The most common shape memory alloy is called nitinol.  Equal amounts of nickel and titanium are combined and melted in an electric furnace at 1300 degrees.  The process is carried out in a vacuum to avoid contamination. Ingots are poured, and then either rolled into sheets or very fine wire.
A sequence of heat treatment is used to “program” the material to a specific shape.  For example, a length of wire can be made to remember that it should straighten out if heated above 70 degrees.  If you bent this wire …

I recently came across an artist group called Open Ended Group composed of three artists: Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, and Paul Kaiser. There are some great artworks featured on their site, including some very innovative stereoscopic work (see Depth, and Upending for example).

Fuji is coming out with this camera in October in Canada.  Should cost around $699.  It can do still (1omp) and video (640×480).
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

I cleaned up the XSI stereo camera rig I posted earlier. There were some problems with it and it wasn’t very customizable. This new rig has 3 parameters that can be modified.

Sheldon Brown, author of Scalable City, is the Director of the new Center for Next-Generation Digital Media which will focus on developing a different kind of virtual world which proposes to be visually richer and more flexible than existing virtual worlds.  The center is in a partnership with IBM and will use their new platform based on ‘System Z’ mainframes.
I actually just saw Scalable City (in stereo!) at the Stereo Displays and Applications conference in San Jose.  It was definitely one of the better clips shown during the 2 hour …