Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft’s hardware research team today unveiled what it has deemed “Mouse 2.0”: five mouse prototypes aimed at taking advantage of the push toward multi-touch computing, jumpstarted with the introduction of Windows 7. The five mice are still in early concept stages. Each takes a different approach to multi-touch through a complete rehaul of the standard desktop mouse.

All five designs were demoed in a video released online today by the research team. The first mouse highlighted was the FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection), a curved multi-touch design. Microsoft explains: “[The mouse] applies the principle of Frustrated Total Internal Reflection to illuminate a user’s fingers, and uses a camera to track multiple points of touch on its curved translucent surface.”

The Orb Mouse, meanwhile, is aimed largely at gamers. The demo in the video showcased the way it interacts with a first-person shooter. Says Microsoft: “Equipped with an internal camera and a source of diffused infrared illumination, it can track the user’s hand across the [entirety] of its hemispherical surface.”

The Cap Mouse is designed for augmenting GUI features. “[The mouse] uses a matrix of capacitive touch-sensing electrodes to track the position of the user’s fingertips along its surface.”

Arguably the coolest of the bunch, the Side Mouse requires minimal contact with the user’s hand. Rather it uses the company’s proprietary SideSight technology to detect finger and hand movements around the device.

The final mouse, the Arty Mouse, is a bizarre little peripheral aimed at 3D manipulation. Says Microsoft: “[The mouse is] equipped with three optical mouse sensors to track the individual movements of the wrist, thumb, and index finger.”

You can watch the full low-budget video over at the Microsoft Research site.

The Selphy ES40 –Canon’s small-format “talking” printer–isn’t a great conversationalist; if anything, it’s rather shy and reticent. (In its favor, it doesn’t mindlessly babble.) It’s actually multilingual–French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin, as well as English. Its female voice sounds reasonably human–it’s no robotoid voice-box.

Other than its verbal ability, the ES40 is a fairly standard portable, dedicated small-format photo printer. It uses thermal dye technology to output its 4- by 6-inch prints. It’s about average in speed, and except for a problem printing diagonal lines like spokes on a bicycle (they come out jagged), prints very nice-looking photos. Its main shortcoming is its relatively high running cost compared with some other small-format printers such as the Editors’ Choice Epson PictureMate Dash.

As I mentioned, the Canon Selphy ES40 is no Chatty Cathy–it took some rather creative interrogation techniques to get it to speak (see our video “quick look”). The two times when it talks are when it finishes a print, and when you access the Creative Print Mode to add frame or clip art, change layout, or apply special effects to the photo. There’s really nothing it says that isn’t also imparted through the LCD screen itself. But it is a fun extra, which might appeal especially to kids, people whose first language is one of those represented, and the visually impaired. And that’s on top of a very capable small-format printer that outputs beautiful prints.

For fans of high design who don’t want to put their laptops on any old piece of plastic, there’s the Intelligent Forms Log Pillow. Perfect for Web loafing in bed or on the couch, the Log Pillow consists of six fabric tubes criss-crossed log-cabin style and attached with snaps. The “logs” are made from a mix of hemp canvas, cotton, and Lycra and filled with buckwheat hulls. The design is meant to cause better ventilation and keep heat from building up at the bottom of your laptop. The log pillow also fold flat for transporting.

Intelligent Forms also has laptop pillows with buttons and a “Terrapin” design. Though you might get some strange looks at the airport, these laptop pillows are well-suited to “working” from home with a big hot cocoa at your side. All three pillows are available for $69 each at the iF Web site.

Memory maker SanDisk today announced the release of three new cards, including a Memory Stick Micro (M2) targeted toward users of the upcoming PSP Go. The card will double the amount of storage in the soon-to-be-released Sony PSP Go, according to a release issued today by the company.

Fair enough, but is the only card that will do so? Hardly. The PSP Go-specific branding is similar to a ploy taken by the company with the Nintendo DSi, when it released the SanDisk SDHC Memory Card for Nintendo DSi, an official Nintendo-branded card, which was like any other SDHC card, only with a Nintendo label.

A VP at the company issued a statement about that card, reading, While Nintendo DSi is compatible with all SDHC formats, the branded SanDisk SDHCcards provide added assurance for consumers that it can be used in the Nintendo DSi.

SanDisk would probably happily tell you the same if you asked about this model.

Have you been waiting for the digital equivalent of the traditional Polaroid instant-camera experience? As the Polaroid PoGo Instant Digital Camera is a hybrid printer/camera product, we enlisted PCMag’s printer and camera experts, M. David Stone and PJ Jacobowitz, to review it. One thing I can tell you: They both had a lot of fun testing it.

This 5-megapixel camera uses the same ZINK (zero ink) technology to output its photos as the Polaroid PoGo Instant Photo Printer and the Dell Wasabi PZ310 . With ZINK, clear dye crystals are embedded in the photo paper; heat from the printhead activates the color in the crystals. A downside is that you’re limited to 2- by 3-inch photos; one thing you can do with the PoGo that you couldn’t with an analog Polaroid camera is to save and store digital versions of your photos. You will need an SD card, as the camera comes without one, and its internal memory is only enough to hold a handful of images.

The PoGo’s image quality is modest, about that of a high-quality camera phone. Prints are tiny, and ZINK isn’t yet up to the standards of ink-based photo printing. But it provides what people want and expect from a Polaroid camera–enjoyable picture-taking and the ability to print your results out on the spot (and perhaps to draw a small crowd while you’re doing so, as happened with one of our reviewers).