Oh, Fall Fashion Week. While the exclusive invite lists, overwhelming crowds and Bryant Park traffic can be irritating to those not on the A-list, we deal. Because, for people who covet the cloth, Fashion Week is the big reveal: a taste of the creative genius of some of today's top fashion minds and the fuel for our own style inspirations. For most of us, scouring fashion blogs or scanning through Style.com's runway photos does the job, but there's certainly room for improvement. So, this season, designers decided to utilize some of today's hottest technologies to give stylephiles a more immersive runway experience:  3-D:   On its journey from movie theatres to home theatres, 3-D technology made a pit stop on the runway. The creative minds at Burberry Prorsum must have had Avatar on the brain when they thought of throwing red and blue glasses into the mix. Giving exclusive invitees outside the London area a more eye-catching perspective, the Burberry Prorsum show was streamed live in 3-D at specially designed viewing venues in Dubai, Tokyo, Paris and New York. (LA fashionistas got a tape-delayed version.) And while the novelty of the 3-D runway show got the media buzzing, it was the instantaneous online pre-selling of the runway items - available for three days only - that captured the hearts and minds of those not included on the guest list.

QR Codes: From wine labels to book covers to business cards, the QR code is becoming a marketing must-have. Taking advantage of these nifty little symbols is fashion designer Norma Kamali. Foregoing the standard runway presentation, pieces from and photographs of Kamali's Fall 2010 line were, for a limited time, on display in her store for anyone to view. After downloading a free app from ScanLife Mobile Technology onto their smartphones, visitors could scan QR codes which accompanied the displays to access videos, images, press clips, and other bits of behind-the-scenes information. Items from each of her lines, including the budget friendly NK for Walmart and eBay collections as well as the higher priced OMO collection, were featured. And unlike the typical runway show, every item was immediately available for purchase.

Live Mobile Streaming: Whether you're in the corner coffee shop or the corner cubicle, the ability to catch live streams of events online is just a click away. But what if you're riding on a crosstown bus? Or stuck in the waiting room of the doctor's office? Dolce & Gabbana took the live stream one step closer to fans by streaming both the D&G and Dolce & Gabbana shows directly to several different smartphones, including the iPhone and the Droid. For those stuck at the computer, the shows were also streamed live on the Dolce & Gabbana Facebook page. Too bad Gilt didn't have a haul of D&G to push later that day.

[trendcentral]

Barcelona — It may not look like much, but the Armada chipset from Marvell could totally change what your cellphone can do. Based on the ARM v7-spec chip, the Armada 618 also packs in enough graphics hardware to power a home cinema and gaming rig at the same time, all while staying cool and merely sipping battery power.

I caught up with the Marvell guys at the Mobile World Congress, and saw this little box hooked up to a pair of screens. One, which you see above, was running a hi-res 3D video game. The other screen was a huge TV set showing an HD movie.

The Armada is designed to be used in the next generation of smart phones, and will be available later this year. The numbers are impressive. The chipset can drive up to four 2K x 2K resolution displays at the same time, which means it sniffs at mere 1080p, and the 3D-engine can render up to 45 million triangles per second. It will turn your phone into a full-on movie and gaming machine.

The Armada 618 will work with Linux, Android, and Windows Mobile, and even has enough power to run Adobe’s Flash. And of course, its not just limited to phones. The Armada could power an HD netbook and put Intel’s Atom to shame.

[wired]

New software developed by Oddcast allows sites to offer a service to users that will take a 2D profile picture and render it into a fully 3D avatar.  The results are quite impressive, and creepy.  Right now, the company is selling this software to other sites for installation, but I tried a demo on the company website.

First, you upload a picture of yourself and indicate your gender.  After the photo is processed, you'll be asked to align your photo according to an example.  Then comes the wireframing, the tweaking of physical features (not all are available in the demo) and, finally, adding audio.  Once that's all done, you'll be left with a three dimensional model of yourself (or whoever you used to make the photo) that can even talk like you.  Pretty sweet!

The avatars all have moving facial features, and additional features come with the software for installation.  Site owners can give users the ability to upload .mp3 files or do voice capture over microphone to give their avatar speech.  You can also add speech via phone call, text-to-speech, or premade samples.  There's also facial morphing, accessories, and the ability simulate aging and racial profile.

While there is no practical application for this software unless you buy and install it on your own site, I had a fun time trying out the different features. After a little tweaking, my resulting avatar really does look a lot like me!  All of the audio capture features worked perfectly, as well.  You can check out my avatar (with bad audio) here. Go make one of yourself, now!  Link us in the comments, and no impersonating!

[inventorspot]