Oculus Rift

My dad was a quality control officer who worked in middle east for about 20 - 30 yrs. So we lost our daddy time most of our childhood except his 2 months yearly vacation. But for a trade-off we got beautiful toys our friends never could even imagine. I remember one of my favorite toy used to be VR (Virtual Reality) system where you load circular discs and with a liver when you pull it down the film roles to the next scene. And he used to get us discs of rain deers with Santa, snow time in Europe, desert rides etc etc. For some time we used to enthusiastic about the discs and after a while we get bored, until we get next set of discs. Well that used to be the augmented VR systems of 1980's.

VR systems are developed mostly for gamers or movie viewers to virtually put into the scene. You feel you are in the situation and you are seeing that in-front of your eyes. But it will give you a 40 degree view where when you look up or side ways, the scene move with you. You can't see the environment surrounded, only thing you can see is the scene.

Here is a small company with an Immersive VR system called RIFT which can really virtually put you into that space with 110 degrees viewing angle, if you look around you can actually see what's in the surrounding space. For example you are in a war zone and you see your enemy coming against you and you look around you can see your comrades running with you against the enemy. Now you really feel like you are in a war zone really fighting against somebody. That's the effect of augmented reality systems.

Oculus founded by Palmer Luckey, is successful with their prototype RIFT which raised more than 2 million from funding, set up their office in Irvine,CA. And they are coming up with their first developer toolkit for developers to involve in creating an Eco-system like android before they launch their product commercially. Thanks for display systems which are so light in weight and cheap so that this possible for common man and usual game players who can use this technology which used to cost 100K couple of years before.There is a new game released also called as Doom 3 especially for RIFT.

You can pre-order RIFT for 300$ from their site

GoPro - Hero 3

Sometimes fortune hits you unexpectedly and that's exactly what happened to Nick Woodman. New kid in the millionaire's list. A UC San Diego graduate went on creating his own company funbag. He raised most of his funds through external sources and the company busted in Y2K tech bubble.

But he followed his passion of traveling and surfing. He struck gold while surfing in Australia, he noticed that he don't have camera that can capture under water scenes, checked with his surfing friends and they were facing the same problem. A camera that's sturdy enough so that you can strap it on your helmet or bike. A camera that can take a few beatings, survive the blows and keep working. He decided to capture his small idea into a bigger canvas by starting a new company producing an excellent camera that can be used underwater, while having an adventurous bike ride, snow-boarding, you flying a helicopter or you go hitch-hiking, you can carry this one and it works like charm.

Well here's the real deal, FOXCONN bought a 8.8% of the company GoPro for a kool 200 mils, which made Nick overnight Millionaire. A company he bootstrapped from his mom and he selling belts in CA beach into 200 mils. It may sound surprising, but if you see the video below, you know why in the world its worth so much. By the way this video is a summation of many clips shot by Hero 3 in the 1080p ( Hi Def ). Don't forget to turn on your sound.

Shaka - Unknown 3D Artist

I follow the Art world closely but never heard about this artist Shaka. You would have heard about Nilko and Jaye, Obao, Muto, Opare, Sirius, Popaye etc etc.. I stumbled up on Shaka a year back while reviewing some paintings in a gallery. There was an instant connection to his paintings and that led me to notice him more.

Shaka aka Marchal Mithouard is from Evry, France. Got into painting by doing graffiti on walls but later joined another artist Nosbe to merge his style of painting to create unique 3D creations. According to Shaka, graffiti is illegal and paintings are legal, so he turned into painting pictures and started selling his signed copies of original paintings online. Most of his paintings are pop-art, icons from hip-hop and regular people with usual emotions. And he's amazingly successful in capturing those emotions in his paintings.

He's not sponsored, so if you can help him any ways that will be of great help to him to continue creating beautiful paintings and 3D arts. Here's his mail id : infoshaka@gmail.com

Joe Jin HIS & HER's

Cute Cotton Pillow filled with goose feathers and goose down to go with any bed spread, especially white just giving a crisp white clean look with minimal accessories to decorate your room.. So cute, it should be in our list of things under 50$ gifts for XMAS 2012. Visit them here. They also got a green rug which is also pretty beautiful but very pricy for such a small thing.

Parrot ZiK

If you are a music lover then you know this is a very vulnerable position to be a headphone manufacturer. There is BOSE, Beats by Dr. Dre ( which is owned partly by HTC ), heard 50 Cents ( rapper from NYC ) is launching one, Nakamichi, Sony, JVC, Denon etc etc. And there are tonnes of bud speakers available in the market. But there is one stand out product in this scene too. That's ZiK ( sick in brooklyn means beautiful ) which is the best headphones available to be paired out with your phone.

After iPhone came into limelight, almost all the gadgets are having big touch screens and all the activities are controlled by gestures. Here's a head set which don't have a volume rocker or any buttons like on / off outside the head set, but all controlled by gestures. If you rub your finger up on the speakers volume increases, swipe down, it reduces. Move horizontally it takes the next song or the previous song, all while paired via bluetooth.

Guess what happens when a call comes in while you are listening music, it stops playing the music and starts ringing.. And if you wish not to take the call, touch the headset for 2 secs. Or if you want to pick the call / cut the call, just tap on the head set. Its speakers swell so you can easily carry it around in a bag or briefcase and it won't bump out.

It comes with an app on the iOS and Android to control the effects like theater, movies, arena you can select. App come with an equalizer to set the bass - treble controls. All the while being absolute noise cancelled music.. Now you tell me you love it or not.

Beolit 12

There are plenty of iphone speakers came out in last 4 years. But there a few that wins in their design and sound quality. BEOLIT 12 is listed in the best gadgets to own if you are an Apple fan. You can do lot more than playing just music, if you are watching a movie in your iPad you can airplay that too. If are an outdoor person, still you can carry it around and it will provide you flawless music all across. More over you can't find from where the sound is generated if you keep it hidden. Ain't it cute ?? Its costly though, but you will like it.