Hasta La Gadget!

Turning your monitor into a touchscreen could some day be as simple as peel … and stick.

Displax, a Portugal-based company, promises to turn any surface — flat or curved — into a touch-sensitive display. The company has created a thinner-than-paper polymer film that can be stuck on glass, plastic or wood to turn it into an interactive input device.

“It is extremely powerful, precise and versatile,” says Miguel Fonseca, chief business officer at Displax. “You can use our film with on top of anything including E Ink, OLED and LCD displays.”

Human-computer interaction that goes beyond keyboards and mouse has become a hot new area of emerging technology. Since Apple popularized the swipe and pinch gestures with the iPhone, touch has become a new frontier in the way we interact with our devices.

In the past, students have shown a touchscreen where pop-up buttons and keypads can dynamically appear and disappear. That allows the user to experience the physical feel of buttons on a touchscreen. In 2008, Microsoft offered Surface, a multitouch product that allows users to manipulate information using gesture recognition.

Displax’s films range from 3 inches to 120 inches diagonally.

“If Displax can do this for larger displays, it will really be one of the first companies to do what we call massive multitouch,” says Daniel Wigdor, a user experience architect for Microsoft who focuses on multitouch and gestural computing. “If you look at existing commercial technology for large touch displays, they use infrared camera that can sense only two to four points of contact. Displax takes us to the next step.”

Displax’ latest technology works on both opaque and transparent surfaces. The films have a 98 percent transparency — a measure of the amount of light that is reflected through the surface. “That’s a pretty decent transmission rate,” says Wigdor.

A grid of nanowires are embedded in the thin polymer film that is just about 100 microns thick. A microcontroller processes the multiple input signals it receives from the grid. A finger or two placed on the screen causes an electrical disturbance. The microcontroller analyzes this to decode the location of each input on that grid. The film comes with its own firmware, driver — which connect via a USB connection — and a control panel for user calibration and settings.

Currently, it can detect up to 16 fingers on a 50-inch screen. And the projective capacitance technology that Displax uses is similar to that seen on the iPhone, so the responsiveness of the touch surface is great, says Fonseca.

And if feeling around the screen isn’t enough, Displax allows users to interact with the screen by blowing on it. Displax says the technology can also be applied to standard LCD screens.

Displax’s versatility could make it valuable for a new generation of displays that are powering devices such as e-readers. For instance, at the Consumer Electronics Show last month, Pixel Qi showed low-power displays that can switch between an active color LCD mode and an e-reader-like, low-power black-and-white mode. Pixel Qi’s displays, along with other emerging display technologies from the likes of Qualcomm’s Mirasol  and E Ink’s color screen are keenly awaited in new products because they promise to offer a good e-reader and a netbook in a single device.

But touch is a feature that is missing in these emerging displays. Displax could help solve that problem.

It is also more versatile than Microsoft Surface, says Fonseca. “Our film is about 100 microns thick, while Surface is about 23 inches deep,” he says. “So we can slip into any hardware. Surface cannot be used with LCD screens so that can be a big limiting factor.”

The comparisons to Surface may not be entirely fair, says Wigdor. “Surface is not just another hardware solution,” he says. “It includes integrated software applications and vision technology so it can respond to just the shape of the object.”

Still he says, Displax’s thin film offers a big breakthrough for display manufacturers because it they don’t have to make changes to their manufacturing process to use it. Displax says the first screens featuring its multitouch technology will start shipping in July.

Photo: Displax

See Also:

• Touchscreen PCs Prompt Interface Innovations
• Experimental Touchscreen Has Physical Buttons That Can Pop Up
  
• Dell Joins ‘Kitchen PC’ Trend With Touchscreen Desktop
• To Answer the Phone, Scratch Your Jeans
• Experimental Tech Turns Your Coffee Table Into a Universal Remote
  

Our crack team over at Engadget Chinese has managed to snag the above roadmap slide for Lenovo’s mobile computer division. We’ve seen earlier versions of the same slide — when the Edge and T410 / T510 were freshly added — but the very latest iteration contains a sprinkling of even newer machines. Most intriguing will be the L400 and L500, which are set to replace the former “corporate mainstream” mainstay R series, which incites the more hopeful among us to believe that perhaps a new chassis design is on the cards too. No less notable are the new X201 models, though we might surmise by the mild numerical change that they’ll just be upgraded to low-voltage Arrandale CPUs and left well enough alone. For more info on the likely specs of the W701, you should check out our breakdown of its FCC appearance right here.

Update: In light of the X201 discovery, we’ve combed through our CES 2010 imagery and found a photo of an X200 with a touchpad, which was a curious thing to see when Lenovo has never sold such a creation. Our suspicion is that the X200 on display was in fact an early showing of the touchpad-enabled X201 that is soon to come. Browse past the break for the evidence.

Continue reading Lenovo X201 Tablet, W701 and new L series revealed by ThinkPad roadmap slide (updated)

Lenovo X201 Tablet, W701 and new L series revealed by ThinkPad roadmap slide (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 04:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Mousou Controller (妄想コントローラ or “Fantasy Controller”) from Bandai taps into both the retro and mugen trends we have been reporting about for a while on this blog. On the market from March 20 priced 888 JPY ($9.80), the toy revisits video games like Street Fighter, Xevious and Famista, letting you play on the console controller-style key chain and hear the sounds from your favorite levels. Not only does this look like the real thing, even the key combinations work just as you would expect.

Mobile culture is all about convenience, and products like the Mousou Controller replicate the sensation of a beloved past time no matter where you are. Sure, this is a product that gamers and otaku will love, but these kinds of gadgets are not just for niche markets — they help us all get through the stresses of daily life, which is why we have seen such a range of mugen products.

Aiming squarely at the twenties to thirties male consumer base, Bandai expects to shift two hundred thousand of these mugen gadgets. You can pre-order it here.

It’s finally here: Windows Mobile 6.5.3, the iterative finger-friendly Windows Mobile release that should have been wrapped into 6.5.0. The latest mobile wares from Microsoft come wrapped inside the Sony Ericsson Aspen (aka, Faith); a business-focused QWERTY candybar with 2.4-inch QVGA TFT touchscreen LCD, 3.2 megapixel camera, A-GPS with Google Maps, 3.5-mm audio jack, WiFi, and microSD expansion. This latest addition to Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart portfolio comes in black or white silver and packs quad-band GSM/EDGE with either HSPA 900/2100 or 850/900/2100 radios (depending on region). Available in Q2.

Back to Windows Mobile 6.5.3 for a second, although this is a .dot.dot update it’s actually a fairly significant move for Microsoft. For starters, this release now includes a more finger-friendly layout (no stylus needed even when digging deep into the OS), support for capacitive touchscreens (huzzah!), and acts as a platform to enable multitouch. Microsoft has also improved browser performance with faster page load times and better memory management while improving the pan and flick gestures and zoom and rotational speeds. Sounds like somebody is getting ready for Mobile World Congress.

Sony Ericsson Aspen: first with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We are pleased to announce the release of our in-depth report on Japanese ECO trends, a seriously under-reported area with real future implications for global business.

We’ve spent several months researching all about the emerging technology that will change our modes of transport, as well as the consumer trends, community shifts, and lifestyle changes. Along the way we’ve encountered power-generating floors, Shibuya fashion gurus taking to the farms, and surprisingly green vending machines. While often unique to Japan, these new movements provide limitless possibilities for inspiring innovation around the world.

The new Japanese government has promised a bold twenty-five percent reduction in emissions by 2020, and will no doubt introduce regulations and legislation designed to achieve this target. However, our research has told us that the real success happens through consumer and industry interaction, that the biggest innovation is in harnessing the power of the consumer for creating real change.

There’s arguably no better country than Japan for brand-to-consumer interactions.

Our 75+ slide report is packed full of original images and on-site local examples with analysis and numbers. Even if you’re not a researcher or marketer, there’s a lot to be learned from the pioneering developments happening in Japan that will likely have implications for your own business.

You can read more about the report on our special Eco Report page, where it is available worldwide in digital form.