Apr 17
Tactus Taps Wistron To Bring Its Magical Physical Touchscreen Buttons To The Masses
Posted in: Today's Chili
Tactus makes keyboards that appear out of seemingly flat glass touchscreen surfaces, thanks a fluid-based layer that reacts to electrical signals to create rises and bumps that serve as keys and buttons. It’s a magical technology, and one that you can see demoed on video in the clip below from CES this year. Soon, you’ll be able to get that tech on a range of devices thanks to a new… Read More
At MIT’s Media Labs, researchers Roy Shilkrot, Jochen Huber and others are working on the “FingerReader,” a ring-like device that straps itself around your finger and reads printed text out loud with a synthesized voice, thanks to a mounted camera and heavily modified open source software. The FingerReader’s voice is clipped and metallic – what one might liken to… 
If you want a hint of what might be on the horizon at Apple, look to Google – or at least look to its Project Tango experimental 3D depth-sensing smartphone. Tango got a teardown just the other day, and later on iFixit determined that one of its key components comes from what is now an Apple subsidiary (via 9to5Google), thanks to a deal that wrapped up last November. PrimeSense, which is the… 
Created in collaboration with British singer-songwriter Imogen Heap, the Mi.Mu glove turns the arms and hands of performers into musical instruments. Eventually, Heap and Mi.Mu’s developers hope the glove and it software, which will be made open source, will reach a wide range of users. 
Google has a new standalone camera app available in the Google Play app store, and it can be installed on any smartphones or tablets running KitKat 4.4 or higher. The new app will also be rolling out to other devices in the future according to Google, so that might expand beyond just KitKat to those on other versions of Android. The app offers a 100 percent viewfinder to show you exactly what… 
When ShopLocket was undergoing its transformation from an ecommerce provider to a platform designed to support hardware startups from concept to consumer launch, it had a lot of learning to do. Key to making that transition was gathering resources and talking to industry experts to find out best practices and find examples of hardware startups that have successfully made the journey themselves.… 
Google’s Project Tango prototype smartphone is armed with four cameras to allow it to take stock of its environment and record and use 3D depth-sensing info, and it’s basically just a bunch of cameras and sensor glommed onto a fairly impressive Android smartphone with a quad-core processor and 2GBs of RAM to crunch all that environment data. iFixit got to tear it down and have a look… 
Google has been showing off its Project Ara modular smartphone in a lot more detail over the past few days, likely because it’s also hosting a developer conference for the device this week. Ara uses interchangeable modules to deliver a smartphone that can be whatever a user wants it to be, complete with first- and third-party components including sensors, cameras, radio antennas and more.… 
Move over Segway, there’s a new stand-up personal transporter in town. Or there will be come August when the first machines are scheduled to ship to Kickstarter backers. More than 200 users of the crowdfunding website have pledged funds to Me-Mover, a Danish project to rethink the bike as a stand-up exerciser on wheels. 
Apparently some people still want Google Glass. The white model sold out several hours after Google allowed anyone to purchase the product. Models of the other colors are still available — at least until Google stops selling the product tonight. For today only, Google made Glass available to anyone. This is the first time since the product’s announcement that Google has allowed the general… 