Barnes & Noble has slashed the price of its NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight ereader, trimming the illuminated e-paper slate to under $100, and prompting speculation that a successor might be close at hand. The NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight is now $99 through B&N’s official store, down from the $119 the company had been […]
Minority Report was an enjoyable action flick, but it may hold the blame for getting the idea stuck in our collective heads that 3D gesture control is the next frontier for computing. The Kinect from Microsoft helped further this idea around as well, with a pretty good (though highly limited regarding needed space, applications, etc.) gesture experience. But a lot of startups and other companies are chasing this carrot – and it begs the question of whether there’s even a carrot to chase.
Maybe the most headline-grabbing of those going after the gesture control birdy is Leap Motion. The company raked in lots of pre-order interest for its device, which uses infrared tech to track finger and hand movements in 3D space and them map those to controls for apps on a computer. But then it arrived, and the reality was nothing like people had imagined, even after the device delayed its release for an extended beta to amp up the consumer user experience.
Leap Motion had good reason to go back to the drawing board: there’s a huge risk with this kind of device because when you aren’t just blown away by a device like this, it ends up in a drawer and no one ever uses it again. Unfortunately for the company, that’s likely the fate of a lot of their controllers, I realized after a couple of weeks of using one.
Early reviews were not very kind to the Leap Motion, but really a lot of them may have been over-generous. The controller is impressive enough during its demo when it’s showing you the finger points and hand model skeleton its detecting, but already it’s apparent that the detection is finicky. The controller is finicky in its appraisal, and requires your hands to occupy a sweet spot relative to the gadget itself to work really well.
Even when you’re in that zone, the problems don’t end. How each app uses gesture input varies, and things like web browsing with it are a definite pain. In the end, the fact is that on balance you get more frustration than pleasure out of the experience, and that’s not good for long-term adoption.
The experience of Leap Motion is flawed enough that it makes me wonder whether gesture control is actually something that it’s even possible to get right. Minority Report painted an idealized picture of how that might look, but it is, after all a work of fiction, and think about what the Tom Cruise character is actually doing in many of those scenes; wouldn’t it be easier to work with a traditional multimonitor setup and keyboard and mouse to accomplish the same thing?
There are a lot of people looking at gesture control right now, including Waterloo’s Thalmic Labs with its MYO armband, the new Haptix Kickstarter, and pmdtechnologies from Germany with their CamBoard pico. Microsoft is also refining and improving upon its Kinect for the upcoming Xbox One console.
Gesture input is a tempting area of focus, since it has clearly been a focus of lots of imaginative work for speculative and science fiction. Kinect and Wii showed us that large groups of people could enjoy that kind of device interaction, but those are in very specific contexts. Even if executed well, I’m not sure any solution is going to be anything other than a niche curiosity – we’ll probably see input take other, unexpected courses of evolution instead. They MYO and others could still prove me wrong (and I hope it does), but if you’ve got a farm to bet, I wouldn’t bet it on a gesture control revolution.
There’s something that continues to intrigue me about Steampunk style. I think it’s the idea that technology could be driven by steam power instead of electricity. And while these speakers aren’t actually driven by steam, they’re still pretty amazing.
This pair of Empire Steam speakers was handmade by Airhammer Industries. Each octagonal cabinet is made from MDF with a copper veneer, copper edging, and brass and bronze details. They’re extremely substantial, as is evidenced by the large 1.5″ thick granite top on each one, and an approximate weight of 125 pounds per speaker.
Inside of each 36-inch-tall speaker is a pair of Vifa 1″ silk dome tweeters, a 5″ Pyle midrange, and a 15″ Goldwood downward-firing subwoofer for cranking out the bass while you watch The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on your steam-powered television. Maximum power per speaker is 400 Watts RMS @ 8 ohms.
While these speakers are glorious, they’re not exactly cheap. All of this craftsmanship and audio tech will set you back a whopping $12,600 (USD) for the pair. I wonder how much they would have cost back in the 19th century?
Online instructional courses or web training can be boring. So that’s where any distraction ever comes in. Learning! But the online training company Mindflash is offering a new feature for their iPad services that ensures actual focus and participation. No reading Gizmodo allowed.
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Addicted to Japanese TV Show? Own an iPhone 5 or iPad Mini? Then you will be thrilled to know that Sanwa Supply announced in Japan its latest…
Blonde hair, blue eyes, pearly white teeth, and a winning smile. That’s a description of your typical model. Crooked eyes, gapped teeth, tattooed face, and a gummy smile. That’s a description of some models from the Ugly Model Agency.
And then there’s the people who are somewhere in between, and you can find them from the We Are Unlike You model agency.
The agency is based in Berlin and distinguishes itself from other agencies in the sense that they recruit non-traditional models from various niches, including burlesque, cabaret, and stand-up comedy. It’s an agency where models stand out because of their individuality and uniqueness.
As you can see, they’re definitely unlike the norm and definitely don’t fit the description of your typical model.
We are unlike other model agencies. We don’t just offer tremendous looking individuals, but real characters who don’t just look the part, they feel and act it too. Because it’s simply who they are.
Think you have what it takes to be one of them?
[via Violet Blue via Laughing Squid]
I’m not quite sure why I want one of these. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time waking up in the morning… But this LED showerhead would definitely brighten my day.
Watercolors are a compelling medium because their aesthetic is the product of multiple variables. The pigment, the surface and, of course, water play into every unique stroke. But design engineer Kenichi Yoneda is using openFrameworks to create digital watercolors. And they look organically beautiful.
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A year ago, pod-shaped recycling bins were installed all over the UK by Renew London. The so-called “smart bins” definitely look better than your average trash can. Now, you might be wondering, why would trash cans have Wi-Fi capabilities and an LCD installed on front?
The answer, my friends, is advertising. Targeted advertising.
The bin looks for smartphones nearby that have their Wi-Fi turned on. It then logs their MAC address and calculates the “proximity, speed, duration and manufacturer” of each device. It tracks the phone owner’s actions to then display targeted adverts on the screen, which will play as they walk past the bin.
Sounds smart, right? Yeah, definitely, but it’s rubbing a lot of people the wrong way because of privacy issues. To be honest, I’d be pretty irked, too, if this phone was tracking what I was doing just so it could show me an ad or two when I walk past the bin.
So it was only a matter of time before the bins had their Wi-Fi and tracking capabilities pulled. The City of London has called on Renew to stop recording people’s movements, so Londoners can breathe a sigh of relief now.
The City of London released the following statement:
We have already asked the firm concerned to stop this data collection immediately. We have also taken the issue to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Irrespective of what’s technically possible, anything that happens like this on the streets needs to be done carefully, with the backing of an informed public.
[via C|NET]
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk wowed the tech and business worlds this week when he unveiled plans for a 700MPH solar-powered Hyperloop train that could catapult people from San Francisco to LA in just over half an hour. Although the plan is highly conceptual, nothing associated with Musk can be written off as fantasy these days. The news somehow managed to overshadow all other futuristic transportation stories, like Martin Aircraft’s unveiling of a “practical” jetpack that can travel at speeds of up to 60MPH and reach an altitude of 8,000 feet. Meanwhile, German designer Andreas Blazunaj unveiled a sleek hybrid concept vehicle that looks more like a spaceship than a car. An Australian high school student designed a solar-powered car that could be used to transport pregnant Zimbabwean women to hospitals. And the team behind the Bloodhound Supersonic Car announced that it will use a 3D-printed nose cone in its attempt break the 1,000MPH speed record in summer 2015.
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