Plus: Touchable Holograms, Honda’s Futuristic Unicycle, American Happiness and a DIY Space Camera.

3-D Holograms You Can Feel
Hologram technology has been used to project 3-D images to prevent forgery on items such credit cards and DVDs, as well as for entertainment (and infotainment) purposes. Until now, anything more advanced seemed firmly in the realm of science fiction. But Japanese engineers have developed a new type of hologram system that allows a user to actually feel the image being projected.

Scientists at Tokyo University recently demonstrated new hologram technology that relies on ultrasonic waves to apply pressure along a user’s hand when it passes across a projected image, simulating the sensation of touch, Reuters reports. The researchers rely on a pair of Nintendo Wii controllers mounted above the display to track the hand.

“Up until now, holography has been for the eyes only, and if you’d try to touch it, your hand would go right through,” Hiroyuki Shinoda, a professor at Tokyo University and one of the project’s developers, told Reuters. “But now we have a technology that also adds the sensation of touch to holograms.”

Although the technology has only been tested with simple objects thus far, the developers believe the holograms may be used to replace physical contact with objects to prevent contamination, as with hospital switches. However, it seems possible that it could also eventually be used to create virtual products, such as household items, or advanced interfaces for electronics.

Sluggish Sales? Create Your Own Holiday
Consumer spending tends to peak at holiday seasons, but what is an enterprising company to do during the long stretches between major holidays? Perhaps consider creating a new day to celebrate and get it on as many people’s calendars as possible.

This is essentially what happened with International Talk Like a Pirate Day, a tongue-in-cheek holiday concocted seven years ago by two friends from Oregon and that has since grown into “a full-fledged movement,” CNN.com reports.

The holiday involves not only pirate speech, but most things buccaneer, including pirate dress and behavior. It is now recognized on every continent and was even celebrated on the International Space Station.

Businesses have also hopped aboard. According to Inc.com, merchandisers, restaurants, snack food makers, computer game developers, publishing companies and even bicycle manufacturers have harnessed Talk Like a Pirate Day for their marketing efforts.

“We never planned on this being something we could retire on, and we recognize we haven’t been at all ‘businesslike’ about it,” John Baur, one of the holiday’s co-creators told Inc.com. “We’d like to make tons of money, but only as long as it stays fun.”

Honda Builds Advanced Unicycle, Finally
Last week, Honda Motor unveiled its latest attempt to tap into the coveted unicycling market: the U3-X, a personal mobility device that operates atop a single wheel, Agence France-Presse reports.

The electric vehicle features specialized balance control technology taken from the Honda robot ASIMO and can be steered by having riders shift their upper bodies toward the desired direction of travel. The unicycle is 26 inches tall, weighs roughly 22 pounds and can operate for about an hour on a lithium ion battery.

Here’s a demonstration of the futuristic device in action:

“We believe this is the first step in realizing the fun of human transportation and expanding the joy indefinitely,” Honda President Takanobu Ito told reporters at the unveiling.

“It’s just one of those things you know no one is really going to buy,” according to CNET News.

Most Americans Happy with Life
Times are tough and economic uncertainty remains a widespread concern, but a September survey from BIGresearch (via Marketwire) found that the majority of Americans are happy with life in general. According to the findings, 51.9 percent of men and 59.9 percent of women in the United States rated themselves “happy” or “totally happy.”

BIGresearch’s latest American Pulse survey also showed that, unsurprisingly, people with higher incomes are happier than those with lower incomes, while Republicans tend to be happier than Democrats and Independents.

Of course, professional worries are still a sore spot. Only 34.6 percent of Americans are happy with their jobs, while 29.4 percent are unhappy. Among the various age groups, those over 55 years old have the highest rate of happiness, at 68.5 percent.

According to Forbes, statistical data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that Denmark is the happiest country in the world, followed by Finland and the Netherlands, while the U.S. came in at number 11.

A recent poll from Gallup measured “overall well-being” across a range of industries and business categories. The findings indicate that self-employed business owners have the highest level of well-being, followed by professionals and managers or executives. Workers in the transportation and manufacturing fields ranked at the bottom of the list.

Do-It-Yourself Space Camera
A group of college students recently proved that you don’t need billions of dollars to capture images in space (though most wouldn’t turn down the money), having built a functional space camera on a shoe-string budget.

Without resorting to rocket propulsion or sophisticated guidance systems, two students from MIT put together a Styrofoam beer cooler containing a compact camera and rigged it to a helium-filled weather balloon that carried the apparatus into Earth’s stratosphere, according to Wired’s Gadget Lab. The team used instant hand warmers to keep the equipment and batteries from freezing, and the entire project was accomplished for under $150.

“What is most astonishing about this launch, named Project Icarus, is that anyone could do it. The budget is so small as to be almost nonexistent … All it took was a grand idea and an afternoon poking around the hardware store,” Wired notes.

The following is a picture from Project Icarus, taken at approximately 93,000 feet above the earth:

Have a happy weekend, folks.