While Tobii has a peripheral that brings eye tracking to Windows PCs of all sorts, there’s little doubt that an integrated approach would be more elegant. The company agrees: it’s partnering with Synaptics on a concept Ultrabook (seen above) that combines both Gaze UI and Synaptics’ pressure-sensitive ForcePad in a showcase of new input methods. The partners haven’t said just what new tricks they’ll demonstrate, if any, but it’s clear that there won’t be a size penalty when the concept is as slim as the laptops in stores today. Synaptics and Tobii plan to tour the PC throughout the industry during the summer and the fall, and they’re no doubt hoping that a few vendors use the concept as inspiration.
If you’re the type of person that likes their phone to be the same color as their passionate, loving heart, AT&T has a unique Samsung Galaxy S 4 for you to glance upon this week. The color that – inside the USA – is exclusive for the moment here with AT&T is Aurora Red, and
Low Latency is a weekly comic on CNET’s Crave blog written by CNET editor and podcast host Jeff Bakalar and illustrated by Blake Stevenson. Be sure to check Crave every Friday at 8 a.m. PT for new panels! Want more? Here’s every Low Latency comic so far.[Read more]
I have a question for all of you that, for the life of me, I just can’t answer on my own: what makes Apple different? Yes, I know it’s a question that’s been posed before, and some have said in the past that it was Steve Jobs or the company’s massive cash coffers. Others have
The sequel to the classic sci-fi thriller Independence Day is coming, and it has a release date. 20th Century Fox has announced that Independence Day 2 will be arriving in theaters on July 3, 2015. Director Roland Emmerich will return to direct the sequel, but none of the original cast members have committed to the
One of the first things I did when I visited London a few years ago was to go on a Sherlock Holmes walking tour. I’m not the only avid reader compelled to seek out the real-life settings found in books. This desire is what has brought about Placing Literature, an interactive site dedicated to plotting scenes from books onto real-world maps. It’s like a heady mixture of a database, Google Maps, and the efforts of a bunch of literature geeks.
Placing Literature started with a conversation between co-founders Andrew Bardin Williams (an author) and his sister-in-law Kathleen Colin Williams (a geographer). “I use a lot of real-world locations in my novels. We decided there was this great intersection between geography and literature that hadn’t been explored before,” says Andrew Bardin Williams.
The site has been in development over the past six months thanks to a $10,000 grant from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven. Software engineer and former Googler Steven Young came on board to apply his technical know-how to working with Google Maps and building up the technology side of the site.
Due to its base in Google Maps, the site feels very familiar. You can click on a map,… [Read more]
In each issue of Distro, editor-in-chief Tim Stevens publishes a wrap-up of the week in news.
It’s not too often that we call a tech news story stunning, but that seems like an apt description for our reaction when Microsoft decided to pull an abrupt about-face and nix its controversial rights management for the Xbox One. We learned at the Seattle launch event that the system would have to call home once every 24 hours or every game installed from a disc would be disabled — even if you had the disc in the drive — and quickly the rumblings from the gamers started. They grew louder at E3 when Microsoft detailed the system’s DRM, a stream of complaints that quickly reached deafening levels on online forums and the like.
Yet, through all that, Microsoft stayed true to the party line, that the advantages of this system (being able to digitally share games, being able to change games without having to swap discs, etc.) outweighed the overwhelmingly negative reaction brewing among online gamers. That corporate message seemed to get bitter at times, weary at others, but never showed a sign of changing. Until, suddenly, a complete about-face this week.
Thanks to it8bit, I’ve found one of my new favorite artists: Billy Butcher. His collection Come Play My Game, I’ll Test Ya! is an edgy and lively mashup of pop culture, headlined by my favorite pastime: videogames. Can you name the references in each illustration?
My favorite has to be the Akira/Pac-Man/Ghostbusters mashup. “Tetsuoooo!!! Waka-Waka!!!”
Head to Red Bubble to get prints, posters, clothing, stickers and greeting cards featuring Butcher Billy’s artwork. You can also check out his Tumblr blog for more of his art.
Based on an incredibly simple concept, Jenga is one of those ‘board’ games that will never go out of style. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for branded versions that bring something new to the table. (The table that you’re trying desperately not to bump.)
You will gaze at your computer, and your computer will gaze back. That’s the inevitable path of progress in interface design, as evidenced by ongoing projects from companies like Leap Motion, Umoove, pmdtechnologies and more. Now, Sweden’s Tobii Technology is taking a step forward with its own approach, via a prototype ultrabook design created in partnership with touchpad company Synaptics.
The notebook will incorporate Tobii’s eye-tracking tech with Synpatics’ touch sensitive input methods to preview how the two can be used together to further the cause of new input methods. The purpose of the project is to showcase to OEMs how they might be able to use the same tech in their own products. Tobii and Synaptics will be touring with a roadshow of the prototype devices throughout July and August, showing off exactly how the two technologies work in tandem.
For Tobii, which has been showing off its Tobii Gaze technology since its introduction last year (and which was in development for many years before that in some form or another), this is a chance to finally start getting eye-tracking built-in to more mainstream devices. There’s been a lot of attention paid to how gaze tracking is a part of Samsung’s Galaxy S4 device, and other startups like Umoove are trying to market their own products to other consumer electronics makers, so the time is right for a major sales push.
Partnering with Synaptics is a good way to hitch Tobii’s wagon to a player with strong existing relationships with virtually every Windows PC manufacturer, as well as makers of mobile devices. The touchpad company has been in business for a long time, and survived the transition from cruder, simpler pressure-based input mechanisms to the more sensitive capacitive and hybrid systems now in place in most modern devices. Synaptics will be using the prototype to shop around its own ForcePad solution, a new product offering that incorporates per-finger pressure detection into the mix for even greater sensitivity.
The jury’s still out on whether any one company will dominate gaze detection and eye tracking the same way that Synaptics has done for touch-based input on PCs, but clearly Tobii (which raised $21 million from Intel last year) is making a play for the crown.
“We expect consumers will start seeing product options like this one in stores as early as sometime next year,” Tobii VP of Business Development told us via email. This push likely means we’ll see a lot of familiarly named PC makers trot out this kind of tech (or some kind of motion detection) in their prototype products and concepts at CES next year, so keep an eye out for that, and for the Tobii name.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
