Sometimes at events like ShowStoppers! at E3 2012 you are surprised by what products you find. Now, we all know about Augmented Reality (AR) – Sony even showed off their own implementation in the Wonderbook. So far, however, it has mostly been a toy and not really used for anything productive – until now.

Enter Aurasma. Their goal is to bridge the physical and virtual worlds, all through your phone or tablet. This system allows you to take a physical image and turn it into an interactive element. For example, if you use their free software and aim it at the Mona Lisa, you will be treated to a moving version of the image, talking to you. It is done entirely without ugly QR codes, which have become like modern day modem noise, keeping an advertisement or brochure entirely clean and professional. Companies have already used their product for Despicable Me, soccer teams and even Marvel has recently gotten involved to bring your comic book characters to life.

This is one of the coolest technologies I have interacted with, and it is great to see someone trying to eliminate the scourge that are QR codes. You can get the free app in either the Android or iTunes marketplaces right now.

Interview by Scott Ertz of F5 Live for the TechPodcast Network.

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Only Kingston Technology, home of high-quality memory products, could show up at an E3 2012 ShowStoppers! party and bring with them an uber-powerful gaming computer. What do I mean when I say uber-powerful? How about 64GB of HyperX RAM, a $1,000 12-core processor and dual SSDs. One SSD is setup for the operating system and applications and one is setup for an Adobe scratch disk.

This computer is so powerful that rendering full HD video only takes about 7% of the processor. How do they do it? By loading all of the video into RAM, meaning no disk seek times, plus using an SSD as a scratch disk. With no seek time, the video is capable of rendering faster and smoother than the average editing rig. This simulates a lot of how videogames work. In general, the area you are in is loaded into memory and rendered on the fly. A rig like this could make any game run smoother, even at the highest video settings.

Interview by Scott Ertz of F5 Live for the TechPodcast Network.

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For those of you who feel saddened because your glorious video game achievements and heroic epic fails seem doomed to live forever in the obscurity of your memory then you’ll want to pay attention to Elgato’s Game Capture HD. I had the pleasure of speaking with Tim Böth, Elgato Systems brand manager, at ShowStoppers! during E3 this year and we got live demo of the hardware and software in action.

The way that the Game Capture HD works is pretty simple. You have an Xbox 360 and/or a PS3,TV and a Mac or PC. The Game Capture HD hardware had an HDMI pass-through that catches the feed from your console and sends it to your computer via USB 2.0 in 480i/p, 756p, 720p and 1080i outputs without losing a single frame. So you’ve got a couple options even if somehow you don’t have an HDTV to go with your HD game console. Elgato Systems also has their own software that makes it easy to work with your footage. Check out more after the break and get a first hand look.

Their software makes it easy to record with features like Flashback Recording which lets you rewind your footage and go back in time to start recording from that point. Their visual editor makes it easy to remove, move and trim your footage so that you can focus on the best of it and easily post to YouTube all from the same place. In case your familiar with other video editing programs like Sony Vegas or Premiere, no worries, you can output your video as an MP4 to use with them as well. That not bad at all for under $200.00, if you’re interested, go pick one up from Elgato here.

Interview by Jon Wurm of F5 Live for the TechPodcast Network.

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