Friday, November 26, 2004

Tech Goodies in Florence

Just got back from two weeks of running all over the place (well it felt like it) the first of which was Florence (then London, then Hamburg, then Düsseldorf… whew), nice town, beautiful architecture… rip off prices. I think I have gotten spoiled with (kinda) knowing my way around in Rome and knowing good-for-cheap places to eat… argh.

Anyway lots to see there, about $9 to see David in all his well hung glory, but here I try to focus more on tech, and tech there was (though not when I needed it most, like running around with my friend while she shopped [for shoes/purses/jackets… no gizmo store for me]) at two of the exhibits.

I looked around on the web for a mention of these features but found nada (could be something out there in Italian, I used English).

Medici Palace meets Minority Report
There was a cool exhibit in an ok site the Medici Palace. It was a huge screen (something like 2x4m) that had a cone you stood under and about 2 webcam looking things pointed at you while you watched, the cool (at least in concept) part was that to pick something on the screen you wanted to listen to or to go to the next screen you used your hands, pointing at the option you wanted, kinda like Minority Report without the 3D holograms. It did work but not that well, i had to do a lot of waving around to get the desired result, perhaps it requires more practice…

3D of David
The second not-nearly-as-cool-but-what-the-hey thing was at the exhibit of David, they had 3D images of David which you could rotate around looking at every aspect of him (probably did more for the women and true art lovers than it did for me).