Super Mario Crossover lets you play Super Mario Bros using characters from other games. Pretty cool stuff.
Super Mario Crossover
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Category Archives: Cool Stuff
Video: Saving the Princess
Come to think of it, I wonder if Princess Peach cared much for that plumber named Mario after she was rescued.
Video: Retro Games Destroy NYC
Have to give these guys credit for putting together an interesting, cool video.
Playstation Move
This is a pretty clever commercial.
I was trying to figure out how they were determining your body-position from two controllers. From the videos I’ve seen, they do a pretty good job of it.
I can understand how they could figure out the controller’s position in 3d space, based on a 2d-camera image and the size of each of those balls from the camera’s perspective (which gives them a distance to the camera). I can also understand that they can use inverse kinematics to figure out a person’s arm position. But, as far as I can tell, if you hold the controller to your chest and take a step forward, the computer should perceive that your body is in it’s original location and you have your arms outstretched. Unless I’m missing something, they aren’t tracking the location of your body. Interesting stuff nevertheless. Also, I’m glad the system doesn’t suffer from the same cheats that you can do with the Wii motion controller.
Microsoft Translating Telephone
This is a pretty cool video. Not only is it impressive technology, but the idea of overcoming language barriers is also pretty cool. The military has been very interested in this kind of stuff — so soldiers in the field can communicate with natives. I wonder how long until call-centers are outsourced to non-English-speaking countries. I could also see it being used for auto-generating transcripts for things like podcasts, which could be useful for searching.
Zappos’ Approach to Business
I really like Tony Hsieh’s approach to business. Here’s an mp3 to his talk at the Web 2.0 conference:
In this presentation at the Web 2.0 Conference, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh talks about his first business selling pizza in college, starting Link Exchange after college, and how he eventually ended up leading Zappos as the CEO. Tony discusses how his experience at Link Exchange influenced him to focus on corporate culture as a top priority, and why he thinks culture is so important to a company’s future growth and success.
Tony talks about the internal vision of Zappos not just to be an Internet footware merchant, but to be a brand that is known for an excellent customer experience. He goes on to list a number of specific techniques that the company uses to enhance customer service, and explains why he thinks that the telephone is still one of the best branding devices available.
Video: Magnetosphere by Flight404
I just think this video is pretty cool. It’s done in Processing, which is an open source computer language setup for visual effects.
Moon Preview
A while ago, I happened to see the movie “Moon”, and recommended it. Well, it looks like they’ve put the first seven minutes of the movie up on the internet. You can watch it here, courtesy of the Independent Film Channel:
Movie Magic
I was pretty impressed with the compositing movie editors are able to do:
[via Fubiz]
Also, the same video made it to YouTube, but for some odd reason, the guy who uploaded it there removed the movie-production studio’s name from the beginning and end of the video.
Penny Arcade TV?
I stumbled on this while reading Penny Arcade: they’re doing a video-blog/Reality Show*, but only for a limited time. Click the image below to see the videos.
* They’re calling it a “reality show”, but I don’t see any physical challenges, infighting, or any disgusting “eat this live snail/spider/scorpion” contests, so I think it’s more similar to a ‘day in the life’ documentary.