COOL: 3D Baseball cards

Time was the most fun one could get out of a baseball card was trading it with friends or sticking it inside the spokes of a bike wheel.

Not anymore.

The NY Daily News reports Topps has teamed up with Total Immersion to bring a new series of fully-three-demensional baseball cards to consumers throughout America.

All that's needed is a Web camera and an Internet connection and your favorite players spring to life on your computer screen. There's even games a user can play using his keyboard.

The News explains:

Topps - a familiar name to generations of baseball fans - has teamed up with a company called Total Immersion to launch a new series of 3D cards that would have been unimaginable in the days before the Internet.

Now, with a PC and a WebCam, collectors can watch as the players on their cards come alive - popping up in full 3D for interactive "augmented reality" minigames including batting, fielding and pitching drills.

Here's how it works: After you've snagged one of the "Topps 3D Live" cards - they come in both Topps 2009 Baseball Series 1 and Topps Attax packs - you log on to ToppsTown.com and select the player on your card.

Then, simply hold the card up to a standard WebCam and - voila! - Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Johan Santana or one of 30 other stars appear to emerge from the card, in 3D, on your computer screen - for a series of simple games playable using your keyboard.

Check out an embedded video of the cards:

3-D: List of epic fails through the years

"Some of science fiction's predictions have passed fitfully into the present; video phones and geostationary satellites for example. Others seem destined to remain forever in the hereafter, despite being almost universal in movies and literature. The list will be familiar: jetpacks, food pills, silver clothes with giant collars.

One technology, though, resurfaces every few years and makes it to market, only to disappear into the morass of nostalgia soon after. These are 3-D displays, attempts to turn boring old flat telly into a depth-charged experience. Some products failed because they were junk, others just fade from view and resurface years later. This is a list of the most notable flops."

Courtesy Wired.com

I agree with most of the list, but viewmasters? Come on, every kid had a pair of those in the 80s...