Technologies

Logitech’s Telepresence Video Booth Aims for Your Next Office

The life-size video projections hide cameras behind the screens to make for better eye contact.

The world’s gone hybrid now. Many people work from home, and video meetings are office fixtures. What’s the value of coming into an office? Companies are still trying to figure this out, and so are manufacturers of office furniture. Logitech’s collaboration with Steelcase, called Project Ghost, is an office telepresence booth that’s designed to feel like remote meetings are really happening in person, instead of on a laptop or TV screen.

No one’s wearing VR or AR glasses around any normal office; we’re all in video chats to connect. That’s sparked some companies like Google to explore advanced 3D video booths like Project Starline that promise life-size, eye-to-eye conversations with people at a distance. My demo of Project Starline last year was astonishing, but not something that can be set up in any normal office easily. Logitech’s Project Ghost is a similar idea but designed to be easier to set up at a lower cost, without the glasses-free 3D part and at what will likely be a lower budget.

Ghost’s technology is meant to be pretty simple: It uses a mirror to project the video chat over a hidden webcam, so the camera is disguised and actual eye contact ends up feeling real. The screen also shows the person you’re chatting with at full scale. Project Ghost nestles the display into a wall unit, with a lounge seat and a semi-walled booth around it. According to Logitech and Steelcase’s designers on Project Ghost, it’s meant to feel as comfortable as being at home.

I haven’t tried out Ghost yet (Logitech is setting up demos in New York in the spring; for now it’s showing off this concept at a Barcelona trade show), but it sounds very much like the same proposition as Project Starline: that eye contact makes for meaningful conversations, that life-size video chats end up being remembered as more real. I don’t know how this would actually impact meetings or virtual connections at an office, but my one Starline demo did feel a lot different than a normal video chat.

Logitech’s ambitions for Project Ghost don’t just stop at offices, though. Much like Starline, the hope is that these booths could be used in places where an in-person employee could be replaced by a video-streamed replacement.

The furniture designed as part of Project Ghost is supposed to be available for interested companies by the end of the year, but the office video-conferencing tech it uses is already available. The reflective embedded mirror display with hidden camera — which is the same «Pepper’s Ghost» illusion that’s been in stage magic and theme park attractions for decades — is the one new wrinkle here.

Will it be enough to make a more inviting environment for virtual chats than what’s already on your laptop or phone? Unclear. But Logitech’s bigger angle here is seeing whether offices and corporations can find ways to make their own unevolved, prepandemic office constructs feel more appealing to a world that’s very different now.

It’s a project more than an absolute product at the moment, and Logitech is looking for feedback — mine is that, while I think comfy life-size video chats could be surprisingly relaxing and even lifelike, I don’t think they’d be enough to convince me to come into an office that was using them. In that sense, maybe I’d be the one beaming in from the other side.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Dec. 24

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Dec. 24.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I’m Irish-American, but yet 6-Down, which involves Ireland, stumped me at first. Read on for all the answers.. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Wordle or Boggle
Answer: GAME

5A clue: Big Newton
Answer: ISAAC

7A clue: Specialized vocabulary
Answer: LINGO

8A clue: «See you in a bit!»
Answer: LATER

9A clue: Tone of many internet comments
Answer: SNARK

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Sharks use them to breathe
Answer: GILLS

2D clue: From Singapore or South Korea, say
Answer: ASIAN

3D clue: Large ocean ray
Answer: MANTA

4D clue: ___ beaver
Answer: EAGER

6D clue: Second-largest city in the Republic of Ireland, after Dublin
Answer: CORK

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Technologies

Quadrantids Is a Short but Sweet Meteor Shower Just After New Year’s. How to See It

This meteor shower has one of the most active peaks, but it doesn’t last for very long.

The Quadrantids has the potential to be one of the most active meteor showers of the year, and skygazers won’t have long to wait to see it. The annual shower is predicted to reach maximum intensity on Jan. 3. And with a display that can rival Perseids, Quadrantids could be worth braving the cold to see it.

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The show officially begins on Dec. 28 and lasts until Jan. 12, according to the American Meteor Society. Quadrantids is scheduled to peak on Jan. 2-3, when it may produce upwards of 125 meteors per hour. This matches Perseids and other larger meteor showers on a per-hour rate, but Quadrantids also has one of the shortest peaks at just 6 hours, so it rarely produces as many meteors overall as the other big ones.

The meteor shower comes to Earth courtesy of the 2003 EH1 asteroid, which is notable because most meteor showers are fed from comets, not asteroids. Per NASA, 2003 EH1 is a near-Earth asteroid that orbits the sun once every five and a half years. Science posits that 2003 EH1 was a comet in a past life, but too many trips around the sun stripped it of its ice, leaving only its rocky core. The Earth runs through EH1’s orbital debris every January, which results in the Quadrantids meteor shower.

How and where to see Quadrantids

Quadrantids is named for the constellation where its meteors appear to originate, a point known as the radiant. This presents another oddity, as the shower originates from the constellation Quadrans Muralis. This constellation ceased to be recognized as an official constellation in the 1920s and isn’t available on most publicly accessible sky maps.

For the modern skygazer, you’ll instead need to find the Bootes and Draco constellations, both of which contain stars that were once a part of the Quadrans Muralis. Draco will be easier to find after sunset on the evening of Jan. 2, and will be just above the horizon in the northern sky. Bootes orbits around Draco, but will remain under the horizon until just after 1 a.m. local time in the northeastern sky. From that point forward, both will sit in the northeastern part of the sky until sunrise. You’ll want to point your chair in that direction and stay there to see meteors.

As the American Meteor Society notes, Quadrantids has a short but active peak, lasting around 6 hours. The peak is expected to start around 4 p.m. ET and last well into the evening. NASA predicts the meteor shower to start one day later on Jan. 3-4, so if you don’t see any on the evening of Jan. 2, try again on Jan. 3.

To get the best results, the standard space viewing tips apply. You’ll want to get as far away from the city and suburbs as possible to reduce light pollution. Since it’ll be so cold outside, dress warmly and abstain from alcoholic beverages, as they can affect your body temperature. You won’t need any binoculars or telescopes, and the reduced field of view may actually impact your ability to see meteors.

The bad news is that either way, the Quadrantids meteor shower coincides almost perfectly with January’s Wolf Moon, which also happens to be a supermoon. This will introduce quite a lot of light pollution, which will likely drown out all but the brightest meteors. So, while it may have a peak of over 100 meteors per hour, both NASA and the AMS agree that the more realistic expectation is 10 or so bright meteors per hour.

Technologies

Today’s Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for Dec. 24, #1649

Here are hints and the answer for today’s Wordle for Dec. 24, No. 1,649.

Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a little tricky, with a double letter that could confuse players. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.