Ratchet Up

Media Center In A Headset

A new headset from Nikon, released in Japan, is a completely self-contained entertainment center. Media-playback software and up to eight gigabytes of memory are built in, and with two AA batteries installed, the headset weighs less than a pound. According to Nikon, the adjustable eyepiece simulates a 50-inch TV screen viewed from about 10 feet away. The key to the picture quality is a light-diffraction grating that emerged from the company's research on camera lens design. Data can be loaded onto the headset through either a USB cable or a Wi-Fi connection. [Source]

My Eye Is A Camera

A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras. Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the handicap into an advantage. [...]

With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one. Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."  [...]

His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [...]

Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels that the camera hidden in a prosthetic eye — the same pale hazel color as his real one — would also let him capture more natural conversations than he would with a bulky regular camera. "As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."" [Source]