Hasta La Gadget!

Growing up I settled more than a few arguments with a quick game of thumb wrestling. Those matches always started with the chant “one, two, three, four, I declare thumb war,” which is clearly how all civilized people do it. If you ever wondered when thumb wrestling might get the inevitable upgrade, it looks like that time is now.

A new spiral-bound book has been published called simply enough Star Wars Lightsaber Thumb Wrestling. The book has seven thick pages each printed with a different dueling location. You and your foe stick your phalanges through the holes with tiny super-cool lightsaber models strapped to them with Velcro straps.

You then duke it out with little thumb sized lightsabers. This may be the perfect way to settle arguments in a more civilized time. The book is available for $12.99(USD) over at ThinkGeek, Imperial credits are not accepted.

[via Nerd Approved]

Everyone’s let it happen at some point — that moment where we’re desperately trying to use our smartphones in one hand while juggling groceries or coffee in the other. There’ll be no way to recover those social graces, but six researchers at the University of Calgary have developed a software technique, Fat Thumb, that should at least keep the contortions and dropped phones to a minimum. As the name implies, it’s all based around pressure: a light touch performs the usual commands, while squishing the thumb’s wider surface area against the screen allows the equivalent of a multi-touch gesture, such as a pinch to zoom. The advantages for comfort and grip virtually speak for themselves; what’s surprising is that Fat Thumb may well be faster than other one-handed gestures. Work on the project is so far confined to a research paper stemming from experiments with an iPhone, although it’s easy to see this spreading to other platforms and real products before too long. Catch a glimpse of the cleverness in action after the break.

Continue reading University of Calgary’s Fat Thumb trick allows one-handed phone use, jugglers are thankful (video)

University of Calgary’s Fat Thumb trick allows one-handed phone use, jugglers are thankful (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 05 Jul 2012 04:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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