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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