Technology, 3d | featured news

Amazon is reportedly developing a smartphone that sports a 3D screen that relies on retina-tracking technology to make images seem to float above the screen like a hologram. With the smartphone, users would be able to navigate through content by using their eyes alone, according to two unnamed people who discussed the phone with the Wall Street Journal.

A Texas group run by a self-described anarchist has posted what appears to be the first video of the live firing of a handgun created with a 3-D printer. The 53-second video shows a single shot being fired from The Liberator, a plastic handgun that, with the exception of its metal firing pin, was assembled from parts made with a 3-D printer, according to Defense Distributed. The gun appears unscathed after the test firing, although the brief clip does not reveal anything about its range or accuracy.

A camera able to create 3D images up to one kilometre (0.62 miles) away has been developed by a team in Edinburgh. Physicists at Heriot-Watt University developed a technique which uses lasers to scan almost any object. With extra research, the camera's range could extend to 10km (6.2 miles), the team said.

The company that developed 3D printed gun parts has announced plans to launch a new firm, dedicated to copyright-free blueprints for a range of 3D printable objects. Defcad, as the firm will be known, has already been dubbed the Pirate Bay of 3D printing. The site will become a "search engine for 3D printing," according to its founders.

In his State of the Union address last week, along with the standard calls for education reform and energy independence, President Obama gave a shout-out to a growing technology. In a lab in Youngstown, Ohio, the president said, “Workers are mastering the 3-D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost anything.”

When Ford wants to try out a new transmission part, an engineer sends a digital blueprint of the component to a computer, and what happens next once seemed like the stuff of science fiction.

Cameras that can record in 3-D are usually pretty complicated, sporting two lenses instead of one, to mimic human binocular vision. Samsung says it has a more elegant solution: a single lens that can go from 2-D to 3-D mode with the flip of a switch.

The promise of home 3-D printing is that you can construct anything you want from the comfort and convenience of your own living room. For a group whose mission is to 3-D print a working pistol from scratch, however, that promise has been revoked.

Google has just announced an event called "The next dimension of Google Maps," where they are expected to introduce 3D maps to it s standard offering. The demo will be less than a week before WWDC2012 event at which Apple is expected to introduce its own map app, with 3D capabilities, as part of iOS 6. At the same time Google is making moves to monetize its services on all fronts, so making the value proposition for its unique offerings is crucial.

This clever demo simulates a 3D effect on your iPad 2 without forcing you to wear glasses.