Rome Reborn

From 1997 to 2007, the UCLA CVRlab (Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory), UCLA ECT (Experiential Technology), the Reverse Engineering Lab at the Politecnico di Milano and the IATH (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities of the University of Virginia came together to participate on a project to recreate Rome.

Rome Reborn is a 15m across minutely detailed scale model of the city of Rome as it was in 320AD. More recently the model was laser-scanned and digitised by an international team of researchers led by Bernard Frischer and Rome Reborn 2.0 was born. Unveiled at the SIGGRAPH conference in LA last week, the VR version of Rome 320AD is spectacular, and thanks to this visitors to Rome can experience the same detail as they walk the ancient monuments of the city. TimeMachine is a new handheld gadget produced by Ducati Myers and the University of Bologna, which, utilising the Rome Reborn 2.0 system, automatically displays 3D reconstructions of ancient building.

As well as this you can also fly over the ancient city and zoom in on specific buildings. Another major plus is that unlike many 'tourist toys' the device is relatively cheap - hire costs around 5 Euros per hour.

Most popular Social Bookmarking services

Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, store, organise, search, and manage web bookmarks. The concept was pioneered by del.icio.us, who coined the term social bookmarking. That was way back in 2003. Since then however, a multitude of alternative services have appeared.

ShareThis, one of the newest services on offer, has just released some interesting data on the popularity of the dominant bookmarking services:

Interestingly, the data shows that email is by far the most important way of sharing links, followed by social networking site Facebook. The actual core social bookmarking sites are lagging behing substantially. Unfortunately the data is US centric, but it would be difficult to imagine the European results being too far off.

Irish Web Awards

It's that time of the year again, and the Irish Web Awards are upon us. There are only 12 days to go mind you, to nominate your website, so get nominating!

Right now only the creators/builders/owners of websites are allowed to nominate their own sites.

New Olympic Coke Spot

Sure it has nothing on the BBC's wicked idents, but it's flashy and fun, and definitely worth a look.

China and the Web

As with most people there are certain websites I regularly visit, and Trendspotting is one of the best. Great, really well written content. Last week I found this presentation on the state of Chinese web use. I had to share.....