Hasta La Gadget!

Digital photo editing is one of the most valuable – and fun! – skills to have these days. But not all of us can easily learn the right mix of tools, filters, tweaks and whatnot to get the result we want. If even the thought of using MS Paint causes your eyes to glaze over, you might be intrigued by PixelTone. It’s like Siri for Photoshop.

PixelTone is a prototype iPad app developed by folks from Adobe Research and the University of Michigan. Unlike Photoshop Touch – or any photo editing app for that matter – PixelTone was made to be operated using natural language commands and simple gesture controls. The user will still need to know certain terms like contrast, crop and saturation, but as you’ll see in the demo below even newbies like me can pull off a lot of tweaks on PixelTone that we may not be able to do on a normal photo editing program. You can even attach words to parts of the picture, such as identifying people or clothes.

There’s no word if the researchers will release a commercial version of PixelTone, but one thing’s for certain: they can make a mind-controlled Photoshop, but you can’t automate taste. Or tact. For more information on the projection, you can download a copy of the PixelTone research paper on Eytan Adar’s website.

[Eytan Adar via Gizmodo]

While there’s plenty of hype going on about smartwatches these days, most of the watches out there solve fairly superfluous problems – like seeing that you have a phone call because you’re too lazy to get the phone out of your pocket. On the other hand, this smartwatch could really help deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

The Android 4-powered Moneaual Smart Care System (SCS1000) can be used to alert people with hearing difficulties to emergency situations by relaying information to the LCD screen of the watch, as well as an accompanying vibration alert.

The device can detect specific sounds and alert users to them on the watch display. In indoor mode, the watch is smart enough to identify everything from the sound of a doorbell ringing, to a smoke alarm beeping, to a crying baby to a phone ringing or boiling water. In outdoor mode, it can detect car horns and other loud noises to protect wearers from dangerous situations. The watch also offers an emergency mode which can call 911 and request help on your behalf.

There’s no word yet on pricing or a release date for the Moneaual Smart Care System, but it could definitely be a great gadget for those with partial or total hearing loss when it’s ultimately released.

I’m sure that chess has dozens – if not hundreds – of virtual versions that let people play against each other online. This project by YouTuber FunGowRightNow12 and his fellow students at Northeastern University also offers online multiplayer, but it’s not a videogame. It uses a couple of physical boards along with chess pieces that move on their own.

FunGowRightNow12 and his group-mates made the wireless chess boards for their senior project back in April 2012. The end result of the project is nothing short of magical: you move your chess piece, and the corresponding piece on your opponent’s board does the exact same move and vice versa. It even takes captured pieces out of the board for you. Since the commands are transferred via the Internet, you and your opponents could be anywhere across the globe and you’ll still be able to play with the pieces.

Sadly, FunGowRightNow12 didn’t go into details about the intricacies of their project aside from what he and his group-mates shared on Reddit, but they did post a couple of additional videos. This one shows what’s inside the board:

It looks like there’s a robotic X/Y arm with a retractable magnet on it for moving the pieces around, which is similar to how those Phantom Force computerized chess sets work. The big difference here is that you can play with another human on the other side of the world using this system.

The video below shows how the system handles less straightforward maneuvers such as castling and rescinding illegal moves. In the case of the latter, FunGowRightNow12 and his pals hooked up a computer with a program that determines what the valid moves are at the start of every turn. If it detects an illegal move, the turn will be suspended until the player makes a correct move. Only then will the turn be sent to the other board.

Genius isn’t it?

[via YouTube & Reddit]

Despite the fact that Gorilla Glass is supposed to be extremely durable, I can speak from experience that it can still shatter quite easily. In fact, the only time I ever dropped my iPhone 4 – about 2 feet – it completely shattered the screen and I had to buy a new phone. As Corning continues to improve their impact resistance with Gorilla Glass 3, a startup has a different sort of screen protection in mind.

The engineers at Cambridge, England’s Evolutive Labs have come up with a screen protector called Rhino Shield, which is expected to offer impressive shatter-resistance properties. By combining multiple protective layers with unique properties, they claim to have developed an incredibly durable screen protector for smartphones.

By adding “impact dispersion” and “impact damping” layers to their screen protector, they’re able to add a tremendous amount of protection in front of your gadget’s precious glass screen. Incredibly, all of these layers combine to be just 0.029cm thick, and will not impact screen sensitivity to your touch. The screen protector is easily installed with the included applicator, and can be removed without leaving a sticky residue. That all sounds good, but the proof is in the pudding – and the Rhino Shield doesn’t disappoint in the demo video below:

Wow. That was impressive – especially the part where they drop the steel ball bearing onto the unprotected and protected sheet of Gorilla Glass.

The Rhino Shield is currently raising funds for production over on Kickstarter, where a pledge of £12 (~$19 USD) will get you one for many of the most popular touchscreen phones, including the iPhone 4/4S, iPhone 5, Galaxy SIII, Nexus 4, and HTC One X+. They’re also working on versions for the iPad Mini, Nexus 7, Kindle Fire, iPad and other tablets, with prices ranging from £16 to £20 (~25 to $31 USD). Delivery is expected to begin this April.

The traditional drum set is one of the least portable musical instruments, which is why beginners are usually left with practice pads while their bandmates are out wooing tone deaf chicks just by showing up with a guitar and unwashed clothes. This portable drum set could change all that if it became a real product.

Industrial designer Kevin Depape is the one who came up with the set, which he calls the Y-Drum. It consists of 9 pads, 2 cymbals, a Bluetooth module and a companion app, either mobile or desktop. Just lay out the pads, link them to the app, select a drum kit and you’re ready to practice. All of the hardware is stored in a box that doubles as an amplifier.

I like how the drumsticks are used as the handle of the box. Clever.

It sounds like it would be a blast to own, but Yanko Design commenter the great vashhhnu points out a possible flaw: the user can’t just play it on any surface, not unless they’re okay with shoulder pains. It may not be much of an issue if you’re just going to whack on one of the pads for 15 minutes, but for extended sessions, the great – and helpful – vashhhnu suggests either including pedestals for the Y-Drum or requiring the user to find a knee-high surface for the pads to minimize pain and the risk of injury.

You can read more a bit more about the Y-Drum on page 25 of Kevin’s Issuu portfolio.

[via Yanko Design & Kevin Depape]