MOBILE HORNET … for those who get turned on by mobile devices

I was at the movies recently to watch the high-octane thriller WANTED. You have to take your hats off to Russian director Timur Bekmambetov and his team for all the special effects … all made possible with computers!

Wired explained how they pulled off the adrenaline-pumping stunts:

“Riding the rails in Chicago, Wesley Gibson (played by James McAvoy) and Fox (Angelina Jolie) sprint over the roofs of the city’s elevated trains. Wesley  avoids decapitation by leaping above an oncoming tunnel and landing on the other side when the train emerges.

To achieve the effect, several full-size “L” trains were constructed as stationary units on a green-screen stage. In a studio briefing, Bekmambetov explained: “The train was too big to move, so we moved the bridge instead!” Special effects supervisor Dominic Tuohy elaborated: “We moved the bridge with computerized winches. We knew exactly where it was and at what speed it was traveling. That gave confidence to the artists doing their own stunts — 3 meters up in the air — by ensuring that each take would be the same, repetitive move.”

High-Speed Train Crash
The hellacious train wreck, staged in a fantastically beautiful setting, looks unbelievably real. To pull off the stunning scene, the Pendolino car was constructed on a gimbal equipped with hydraulics that rotated 360 degrees and tilted at a 32-degree angle.

“When the train derails itself, our train carriage tilts and rolls to simulate a crash,” Tuohy explains.

“Rolling around inside were all of the stunt crew as well as our actors, who did every scene themselves. It’s far more interesting when you actually have real people trapped behind chairs or getting flung around. Our actors said they felt like they were in a tumble dryer.”

Digital Stunt Doubles
For especially high-risk sequences, Bekmambetov augmented his flesh-and-blood performers with scanned digital stunt doubles. The scanner rotates around the actors for about 15 seconds to create 3-D models. Downloaded to a computer as a CG mold, the virtual models were then “rigged” with skeletal and muscular systems, layered with textured exteriors, fitted with scanned wardrobes and programmed to move like the actors. ”

Crazy Car Chases
To execute Wanted’s first big car chase scene, when Fox hurtles across town in a red Viper shortly after snatching up the hapless Wesley, Jolie was rigged in a harness strapped to the side of the sports car going 30 mph. Stunt coordinator Mic Rodgers says: “The camera platform was on the back of the Viper and we chased it with the camera bike. Angelina as Fox did a head-on, near miss with an oncoming car, which throws her off to the driver’s side of the Viper.”

For those who have not seen WANTED, I strongly recommend you to go and watch it now.  Watch how a Viper “pick up” its passenger !

James McAvoy has been signed on to do the sequel.  Wow!

Hold your seat and watch the trailer here:

Stuart Miles of Pocket-lint reported:

We’ve had camera-focused phones, we’ve had music-focused phones, and now Samsung is to launch a fitness focused phoned.

Called the miCoach (F110), the quad-band slider handset will offer a dedicated fitness button that once connected to a heart monitor and a step counter will give you information about your heart beat, distance covered and time running when out on a run.

But rather than just record your information to download to a computer later, the phone, through the headphones, will give you running information on the fly by simply tapping the screen.

Measuring your heartbeat, the phone will also tell you if you are running too fast or too slow, based on the fitness programme you have selected.

The miCoach will offer over 220 training programmes via a fitness website ranging from plans focused towards you loosing weight or to running a marathon and measure your running speed within four zones to best suit your training based on an initial assessment run.

Going up against Nike and the Apple iPod partnership, Samsung Mobile has teamed up with Adidas for the offering and users will get the heart rate monitor and the step counter, which it calls a foot pod in the box.

The phone, which comes with 1GB memory for storing songs to play when you’re out and about will also come with a 2 megapixel camera so you can record yourself as you cross the finish line.

Supporting the phone, Samsung has also created a dedicated website for PC users that allows you to plan runs, track your progress and keep a permanent diary of your training.

The phone is expected be available next month.

Users looking for the same technology without a mobile phone element however will be disappointed, Samsung say there are no plans at the moment to release the miCoach system without the phone element.

Screen technology has progressed so fast that you can pinch your screen to flip the pages or even better than that, you can blow the pages to flip it.

This is a must-see video clip to see the future of touch screen technology … gesture screen!

Click here and be amazed!

CNET reported:

“Morph, a concept cell phone co-developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, is featured in an online display presented in conjunction with “Design and the Elastic Mind,” a new exhibition of art-meets-technology advances scheduled to run through May 12 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Morph is intended to demonstrate how nanotechnology might be used to make mobile devices stretchable, flexible, transparent, and easier to keep clean.

One objective of the Morph project, says Tapani Ryhanen, head of the Nokia Research Center Cambridge U.K. lab, is that its “combination of art and science will showcase the potential of nanoscience to a wider audience.”

Elements of the technology being developed for the Morph project might be integrated into consumer handsets within seven years, though initially only in high-end phones, says Nokia.

Announced in March of last year, the partnership between Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge is intended to initially focus on nanotechnologty applications. NRC has established a research facility at the university’s West Cambridge site and collaborates with several departments, including the school’s Nanoscience Center and Electrical Division of the Engineering Department. Although Morph technology likely will be incorporated first in high-end handsets, it eventually will find its way into low-cost mobile phones, Nokia says.”

ROLL OUT YOUR SCREEN, PLEASE

UNWIRED VIEW reported:

“The design of the mobile phones is always a fight between two opposite objectives - portability and usability. The more small and portable the device becomes, the less usable the user interface can be.

You can make the phone screen only that small, until the information displayed on it becomes unreadable. The same goes for the input devices. Make the keyboard small enough, and the user will have a really hard time pressing the correct keys.

Well. Motorola has an interesting idea what to do about that. In a patent application “User Interface System” it describes a concept of mobile phone with rollable display and/or keyboard.

Of course, the idea of flexible/rollable screens and keyboards is nothing new. The are quite a few of these gadgets on the market or at least in late prototype stage. The problem with these devices is that flexible/rollable is by definition not rigid. And using the phone with a keypad or display flapping in the wind, is not such a good idea.

But Motorola has found the way around this little problem, by using a reservoir with electrorheological fluid beneath the foldable display or keypad. This fluid becomes a solid material when electric current is applied to it, and then reverts again to fluid state when the electric current disappears.

The phone with either rollable display or keypad will have all it’s working electronics in a solid part, with an enclosure for the flexible part located here as well. In inactive state the flexible part rests in an enclosure.

Whenever the call comes in, or you want to make one, press a button. Electric current is applied, the display rolls out and springs into a solid state, and you use the device as any other mobile phone. Press the button again, and display folds back-in.

To take it even further, both display and keypad can be made flexible. You just put all the necessary electronics into a solid container, with the enclosures for flexible display and keypad. This way you could make matchbox sized mobile mobile phone, which will be as easy to use as any other clamshell.

Looks like an interesting, if pretty far fetched idea, which probably won’t come to life anytime soon.”