The Graphics Lab at the University of Southern California has designed an easily reproducible, low-cost 3D display system with a form factor that offers a number of advantages for displaying 3D objects in 3D. The display is:

• autostereoscopic - requires no special viewing glasses
• omnidirectional - generates simultaneous views accomodating large numbers of viewers
• interactive - can update content at 200Hz

The system works by projecting high-speed video onto a rapidly spinning mirror. As the mirror turns, it reflects a different and accurate image to each potential viewer. Our rendering algorithm can recreate both virtual and real scenes with correct occlusion, horizontal and vertical perspective, and shading.

While flat electronic displays represent a majority of user experiences, it is important to realize that flat surfaces represent only a small portion of our physical world. Our real world is made of objects, in all their three-dimensional glory. The next generation of displays will begin to represent the physical world around us, but this progression will not succeed unless it is completely invisible to the user: no special glasses, no fuzzy pictures, and no small viewing zones.

Everyone has a big idea.

The next Facebook or Twitter is being presented to potential funders by a hundred different startups every year. However, many or even most of these ideas never really get off the ground. So what’s standing between these companies and success?

Today we’re going to look at why many brilliant ideas fail to make an impact and one essential question that could’ve helped them succeed.

Its rare that I will use the words “innovative” and “Microsoft” in the same sentence. But today I am breaking that habit to talk a moment about Pivot. Pivot is an innovative piece of software from Microsoft that makes it possible to visualize large sets of data in very interesting ways.

Just the Highlights

Disclosure out of the way, here are the latest findings, highlights first:

• 92 countries generated more than 10 million request in May 2010, up from 27 countries in May 2008
• Nokia leads in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe
• Apple leads in North America, Oceania and Western Europe
• In May 2010, smartphones generated 46% of traffic in the AdMob network, up from 22% 2 years ago
• 24% of May's traffic was via Wi-Fi
• Mobile Internet Devices (including the iPad, PSP and iPod Touch) consistently have accounted for 10% of traffic over the past year
• 57% of Apple devices in AdMob's network are outside the U.S.
• Traffic from the Android platform has grown 29% month-over-month since May 2009
• iOS and Android users spend 79 minutes per day using apps
• iOS and Android users download about 9 apps per month

Android Gains Thanks to New Devices

The introduction of numerous Android-based phones has allowed the mobile OS's market share to increase dramatically over the past year, AdMob finds. But what's most interesting is seeing what those gains look like, graphed out.

In this chart, for example, you can see a sharp increase in Android's market share while Apple's iOS market share drops. In February, Apple appears to have a 50% share, but by May, it's down to 40% worldwide.

There are dozens of great demos. But four you don't want to miss are from the companies named Best of Show by the live audience on May 11: 

• Bobber Interactive: Launched a youth-oriented online banking/savings program with gaming and social features.  
• Expensify: Demoed new tools for managers to track and monitor employee spending via "expense reports that don't suck."
• oFlows: Showed its new end-to-end paperless loan-application system.
• Wikinvest: Launched its new Hurricane stock information system to deliver real-time info faster than other outlets.

Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corporation has developed a series of bold architectural plans for the world of tomorrow. Here is a preview of seven mega-projects that have the potential to reshape life on (and off) Earth in the coming decades.

* * * * *

- Luna Ring

In response to the ever-growing demand for energy, Shimizu has developed plans for the Luna Ring, a project that seeks to transform the Moon into a massive solar power plant.

Luna Ring’s 11,000-kilometer (6,800-mile) “solar belt” spans the Moon’s equator

Electricity collected by the Luna Ring’s enormous “solar belt” is relayed to power conversion facilities located on the near side of the Moon. There, the electricity is converted into powerful microwaves and lasers, which are beamed at Earth. Terrestrial power stations receive the energy beams and convert them back to electricity.

Luna Ring feeds power to energy-hungry Earth

The solar power plant is built mainly using lunar resources. Moon rocks and dust are used to manufacture building materials such as cement, bricks and glass fibers. Water is produced through a chemical process involving lunar soil and hydrogen.

Large machinery and equipment from Earth is assembled in space and landed on the lunar surface for installation. Much of the construction is performed by robots controlled by people on Earth, and a team of human astronauts is stationed on the Moon to supervise the robot operations.

ROCK!

Lies, damned lies and statistics: You can play games with numbers, and recently the game has been to show Android phones are beating the iPhone in the U.S. Now new data proves that in the rest of the world, Google's still chasing Apple.

The new figures come from Gartner as part of a bigger survey of global mobile phone use patterns. This has two headline figures that are news all by themselves: Globally the entire mobile market grew by 17% in the first quarter of 2010, a strong indicator that the world's economy is definitely on the mend. But the smartphone market grew even faster, from 13.6% of total sales in Q1 2009 to 17.3% in Q1 2010--a 27% growth rate, which is yet another sign that while the dumbphone still owns the market, the future is in smartphones.

This art-meets-robot has the grueling task of standing on one foot all day long while other robots get to bend to their heart’s content. It balances on that single point by adjusting its center of gravity with six pendulum-like appendages.

Scientists the world over are looking to bring back line-of-sight networking, and the latest demonstration has Chinese researchers streaming video to a laptop with naught but ceiling-mounted blue LEDs. The Chinese Academy of Sciences claims to have realized a 2Mbit per second internet connection that transmits data simply by modulating the flicker of the little diodes, and imperceptibly enough to have them serve as room lighting as well.

Google’s Android OS surpassed Apple in US smartphone market share during the first quarter of 2010. According to the NPD Group, Google now enjoys 28 percent of the smartphone market, earning the company the second-place spot behind Research in Motion (36 percent) and pushing Apple to third place (21 percent).