CityWall has been around for a little bit now, offering a giant multitouch display of maps and other service-oriented features. But now the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology just launched their new 3D UI for the interactive display, which makes it look super futuristic and awesome. While not actually 3D in the physical sense, the UI is fully rendered in 3D. As the video below shows, groups of files are represented as spheres, which can be manipulated in every which way. You can even look at the photo thumbnails inside the sphere "from behind." Though the demo is thin, it shows some really interesting ideas at play. [CityWall via Crave]

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With a history of giving great impressions reaching back to CES, expectations for Mitsubishi's 65in LaserVue TV are high. It's the first laser-powered TV, with completely new rear-projection technology that makes for richer, more accurate colours and significantly lower power consumption. Josh Quittner of Time Magazine got to take one home for a while to drool over/in front of it and, well, that's exactly what he did.

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During the last Presidential debate, John McCain delivered this line about his opponent with withering contempt:

[Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $US3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois.

I'm already tired of hearing these guys talk, but that caught my ear. A $US3 million projector? What does that even look like? Gearlog did some digging and found out that the appropriation was requested by the planetarium to replace an awesome (but obsolete) 40-year old Zeiss Mark VI star projector with a newer model (pictured above).

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Tuesday was a big day in the Broughall household. After years of having to unpack, setup, review, repack, and send back countless flat panel TVs, I finally had my very own plasma delivered and installed. But despite being more fortunate than most consumers in having previously tested plenty of TVs in the comfort of my own loungeroom, there were still a large number of lessons to be learned from the experience of wall-mounting for the first time.

So if you're planning on buying a new flat-panel TV, or thinking of sticking your current screen up on the wall, there are plenty of important factors you'll need to consider. Luckily, I've just been through the process, so you can learn from my mistakes...

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It's been a big week for Panasonic: The company founded by Konosuke Matsushita turned 90, celebrating by both finally swapping the founder's surname in favour of the more well-known Panasonic Corp, and by building its 300 millionth TV set. Apparently this is a record even Sony can't touch, unless the company announces tomorrow that it will focus entirely on plasma sets that are 150 inches and above. I dunno, 90-year-olds can be quite unpredictable sometimes. Anyway, happy birthday, Panasonic—or are you going by just Panny now? [Panasonic on Giz]

When a video editor became depressed looking at his laptop, he did the only logical thing. He went to the garage, whipped out the welding torch and cooked himself up a portable system that could store a five-drive RAID0 array and two 22-inch monitors. Video is captured via unspecified HDMI-wielding video card and project output occurs through a Blu-ray burner. We don't know what the whole honking system weighs in at, but we do know that this 10-minute spark montage build video puts Rocky !, II, III and IV to shame:

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Sony has teamed up with the Max-Planck Institute in Germany to create a flexible, translucent display that creates 3D multi-colour images from laser beams. The all-organic screen uses a chemical reaction called photoexcitation to render images, where energy moves from the lasers to the screen and "turns on" the photons to emit light.

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There's so much wrong with the application of this technology that we won't even get started on it, but this Sharp television runs off the juice of a single attached solar panel. That's because the 52" LCD is illuminated by LEDs which coincidentally reduces its power draw to the same amount produced by that solar panel sitting on the floor.

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It's not built quite yet, but Tameer Holding is constructing the world's largest LED screen in Dubai for a commercial office building named The Podium. The gigantic display will be implemented as the building's facade, reaching 33 stories into the sky and maintaining visibility up to a mile away. (Needless to say, that's a lot bigger than we are building displays in America.)

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Pioneer showed off their new Floating Vision technology at CEATEC this year. It's a system of layers: first, an LCD with built-in computer, then an array of 3D lenses, and finally the "space sensor," or virtual screen, where you can wave your fingers around and watch the 3D animations react accordingly. But the space sensor can also distinguish between and interact with different objects, like the Microsoft Surface: hold your phone under a falling object, say, and it'll appear on your phone's screen with a coupon for that item. Second video after the jump.

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OLEDs are pretty much awesome, but the coolest application, the bendy one, is still tricky, because flexible plastic is more porous than stiff glass, and OLEDs get really upset when they come in contact with oxygen. Apparently, though, Sony and Germany's Max Planck Institute have cooked up a flexible and transparent organic display that will do alright, when it is released in the undisclosed future.

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Aside from allowing for ridiculous contrast ratios and eye-exploding colour saturation, OLEDs can also be thin enough to be flexible, as Sony is demonstrating here with this crazy 0.3-millimeter-thick concept display at CEATEC. We've seen flexible OLED screens before, but 11-inches is a significant step forward. What's in store when this concept moves into reality? Wearable TV jackets? Flexible laptop screens? TV blankets? Boggling.

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Remember the other day when Samsung told us they were launching the country's first LED TV? Yeah, turns out that's not entirely true. Both Samsung and Sony had released earlier models, although they were both prohibitively expensive.

So, Samsung this morning sent out this little clarification of their claim:

The claim "the first LED television available on the Australian market" refers to Samsung launching the first mass market LED television widely available in major retail channels at a price under $9,999. A Samsung and a competitor 70" LED television was previously available but in extremely limited distribution at a retail price of around $70,000; fewer than five units were sold across both companies*.

Samsung apologises for any confusion.

That little asterisk at the end there just refers to the data coming from Gfk.

But regardless of who came first, I'm still hanging out to test the Series 9 panels... I thoroughly enjoyed the Series 6 and from what I can tell, the Series 9 will blow those sets out of the water.

If only the ancient Chinese Had Panasonic's LifeWall, they could have fended off nomadic tribes with HDTV instead of bricks and battlements. But since we live in the future, we can shut out the rest of the world with television that not only stretches from floor to ceiling, it follows people around the room. Panasonic's prototype LifeWall, exhibited at CEATEC outside Tokyo, is a room-sized screen that tracks and remembers users with face recognition, which the firm calls You-Know-Me-TV.

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Philips unveiled their 56-inch 3D display yesterday that packs a Quad Full HD resolution (3840x2160). Wired says the autostereoscopic display requires no glasses and is able to support such a high resolution because of its high data throughput rates. Those high rates also allow for a 3D effect that is high contrast, silky smooth and has a viewing angle of 160 degrees. Early word is that these displays will cost upwards of $US25,000, and will mostly exist in the commercial space. [Wired]

Next year, you can expect your local theatre to get a bunch more digital projectors, upgrading from the trusty old film-based projectors of old. They'll be doing this thanks in part to the major studios, who are helping foot the bill for several thousand $US70,000 digital projectors in Regal, AMC and Cinemark theaters.

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Meet Dorothy. At 150 inches diagonal, she's the world's largest plasma screen and the biggest direct-view TV ever made, built (and named) by Panasonic. We got to play with her recently and as you've seen, it was mind-meltingly awesome. Even though firsthand experiences with Dorothy are akin to filling a leaf blower with nitrous oxide to jet-huff directly into your brain, Dorothy's backstory is almost as incredible, especially when it comes to manufacturing, shipping and yes, managing all the electricity needed to fire her up. So even though you will absolutely never own one--except for you Giz-reading NBA stars and platinum-selling rappers--the story of the world's most advanced television is a thrill, and serves as a crystal ball to the future of all TV. Come, talk to her. She's intimidating, but it'll be good for you.

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Projectors, unless they're of the mini- or HD-kind tend to have me thinking "meh..." apart from LG's new HS102. 'Cause though it has just 800 x 600 native resolution with switchable 4:3/16:9 ratios, it's got Phlatlight LED illumination tech that gives it a 2,000:1 contrast ratio and 150 lumen brightness and it's got a Divx player (playing files from USB-attached storage, it seems) built right into it. And there's a rechargeable battery jammed in there too, making this projector portable in the real sense, since it'll run for two hours unplugged. Out in South Korea for around a $US555 equivalent, there's no word on when it'll hit these shores. [Naver via Zoomgadget]

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Samsung have decided to deliver the good old one-two combo on Australian consumers by following up their "first networked TV" jab with a "first LED TV" right hook. The Samsung Series 9 LCD uses LED backlighting to bring a clear, vibrant picture to your TV screen. It also uses less energy than traditional LCDs.

The tech, as we've seen before, intelligently turns off LEDs that aren't needed, like in dark scenes, by analysing the input signal. Because it switches lights off, it not only saves power, but dramatically increases the dynamic contrast ratio.

On top of the new backlighting tech, the Series 9 brings the new networking features seen in the Series 7 and Series 8 TVs, and be available in both 46 and 55-inch sizes for $5,499 and $6,999 respectively.

That might sound pricey now, but it won't be long before we see LED backlighting become the norm, and prices will drop accordingly.

For the full press release, see below:

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So you went out and bought Samsung's solid performing, stylish Series 6 LCD TV recently? Well, you can officially start kicking yourself... now. Sammy has officially launched its Series 7, Series 8 and Series 9 TVs in Australia (more on the Series 9 to come), and what makes the first two stand out from the crowd is that they feature an ethernet port for direct access to web content on your TV.

The Series 7 LCDs, which we first saw back at CES in January, is available in 40, 16 and 52-inch screen sizes, and incorporates a superior speaker with separate sub to the Series 6 range. The Series 8 range comes in 46 and 52 inch sizes only, and has pretty much all the same features as the Series 7, except runs at less than two inches thick.

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How big is too big? That's the question that you inevitably ask yourself once you spend any amount of time with Panasonic's new 150-inch plasma TV prototype. We visited it in Panasonic's towering warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey last Friday, running it through its paces with 4K footage, Blu-ray movies and Playstation 3 games. After spending a day with it, was it the type of thing I honestly wanted to set up in my living room?

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My opinion on this particular TV can be summed up in the following anecdote: Last weekend I went down to my local Harvey Norman store and bought one of my own...

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Owning a honking rear projection TV is an ever-increasing WASP social stigma, that is, unless it's so freaking huge that neighbours admire it with the same jealous-of-waste gleam in their eye as your original Hummer. One modder takes us step by step through how he removed the screen of his "big screen" TV and swapped it with a 100-inch replacement. The end result is successful, even if his craftsmanship is a bit wobbly around the edges. But the catch? It looks like it now runs at lights-off brightness levels. You know, like a cheap projector or something... [BonMul via HackaDay]

HD Guru Gary Merson has outdone his own ambitious track record, reviewing 125 TVs for a single story. He doesn't go into the aesthetic design of each model, or even measure contrast and colour depth. Instead, he boils it down to some criteria you won't find on corporate sites or press releases.

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On Friday, Mahoney and I went to Panasonic HQ to check out one of the first prototypes of their ludicrous 150-inch plasma TV. This thing puts the 103-incher that I checked out last year to shame. It's a metric ton of overkill, and we hooked up our PS3 and suffered through playing a bunch of video games on it to report back to you. You're welcome! Today, a taste, with me sizing up a weighted companion cube in Portal, above, and, after the jump, seeing what a 42-inch steering wheel on Gran Turismo would be like in real life and learning the ropes in Call of Duty 4. Check back tomorrow for a full report.

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