Hasta La Gadget!

ASUS is back at it again with the crazy concept designs, and this time around it’s brought the lustworthy Waveface collection to look pretty behind glass. There are three different concepts in the lineup that aim to redefine computing in almost every way imaginable. First up is the Ultra, which is a wearable computer / mobile phone based around a flexible OLED display and can be controlled through hand gestures in mid air or by touching the display. Next is the Light, which is also based around a folding OLED, but will have some sort of physical keyboard that pops up when folded up into the laptop form factor. Lastly, the Waveface Casa, a television-esque home computer that will also be controlled through gestures in the air. We wish we could show you how said gestures would work — or how any of this would work, really — but these were really nothing more than empty shells filled with displays. Clearly this tech is a far ways off, but it’s good to know that ASUS still has quite the imagination — and hopefully the knowhow to maybe make it real someday.

Continue reading ASUS Waveface concept line shown off during our lifetime, might be available after it (video)

ASUS Waveface concept line shown off during our lifetime, might be available after it (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Meysam Movahedi’s latest concept certainly isn’t the first revolutionary tweak to the tried-and-true power outlet, but it’s easily one of our favorites. Put simply, the Rambler Socket is an in-wall box that contains 1.5 meters of extra cabling along with a traditional AC outlet. Granted, you’ll need a pretty deep wall to make something like this work (in theory, of course), but the result is nothing short of brilliant. If your AC cord is long enough, you simply plug it into the socket per usual; if you need a little extra length, the built-in extension cord pulls out with a gentle tug. Once you’re done, you simply tug on the cable once more and watch as it recoils back within the wall. GE, or someone — can we get a contract to this guy, pronto?

Rambler Socket tucks a recoiling extension cable, pinch of genius within your AC outlet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The photo to the left shows an example of non-volatile, flexible organic flash memory developed at the University of Toyko–something that could lead the way to a slew of flexible computing gadgets, such as large-area sensors and electronic paper devices, Engadget reports.

The design uses a polyethylene naphthalate (PEN) resin sheet arrayed with memory cells, the report said; data can be written to it and erased over 1,000 times. The university claims it can be bent up to six millimeters without any degradation.

So far, it only retains data for about a day–but researchers expect to improve that drastically over time.

As the decade comes to a close, we’re seeing a bevy of real and mythical devices bent on saving main stream media through the execution of a variety of proposed content partnerships. Unfortunately, it’s still hard to imagine how all this will play out in reality. That’s where slickly produced concepts can be of benefit. Like this one from the R&D wing of Bonnier, the publisher of Popular Science magazine among others. While the concept still treats electronic magazines as periodic issues, the interaction is entirely new and immersive compared to their printed forms. Interestingly enough, our future is ad free if the video (and not Google) is to be believed. Compelling stuff and a possible glimpse at our not too distant future.

Continue reading Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!)

Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy (video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Touchscreens have become a big hit among cellphone users. But what’s next after tap to click and the two-finger pinch and zoom?

Synaptics’ Fuse experimental phone shows a device that you can interact with by squeezing, gripping, flexing and tilting the phone. The device melds multiple technologies such as multi-touch capacitive sensing, haptic feedback, 3-D graphics and proximity sensing.

“It’s not a product but a prototype that showcases a lot of key input technologies,” says Robyn Palmer, marketing specialist for Synaptics. “Our focus was on how to make mobile phones mobile again.”

Fuse tackles the difficulty of single-handed usage and the need to constantly look at the screen, two big challenges that users face today with current generation touchscreen devices, says Synaptics.

With Fuse, touch sensors at the back of the phone means users can poke it to receive or initiate calls. Force and capacitive touch sensors on the sides of the phone also allow you to squeeze the phone to select icons from the phone’s menu. Incorporating the accelerometers into the user interface also means you can tilt the phone to scroll and grip the phone tight to stop.

Synaptics’ silent video demos some of these ideas.

Fuse uses Synaptics multi-touch touchscreen, capacitive scroll strips, a Texas Instruments OMAP 3630 processor, three accelerometers, force sensors on the sides of the phone, a 480 x 800 high-resolution AMOLED display and a 3.7-inch screen.

The phone–which was created in partnership with Texas Instruments, Immersion and U.K. design firm The Alloy, among others–won’t make it to market as a product. But Synaptics plans to license parts of it to handset makers that are looking to take user interface on mobile phones to the next level.

The Fuse concept phone will be shown at the Consumer Electronics Show  in Las Vegas next month.

Photo: Fuse/Synaptics