This is at once pretty cool and also very, really, incredibly silly and dumb. But that’s not a bad thing! Here’s Lenovo’s Horizon desktop computer. It’s half Minority Report, half newjack board game. Oh, and also a full Windows 8 all-in-one computer. More »
I’ve seen some unusual gadgets over the years, but the iKazoo might be one of the most offbeat, yet intriguing devices I’ve seen in a while.
Designed by ogaco, the iKazoo is first and foremost a wireless controller which can be used for playing music with your iOS or Android device. It’s got a lip sensor, a full chromatic keyboard and even a flute built into it. But the device aspires to be much more than a virtual wind instrument, as it can not only detect touch and breath, but movement. This opens the controller up to other sorts of interactions, such as using it as a paintbrush, on-screen navigation or for controlling games.
When used for gaming, it can be used as a sort of joystick, or also as a unique control method for games that involve balancing objects, or spinning a wheel. Its makers envision a plethora of other uses ranging from a motion control for golf and tennis games to a personal fitness tracker to a voice recorder and even as a karaoke machine.
Inside the stick-like iKazoo is a sophisticated set of circuits including an Ardiuno compatible microcontroller, Bluetooth wireless networking, optical, shock and motion sensors, as well as a microphone, multitouch sensor, RGB LEDs and even a headphone jack. It sounds sort of like a Wii Remote on steroids.
While the promotional video for the iKazoo is a bit silly at times (gotta love the part with the guy looking through the microscope,) I can really see potential here. A wireless controller with so much functionality along with an Open Source development platform could be a dream for hackers and tinkerers, much like the Wii-mote and Kinect have been. At this point it appears that the iKazoo is in the prototype stages, but the company is already registering interest for preorders for the strange little gadget.
There’s a hackneyed scientific description of what it means to touch things: your ass never actually “touches” a chair when you sit down, so it goes, but instead is repelled because of electrons that come up against each other. But is that really the case? More »
Apple made a big deal about the iPad mini providing an uncompromised iPad experience for users, and it’s standing by that by making it impossible for web developers to detect whether a web page is being read on an iPad or an iPad mini. Usually, devices provide a means with which developers can determine physical screen size, allowing them to create different wrappers for web content depending on what screen they’re being viewed on. Apple has made sure that’s not an option with the iPad mini, in an interesting move that’s very much in keeping with the company’s aims with the new, smaller tablet.
The inability to detect the Mini’s screen size is what a thread on Hacker News today uncovered, and what I spoke to iPad-friendly web content formatting company Onswipe about in an interview. The Onswipe guys echoed what I already suspected: Apple wants to do this in order to keep the web experience across iPads (both Mini and regular) consistent. The company stressed during its iPad mini launch event that it was “every inch an iPad,” and emphasized how apps would require no modification to work on iPad mini, which has the same screen resolution as the original iPad, just in a 7.9-inch package instead of an 8.9-inch one.
“There are always going to be developers who want to fine tune their experience,” Onswipe Chief Product Officer E.J. Kalafarski told me. “Obviously a button that’s designed to be finger-sized on the large iPad is going to be a little bit smaller than finger-sized on the mini. But all else being equal, the fact that it’s the same resolution, the same aspect ratio, the same number of pixels, Apple probably felt that was a worthy trade-off, to avoid any sort of ecosystem fragmentation, any need for developers to write or re-write second versions of their websites for the mini.”
If you start allowing developers to tweak web experiences for iPad mini, there are some definite implications in terms of consistency of experience. You could have users finding a different site than the one they’re used to on their existing iPads, and that might frustrate some users who are just looking to replicate what their iPads can already do, except smaller. Imagine if you were forced to use only a mobile site on iPad mini, the ones designed for smartphones, if some developers felt that provided a better overall experience. I’m sure more than a few users would be less than thrilled in that situation.
On the downside, developers will likely feel somewhat babysat by this move, since it ties their hands in terms of developing custom web experiences for what is still a different-sized device, which has definite UI implications. On the other hand, Apple avoids any uncertainty in what users expect from an iPad mini web-browsing experience. And, as Onswipe CEO Jason Baptiste pointed out, there’s the added benefit that Apple doesn’t have to worry about a situation where the iPad mini eventually becomes more popular than the iPad itself, which if you’re dealing with multiple types of content layouts, will require much more rework on the part of developers down the road.
Onswipe says its product still works perfectly well as-is, and suspects that’ll be the case for most web-based products targeted at the iPad, so this isn’t a huge issue. And for end users it’s probably ultimately a very good thing. But it does provide an interesting look inside Apple’s philosophy with the iPad mini, and just how much the company is intent on making sure it’s not a compromised version of the standard iPad experience.
It’s impossible to truly master typing on a tiny touch screen, hence the existence of peripherals like laser keyboards or this iPhone case. But what if your smartphone could use any surface as a keyboard without the help of additional devices? That’s the idea behind the Vibrative Virtual Keyboard.
The software was invented by Florian Kräutli, a Cognitive Computing student at the Goldsmiths University of London. It uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer along with a program written by Kräutli to detect which letter has been pressed based on the vibrations made when the user “types” on a flat surface.
Presumably, the app needs to be trained each time it’s used on a different surface or by a different user. I think that even Kräutli himself would admit that the app is unusable as it is. Even without the lag I think it would be far more useful when there are fewer keys involved, perhaps while playing a mobile game. I’d rather have this technology on my phone. Still, the demo does show us just how smart our mobile devices have become.
LG introduced its Touch 10 monitor (model: ET83), optimized for use with Windows 8, which was launched by Microsoft last week. Whereas conventional touchscreens enable two-finger dragging, scrolling and pinching, LG’s 23-inch Touch 10 monitor allows all ten fingers to be used simultaneously. The Touch 10 monitor is an excellent choice for those looking to enjoy an enhanced touch computing experience without having to upgrade their entire PC.
For tablet and smartphone owners, the Touch 10 …
I want this: a thimble that turns everything it touches into a touch-sensitive screen, so you can use quick gestures to make things happen. Imagine going around the world, moving your finger like a magic wand, making things happen. You know, like Minority Report wave-in-the-air thimbles, but touch-based. More »
The explosion of touchscreen devices have not made the mouse obsolete. But what if you could use your finger as a mouse on any surface? That’s the point of Magic Finger, a concept device made by a team from Autodesk Research and the University of Toronto that can sense touch, motion and texture.
The Magic Finger is basically a micro RGB camera, an LED and an optical mouse sensor cobbled together. Talk about ripping off the mouse. Contrary to its name, the magic here seems to be in the software. Aside from letting you point and click on any surface, the camera can also recognize different textures, which the researchers use in a variety of ways, such as reading data, launching applications and controlling other devices. Watch the dorky demo in the video below:
I’m not too sold on the Magic Finger for a couple of reasons. First of all the Magic Finger is intrusive; the finger or hand wearing the device will be of limited use because you don’t want to damage the Magic Finger. Second, I don’t think the data matrix or the Morse code transfer is practical. That said, the shortcuts and its use as a mouse could be very practical. Perhaps those two functions could be integrated in a less intrusive device like Google Glass or Digits.
[via Autodesk Research via MAKE]
The folks over at iFixit have gotten their tool-sporting hands all over the new iPod touch, giving Apple’s latest music player the customary detailed teardown. The alien autopsy-esque dissection reveals the device’s A5 processor, flash memory from Toshiba and a lot of parts secured firmly in place. The latter, naturally, has led to a pretty dismal repairability score for the touchscreen player — a three out of 10 — nothing new, really, for Cupertino products, though the company seemed to be moving in the other direction with the new iPhone. Check the source link below for all the gory details — and yes, iFixit even goes so far as calling the device’s home button “weak.” Oh snap, guys.
iFixit tears into the new iPod touch, bemoans lack of repairability originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Here’s the thing with Windows 8: staring at those live tiles feels kinda weird if you can’t reach out and touch them. That’s why Sony has upgraded its Vaio T13 Ultrabook with a touch panel (making it technically the T13-2), allowing you to reach out across the keyboard and swipe away to your heart’s content. We’ve just left some fingerprints on a high-spec model with a Core i7 processor, 1366 x 768 resolution, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM, which will sell in the UK from October 26th priced somewhere north of £1,000 (or $1,600, though Sony doesn’t set exact prices). A more modestly equipped i7, with 4GB and a 500GB hybrid drive should be somewhere around £900 ($1,400), while an entry-level i3 will start at £700 ($1,100), give or take. Bear mind that the dollar prices will be much lower than these currency conversions suggest — for reference, the original T13 starts at just $770.
Our first impression was that enabling touch on this traditional form factor was slightly awkward, especially if the purpose of touching the screen was to achieve something that would have been more readily accomplished with a tap on the keyboard — such as adjusting brightness, scrolling or returning to the home screen. On the other hand, the UI was incredibly responsive on the Core i7 processor and over time the touchscreen may well come to feel more natural than the touchpad within Microsoft’s new OS. Just bear in mind that enabling touch comes with a couple of sacrifices, aside from any price premium: it adds 100 grams and 1mm in thickness to an Ultrabook that was already on the chunky side, due to the addition of tougher hinges as well as the extra layer in the display. Check out our hands-on video after the break and make up your own mind.
Filed under: Laptops
Sony unveils touch-enabled Vaio T13 Ultrabook running Windows 8, we go hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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