Hasta La Gadget!

The first time we talked about the 8-bitty controller for your mobile gaming device was back in February. Yeah, we never thought it would ship either. If you’ve been waiting for that little old school Nintendo-style controller to finally ship, today is the day. As of right now you can hop over to ThinkGeek and pick one up for yourself for about 30 bucks.

The 8-bitty is a small handheld controller powered by a pair of AAA batteries. It uses Bluetooth to connect to a number of different portable devices on the market today including iOS as well as Android tablets and smartphones. The controller has eight buttons total including four buttons on the face, a select button, start button, and a pair shoulder buttons.

It also has a D-pad for controlling movement. The controller was developed using an open platform with no licensing fees or permissions needed to create apps that support it. ThinkGeek says that it is fully compatible with the Atari Greatest Hits iPad app, and any of the over 150 other games with iCADE support.

The rear touch-panel is one of the most unique features of the Sony’s PS Vita. Now, a Minnesota-based company called Canopy wants to bring that same feature to the iPhone 4 and 4S with the Sensus, a protective case with built in capacitive touch sensors.

A rear touch-panel won’t be beneficial in all apps or situations because iOS apps weren’t made with this hardware in mind. That said, it could make some games more fun or playable and make it easier to look at documents. Canopy says the Sensus also has two built-in microprocessors to handle the gestures and touch input on the case, so there’s no additional burden on the iPhone’s own CPU.

If you pre-order Sensus right now you’ll only pay $39 (USD) (plus $7 shipping), significantly discounted from its $59 retail price. It seems like a product with a lot of potential, but still If I were you I’d hold off my purchase until we see more details, demos and support from app developers. Also, they need a version for the iPhone 5.

[via Joystiq]

As head-mounted displays and motion controllers improve, the possibility of truly-immersive virtual reality in our living rooms continues to get closer and closer to our reach. However one of the big challenges is that you’ll still be standing still or walking in place in any game that involves moving around. While there are omni-directional treadmills that solve this problem, you won’t be able to afford one (or fit one in your living room) any time soon. Now, there’s an odd little gadget in development that aims to solve this problem without any moving parts at all.

Created by Julian Williams, the WizDish is a disc that you stand on, while wearing special shoes (called, of course, WizShoes), which enables you to move around in any direction, while standing in one place. The action isn’t exactly what I’d call walking, though – it’s more like shuffling. The 14 pound device relies on a small amount of friction between the bottom of the shoes and its platform to allow you to move around – without falling like you might do wearing socks on a slippery floor.

According to its maker, “The WizDish exploits the fact that you have 29 bones in each foot to balance with. You slide your feet over a slick concave surface in a simulation of walking that gives surprisingly similar proprioceptive cues to real walking. Once you can see where you are going [using an HMD] you take more confident strides and quickly forget it’s a simulated walk. The key advantages of the WizDish are that you can start, stop and turn with absolute ease…”

Personally, I’m not yet convinced, but then again I think that the cumbersome headgear and eye-strain inducing optics of HMDs still have some big hurdles to overcome before I’ll be strapping one to my head for a 3-hour gaming session.

(I have high hopes for the Oculus Rift HMD though. Please let it be as good as it sounds.)

[via Road to Virtual Reality]

And so, Coca-Cola’s ingenious advertising campaigns continue. Remember their ‘Open Happiness’ vending machines that gave people free coke for a hug? This time around, they didn’t give out free drinks. This time, it was a complete meal – plus an awesome experience that they can tell their grandchildren about in due time.

What Coca-Cola did was team up with the Naked Communications agency and production company Acne to bring Operation ‘Happiness Table’ to life. They deployed a delivery truck that was quickly converted into a food stand (thanks to its pull-out dining table!) and served a scrumptious dinner that was prepared by Italian chef and TV personality Simone Rugiati himself.

The goal of the stunt was to promote eating together with friends and family (and a Facebook app), because that’s where the fun and happiness truly is.

Do you agree?

[via Pop Up City]

Microsoft unwittingly kicked off a revolution in multi-touch and 3D tracking when it released the Kinect. It seems the company is still innovating on those fronts, as it has teamed up with researchers from Newcastle University to create a wrist-mounted sensor that tracks the wearer’s hand movements.

The researchers call their gadget Digits. Despite being made of off the shelf parts, the end product’s potential is limitless. Unlike the Kinect, Digits is self-contained and lightweight, which means it’s very portable. The wearer doesn’t have to worry about staying in the line of sight of a stationary sensor; he can even make gestures while his hand is in his pocket. Second, the researchers deliberately chose to make it wrist-mounted as opposed to making a glove in order to be less intrusive. Finally the researchers came up with an intelligent signal processing pipeline that accurately interprets gestures despite tracking only five points on the wearer’s hand.

No Spider-Man demo? I am disappoint.

[via Newcastle University & Microsoft Research via Cult of Mac]