Hasta La Gadget!

Gesture control might just be one of the most exciting battlegrounds in tech right now. First there was Kinect, then the awesome Leap Motion—and now German company PMD Technologies claims to be able to beat them both. More »

Laser projected virtual keyboards? So 2004. These days, tech firms are dreaming up completely invisible typewriters, or at least Syntellia is. By marrying a Leap Motion sensor with its own Fleksy predictive keyboard, the company has created a system that seems to let you type on thin air — with the aid of Fleksy’s predictive text correction, of course. A brief teaser video of the project shows a pioneering air-typist hammering out “kalr tgw ltsp,” which Fleksy deciphers as “make the leap.” Syntellia’s SXSW Interactive Accelerator preview of the project won’t officially debut until tomorrow, but the impatient can check it out right now after the break.

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Source: Syntellia (YouTube)

Whether you like gesture control or not, Leap Motion’s fine-grain floating-finger input looks like pure future. And it only gets better when you’re controlling a pseudo-hologram with it. And that’s exactly what Robbie Tilton did with his Tony Stark-worthy setup. More »

Leap Motion today announced that its innovative motion controller for PCs will start shipping to pre-order buyers beginning May 13, and will launch in the U.S. at Best Buy locations on May 19. Full retail price for the Leap Motion Controller will be $79.99, the company announced, $10 more than the pre-order asking price.

If you’re looking for an earlier release date than the official retail launch, Leap Motion continues to accept pre-orders for the controller through its own website, for both international and U.S. customers, and American buyers can now also pre-order Best Buy as of today. Pre-orders direct from Leap will be shipped out to customers based on their spot in line. So far, Leap Motion has had pre-orders in the “hundreds of thousands,” the company tells me, though it isn’t releasing more specific numbers.

Leap’s controller ships with built-in support for Windows 7 and 8, as well as Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8. It is bundled with Airspace, Leap Motion’s dedicated app store, where it will offer partner titles that incorporate Leap Motion controls, including games, utilities, art apps and more. Leap is also finally revealing some of those partners, including Autodesk, Corel Painter, Disney games and Double Fine’s music title Dischord. The Weather Channel will also field a Leap Motion compatible app, and ZeptoLabs has made Cut The Rope ready to work with the 3D input device.

“We’ve talked about our app store as a key way to distribute software that our developers are creating,” Leap Motion VP of Marketing Michael Zagorsek explained in an interview. “We’re not going into it too much right now, because we didn’t want to overshadow the launch date news, but we realize that we really need to shift the narrative of the company more and more to the apps that we’re working to create.”

The app store is a crucial one for Leap Motion to tell. It has managed to secure immense pre-launch consumer and tech industry attention thanks to some very impressive demos of Minority Report-style interaction with the computers we already know and love, but sustaining the momentum it has built will depend on making sure early adopters feel there’s a strong reason to keep using the Leap Motion Controller, rather than forgetting it in a closet. The Airspace software marketplace, which will be both a standalone downloadable app itself, as well as a web-based storefront, will be a big part of achieving that goal.

I should be very early in the Leap Motion Controller pre-order queue, and can’t wait to get my hands on (or floating in the air above, as the case may be) this device. For now, this demo of Realmac Software’s Clear for Mac to-do list being controlled by a Leap Motion Controller will have to suffice.

Yes, we know that Leap Motion has signed an exclusive deal with Best Buy so that you can pick up the Leap Motion online as well as in brick-and-mortar stores sometime later this spring, but just what exactly does the Leap Motion do or work? For starters, the Leap Motion is a 3” x 1” device that was specially developed for folks to use their hand to control the computer instead of the traditional mouse or trackpad on notebooks.

Basically, it contains the relevant sensors and technology to be able to track the movement of all ten of your fingers – simultaneously, without missing a beat. Debuting at the recently concluded CES 2013 in Las Vegas, you are already able to place a pre-order for the Leap Motion where it will cost approximately $70 a pop, but that would be prior to taxes and shipping costs. We do wonder just how steep of a learning curve the Leap Motion will come with, and will it end up as a niche device, or will it explode across the board in popularity? Only time will tell.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: New Imaging System A Potential Boon For Self-Driving Cars, Logitech UC Keyboard K725-C Announced,