Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve already seen Evoluce toy around with Kinect hacks and multitouch displays, and it’s now inevitably managed to combine the two. The company has just announced its new I-Voluce display, which fuses a standard 46-inch LCD with some integrated “3D depth sensing technology” that’s apparently not simply a repurposed Kinect — exact details on it are light, but it will apparently work from a distance of up to 13 feet, and it relies on Windows 7 for an OS. That’s obviously not designed for home use, but Evoluce does see plenty of potential for the displays in public spaces like museums, as well as in office and education environments. For those that prefer a more hands-on approach, Evoluce also has an updated version of its Surface-style multitouch table, the Evoluce Two, which also packs 3D depth sensing technology and can accommodate up to six users simultaneously. Of course, neither exactly come cheap — look for prices to start at €3,995, or about $5,600.

Continue reading Evoluce announces 46-inch display with built-in 3D sensors

Evoluce announces 46-inch display with built-in 3D sensors originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 03:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer touch pad / Media Center remote surfaces at the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though there are bigger multitouch screens out there — and ones that can support more simultaneous touch points — 3M’s brand new C3266PW is the company’s largest, said to be suited for industrial-strength installations with multiple simultaneous users (the company is quick to note that the ultra-wide 178-degree viewing angle along both axes is great for that, since folks can crowd around and start touching). They demoed the new unit here at CeBIT in two ways: three of them in a row on a “cascade table” with one high, one slanted, and one low, and another separate unit mounted on a solo kiosk at roughly eye level. The table’s set up as a multi-display Windows box running a tech demo with maps, images, and videos that can be flicked between screens, pinched, and zoomed; the kiosk, meanwhile, is running a rudimentary flight simulator designed to demonstrate all ten points of multitouch capability at once with a finger-based aircraft control scheme (not the way you’d really design a game, but a good demo nonetheless).

3M points out that touch response — the amount of time that it takes the screen to actually recognize that it’s been touched — is an issue in the industry, and it’s not something that we really think about as users; if a gesture is laggy, we just assume the processor isn’t up to the task or the software sucks. The C3266PW is rated at a relatively brisk 12ms recognition time, and while the company has other products with even quicker ratings, we definitely noticed the lack of lag as we played around (of course, the computers powering the displays have plenty to do with that). We’ve come to associate good capacitive displays with glossy glass and resistive with matte, but that’s really not a fair assessment — this one has a non-glare “anti-stiction coating” that, as its name implies, makes your fingers glide like butter. It might not be great for a phone, but it works well for a display of this size that’s probably going to be used in public installations and potentially handled by hundreds of people a day. Follow the break for 3M’s press release and video of both setups!

Continue reading 3M’s 32-inch display with 10-finger multitouch steps out at CeBIT (video)

3M’s 32-inch display with 10-finger multitouch steps out at CeBIT (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That pinch-to-zoom update for the Xperia X10 that Japanese customers got an early lead on is now rolling out around the globe according to a new blog post from the boys and girls at Sony Ericsson. That may not be the most interesting part, though: they’re also chatting up a future firmware update that’ll enable ANT+ support on the Xperia X8, X10 Mini, and X10 Mini Pro, a capability baked into the chipsets on those devices that Sony Ericsson hadn’t previously exploited. Theoretically, that means that heart rate monitors and other wearable fitness gear — a market where ANT+ has really blossomed — could connect directly to your phone rather than passing through a computer with an ANT+ dongle first, perfect for analyzing jogs on the go. Of course, workout technology is always more appealing than the workout itself… but if you can solve that problem, Sony Ericsson, let us know. You can find us on the couch over there.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10’s multitouch update rolling out now; X8, X10 Mini, and X10 Mini Pro getting ANT+ support soon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Feb 2011 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like the iPad might not have an exclusive on those new “multitasking” gestures unearthed in the latest iOS 4.3 beta, because BGR‘s got some shots up of an purported internal build that seem to indicate Cupertino intends to push them down to the iPhone line as well. Now, there are a couple of obvious red flags here — using “four or five fingers” sounds pretty unreasonable for a 3.5-inch display, though it’d certainly tie in with recent rumors that Apple’s turning sour on the physical Home button and might indicate that the complete redesign we’re hearing about could include a slightly larger display. Of course, it could also indicate that this is really early software with the wrong (read: iPad) wording — but at any rate, we could definitely see the benefit of, say, a two-finger gesture to swipe between apps.

Now, on to part two: 9to5 Mac seems to have unearthed traces in the iOS 4.3 beta of a new feature called “Photo Streams” that seems to be — you guessed it — a way to share continuous streams of photos with friends you approve, presumably through MobileMe (which would fit in nicely with the Find my Friends stuff). Alone, that’s not worth $99 a year — plenty of other services offer similar functionality — but we wouldn’t be surprised if this were bundled in with a bunch of MobileMe refreshes this year.

Update: We just received an interesting tidbit of information on the above pic (and others that BGR has its hands on). According to sources, after the iPhone 4 barroom debacle, Apple made significant changes to how it keeps track of — and identifies to third parties — its devices. Namely, the company began adding clauses to screens on the phones which read “Confidential and Proprietary, if found, please contact…” followed by a 408 number (that’s Cupertino, of course). This prevents any misunderstanding from parties who may come across these devices. So what does it all mean? Well, not much, save that it seems these photos we’re viewing are in fact the real deal… which means gestures may be headed to your iPhone. Intrigue!

iPhone rumor two-pack: multitasking gestures and MobileMe Photo Streams? (Update: those pics are real) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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