If you've seen the classic Alice in Wonderland, you probably remember the scene where Alice falls down the rabbit hole and is consequently introduced to a new way of seeing life. To this day, "rabbit holes" are synonymous with adventure, discovery, and new dimensions. This notion is exactly the reason "RabbitHoles," the Canadian 3D Motion Hologram company, bears it's name.

The company's mission statement is to give the world a new way of seeing by bringing 3D and motion to life, in print. To accomplish this mission, they have developed an entirely new print medium: a 3D Motion Hologram printed into a 2-dimensional film surface, which displays full-color 3D and action visible without special eyewear.

A RabbitHole works much like a flip-book, with an embedded sequence of 1280 digital images acting in place of drawings on pages...using film instead of paper...and the viewers' thumbs being replaced by the viewers themselves. The digital images each provide a unique perspective of the scene or object that varies gradually from one image to the next.

The technical side of the "how it works" all comes down to lasers:

Red, green, and blue pulsed-lasers are used to embed a diffraction grating within a small thickness of holographic film. Each digital image in the sequence is divided into a given number of holo-pixels using proprietary algorithms. The holo-pixels are then assigned to their necessary location amongst a given number of rows and columns. This grid of unique holo-pixels is submitted to the Company's patented printers, which utilize red, green, and blue pulse-lasers to embed the data into the specially formulated emulsion film. The resulting prints must be front-lit from either the top or the bottom at a 45-degree angle by a direct white-light source such as a Halogen fixture or sunlight. With the white-light shining properly on a RabbitHole, the diffraction gratings bounce the light in an extremely specific wavelength, and therefore color, which allows RabbitHoles to reflect full-color images.

According to RabbitHole's website, three characteristics make this new communication tool unique and particularly memorable:

3D/Z-plane: RabbitHoles are completely flat (0.7mm thick), yet the 3D imagery appears further in front of, and deeper beyond the surface than people imagine is possible.

Motion: Using CGI (computer generated imagery) or live-action digital video, RabbitHoles can hold motion sequences up to ten seconds long to tell a short story, or bring a character to life.

Interactivity: Viewers' movement in front of a RabbitHole triggers the immersive and animated content, provided by the image sequence embedded in the surface.

Like most promising new technologies, obstacles like high costs and technical complexity of production stand in the way of mainstream consumer usage of RabbitHoles. Currently, a single movie-poster-size piece takes four hours to print and costs about $2,000, but don't be too quick to discount the tech as a possibility just yet. RabbitHoles is working on bringing down the prices and speeding up the production and the medium has the potential to add a whole new dimension to visual communication...literally.

Check them out for yourself on their website. Be sure to watch the video on the homepage, it gives the most "realistic" view.

Our close proximity to NYC definitely has its benefits such as having easy access to pop-up galleries and events such as this past weekend's Gizmodo Gallery. If you're not familiar with Gizmodo, it's pretty much THE blog to go to for entertaining and informative insights on tech and gadgets.

The guys over at Giz decided to display the best of Gizmodo for the general techy public. They gathered up "the biggest and best from this year, strange tech from the far reaches of the world and prototypes from the dawn of the electronic age" and set up shop at the Reed Annex in the Lower East Side. They then looped the gallery idea in with a Toys for Tots fundraiser and let the fun begin!

Head to their site for a full list of items displayed and check out N-GEN's highlights below:

The biggest attention grabber was most definitely the 103-in plasma screen, but then again, it was hard to miss. The giant plasma displayed Mars in 3D, an ultra-high def virtual reality panorama from photographer Joergen Geerds, and video games galore. Other notables included the Back to the Future-modded DeLorean, which one homeless passerby touted as "the original bat mobile" that "could smoke any *expletive* cop car in this city, yo!," a live "Will it Blend?" demo of a charged iPhone (which resulted in a minor explosion), and the amazingly clear-pictured, yet equally expensive 11-in OLED TV from Sony.

And Guy Kawasaki's post about it:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/09/winners-of-worl.html

The folks at Yahoo - who own Flickr - have asked a few of their Flickr users for permission to turn their kitty photos into emoticons for the Yahoo Messenger.

Here's a link to some of the results: Yahoo Messenger blog

Here's a reaction from one of the photographers (I have reason to know she's thrilled):

Tunie is Famous!! "Talk to the Paw" Emoticat™ Icon released today!

This is an interesting twist on CGM - pull consumer-generated media from your user base (it helps if your user base is photographers :-) rather than waiting for it to be pushed to you, and meet the consumer half-way (in this case by providing illustration talent). Wonder if they did this with any other classes of photo, or is it just cat pix?
Apparently this is to support a chat environment called Emoticats - more here.

Here's where to get the Yahoo chat client.

Fixmyphotos is a site that allows you to upload photos for retouching, at low rates. The work is apparently done at least in part by human operators, and the turnaround is 48 hrs.
They're in testing on their updated services, and Guy Kawasaki has instructions on how to try out the service (requires you to use Internet Explorer, unfortunately)
Guy's write-up - how to test the site

Fun & games at becomeanmm.com: first, create a character for yourself. Mine's above.

Now, how long till can I use this little guy as my Second Life avatar??
Once you've created a character, you can use M&M partner Zazzle's service to put it on hats, shirts, etc.
The M&M site also includes a fairly basic World (pseudo-virtual - just a bunch of images you can click on, no real navigation or experience); and a couple of Flash games (couldn't get these to work on my visit).

Also fun is the ability to insert your character into a little Flash movie:

Link

Friday Eye-candy Time!
Laughing Squid has a link to this intriguing collection of High Dynamic Range photos from Japan.




Link

Guy Kawasaki has a Q&A with Presentation Zen's Garr Reynolds here.
Definintely a good intro to the PZ approach, if a little light for regular followers of the PZ site.

Here's a sample:

Question: How did we get to this place where most presentations suck?

Answer: There are many reasons. First of all, presenting exceptionally well isn’t easy. In fact it’s hard. That’s why we find great presenters—and great communicators in general—so remarkable. They are all too rare. Many professionals simply have never had much practice and just follow conventional wisdom and do it “like everyone else” instead of doing it effectively.

PowerPoint and Keynote are both pretty simple tools, but there has been too much focus on the tools themselves. If people want to learn how to make better slides they should study good books on graphic design and visual communication to improve their visual literacy.

When it comes to designing appropriate visuals, there is a hole in our education. Concerning quantitative displays, for example, very few people have had proper training in how to design graphs and charts, etc. The great master Edward Tufte has written many useful books in this regard.
Link

The new Presentation Zen book

The ever-interesting site Presentation Zen has some presentation tips culled from Steve's latest;
Briefly:

1. Develop rapport with the audience.
2. Give them an idea of where you're going.
3. Show your enthusiasm.
4. It's not about numbers, it's about what the numbers mean.
5. Make it visual.
6. Save the best for last.

Worth heading over to read the full article, for sure.
Link

Juice Analytics has a nice (quick-reading) little set of tips on how to avoid inflicting death-by-PowerPoint on your audience. Here's an obvious, but all-too-needed example:

Bad:

Better:

Full article at Juice Analytics

For more on how to use your Power(point)s for good instead of evil, see Presentation Zen.