Hasta La Gadget!

The very talented musician Imogen Heap and her colleagues at Mi.Mu are working on a glove that will allow you to make music by moving your fingers and hands. Think Minority Report, but instead of flipping screens around your movements create sounds. Air drumming is about to be legit.

Mi.Mu has an input and output board called x-OSC that connects the glove to a computer or multiple computers over Wi-Fi. It also has an accelerometer, a gyroscope and a magnetometer. Along with the flex sensors on the glove itself, the system can detect “the orientation of your hand, the “flex” of your fingers, your current hand posture (e.g. fist, open hand, one finger point), the direction (up, down, left, right, forwards, backwards) of your hand [and] sharp movements such as drum hits.”

You can map one or more of these movements to control music software with the help of Mi.Mu’s own application, which converts your movements to OSC or MIDI. This means you can use the glove with any software that can handle those two files. The video below shows Imogen performing (!) a song using only two Mi.Mu gloves to control the music:

As you may have noticed, the glove allows the wearer to activate multiple tweaks or sounds at once. You can also use gestures to switch between your saved mappings, which should reduce the number of movements you have to memorize for a given performance.

Pledge at least £1,200 (~$2,000 USD) on Kickstarter to receive a Mi.Mu glove as a reward. Hopefully in a few years the glove will be affordable enough, so we can wash away all the hate and society can start advancing.

[via Gadgetify]

Concept restaurants aren’t anything new, with the more notable ones being the Modern Toilet Restaurant and the Hospitalis hospital-themed diner. However, Carton King brings something entirely new to the table: cardboard.

Housed at the Carton King Creativity Park, everything at the restaurant is made from cardboard packaging material – well, everything except the food, that is. This includes the resto’s tables, chairs, booth walls, tissue holders, signage, bowls, and even the cup holders that hold the paper cups! If anything is damaged, they can simply replace the part with another piece of cardboard, and recycle the damaged piece.

The place was thought up by Huang Fang-liang, who’s the founder of Chin Tang Paperware. He explains the concept simply, saying: “It’s to say that after using something, you can use it again.”

The coolest part is that the park features a gallery of some of the world’s most well-known landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pizza, as well as a “zoo” of sorts that features (you guessed it!) cardboard animals.

As for another advantage of all-carton tableware aside from the recyclable factor: No breakage if you knock anything over. But as for fires, spills, or when the water sprinklers go off – well, that’s another story.

[via Lost in Internet]

When Valve unveiled its Steam Controller last year, I was quite skeptical about the value of its built-in touchscreen. It turns out many of Valve’s testers had the same opinion. This January, at the 2014 Steam Dev Days conference, the company announced that it was ditching the touchscreen for a more conventional button configuration.

In the video below, you’ll see Valve’s Eric Hope and John McCaskey talk about the evolution of the Steam Controller at Steam Dev Days. At around 23:35 into the video, Eric talks about the point when they realized that the touchscreen was not really that useful. See, Valve added a  “ghost mode” that displayed an onscreen prompt showing you what part of the touchscreen you’re touching as soon as you touch it.

Ghost mode was a great feature. So great that Valve realized it rendered the controller’s screen – which Eric said was the most expensive part of the controller – pointless. Removing the touchscreen also allowed Valve to ditch the built-in rechargeable battery and switch to AA batteries, further driving the cost of the controller down.

Then at around 25:39 in the video Eric discusses why the ABXY corner buttons on the previous prototype also had to be scrapped. Valve labeled the face buttons A, B, X and Y to make them familiar to gamers, only to arrange the buttons in an unfamiliar layout. The result was a jarring experience for testers, who had a particularly hard time accepting the fact that the four ol’ buddies were split into two groups.

As Eric said in the video, the controller is still undergoing internal testing and is nowhere near its final form. They could bring the touchscreen back. They could also place the buttons a bit farther apart. You know what they say about people with big thumbs: they have trouble with cramped controllers.

[via Valve via Ars Technica, Gamasutra & Gamesblog]

Japan gets all the cool stuff. Take KitKats, for instance. In Japan they have introduced all kinds of flavors in the past – like blueberry cheesecake, soybean, red chilli, wasabi and more. And Nestle is not through innovating yet. Now they have introduced a KitKat that you have to bake in the oven.

This new KitKat treat really takes the cake. It sounds pretty awesome. The top layer of the pudding flavored mini KitKat melts when heated and fuses with the wafer-biscuit giving it a dark brown texture and hopefully a great taste. These cakes are slated to hit Japan’s KitKat cafe on March 24th and will be sold for a ¥500 (~$5 USD).

[via New Launches]

You know how superfans are. These are the folks who want a lock of hair from their idol or a used Kleenex. It’s weird, I know. Overly-obsessed superhero superfans who are in this category will certainly want to buy some superhero poop from their favorite hero. And now they can.

Yes, Etsy seller AntonisArtAsylum sells super-poop. You can choose from Batman, the Hulk, Spider-Man and more.

That Hulk poop with the fist on the end? That’s gotta hurt coming out. No wonder he is so freakin’ mad all the time. Never mind the fact that it’s green and purple. At least he’s a doctor, I suppose.

So if you ever wanted some superhero poo, you can get a jar for only $15.99 to $19.99(USD). Enjoy your purchase. You weirdo.

[via The Mary Sue]