Hasta La Gadget!

Mobile phones are making a lot of things obsolete – payphones, maps, privacy – because of cheap and easy to use apps. A new open source technology might add keys – and keychains, and locksmiths – to the cellphone hit list. Called LibeTech, the system enables QR codes to be used as door keys.

LibeTech was developed by Jeremy Blum and 3 other students from Cornell during their senior year. The system is very simple to use. Say you have a hotel reservation. All you have to do is go to a website, log in and the hotel will send you a QR code.

When you get to your room, just show the QR code to the webcam at the door and you’re in. You don’t even need to own the latest smartphone to do this; any phone or gadget that can store and show the image of the code will suffice.

Of course, the convenience is a double-edged sword: someone could easily take a copy of your code. Imagine keys to entire hotels being shared on torrent sites. After much thought and consultation with fellow nerds, Blum and his colleagues have decided to make their technology open source instead of building a commercial product based around it. If you want to modernize your doors, head to Blum’s website for more details and links to the necessary code.

[via Hack A Day]

A few months ago we saw a concept for a camera-based device that is meant to recognize sign language and translate it into spoken words. A Ukrainian-based team has something better: a working prototype of a smart glove with the exact same capability.

The quadSquad team won the 2012 Imagine Cup – Microsoft’s technology competition for students – for their invention, which they call EnableTalk. The glove has 15 flex sensors, an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a compass, all manned by an onboard microcontroller. The glove sends input via Bluetooth to a custom app made for Windows smartphones, which will then interpret the data and output spoken language.

The brief demo below show the tester spelling “hello” letter by letter, which the app is able to translate after just a brief delay:

Head to EnableTalk’s official website for more information on the product. I tip my hat off to quadSquad; I hope the team succeeds in releasing a commercial version of their device.

[via CNET via Reddit]

Electrostatic ink based E-readers aren’t exactly the best devices for moving images, due to their slow refresh rates and black and white screens. But that didn’t stop somebody from porting a SEGA Genesis emulator to the $99 Android-based Nook Simple Touch reader anyhow.

YouTuber ndncnbvcuyuys (try and pronounce that!) posted this video of his rooted Nook Simple Touch running the Genesis emulator, and playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2. It’s clear from the video clip below that the Nook is more than up to the task of emulating the classic 16-bit console.

I’m actually impressed how well the side-scroller plays, given its fast action and movement – though it’s unclear if the emulator supports sound. You can check out detailed pics of the emulator in action over on Imgur, and some other fun emulators running on the Nook Simple Touch here.

[via E-Reader Info]

This is how the New England office (blue) of Dealer.com is connected to the company’s California office (orange). Either that, or this is actually a shot of Aperture Science Laboratories, with webcams included as props to throw us off.

If you think about it, webcams already accomplish 50% of a portal’s job. They let two parties peer into each other’s space as if they were in front of each other regardless of the actual distance between them. The other half is mostly just lighting, and that bit about actually being able to walk through the portal.

[via Reddit]

These shoes won’t take you home when you click its heels, but it will help you get there. Made by British artist Dominic Wilcox, the No Place Like Home shoes points the wearer to the right way via the magic of GPS.

According to Inhabitat, there’s a GPS receiver on the heel of the left shoe that can be used to punch in an address, although they didn’t mention exactly how that’s done. Once it knows where you want to go, LEDs on the left shoe indicate the direction to take, while a line of LEDs on the right shoe provides a rough estimate of proximity to the destination.

The shoes are part of Wilcox’ solo show Variations on Normal at the KK Outlet. It would’ve been awesome if he made them with roller skates.

[via Inhabitat via DVICE]