Hasta La Gadget!

One group of people has traditionally been left out of our modern tablet revolution: the visually impaired. Our slick, button-less touchscreens are essentially useless to those who rely on touch to navigate around a computer interface, unless voice-control features are built in to the device and its OS.

But a Stanford team of three has helped change that. Tasked to create a character-recognition program that would turn pages of Braille into readable text on an Android tablet, student Adam Duran, with the help of two mentor-professors, ended up creating something even more useful than his original assignment: a touchscreen-based Braille writer.

Currently a senior at New Mexico State University, Duran arrived at Stanford in June to take part in a two-month program offered by the Army High-Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC). The program is a competition: Participants are given research assignments, ranging in the past from aerospace modeling to parallel computing, and vie for honors awarded at the end of the summer. This year, projects aimed to solve a problem using the Android platform. Duran and his team’s project, titled “A virtual Braille keyboard,” was this year’s winner for “Best Android Application.”

Duran was challenged to use the camera on a mobile device, like the Motorola Xoom, to create an app that transforms physical pages of Braille text into readable text on the device. From the get-go, there were problems with this plan.

“How does a blind person orient a printed page so that the computer knows which side is up? How does a blind person ensure proper lighting of the paper?” Duran said in an interview with Stanford News. “Plus, the technology, while definitely helpful, would be limited in day-to-day application.”

So Duran and his mentors, Adrian Lew, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and Sohan Dharmaraja, a Stanford Ph.D. candidate studying computational mathematics, decided to develop a writer app, instead of a reader. Currently, the visually impaired must use desktop-based screen-reading software or specially-designed laptops with Braille displays in order to type using a computer.

Because a blind person can’t locate the keys of a virtual keyboard on a flat, glossy touchscreen, the team decided to bring the keys themselves to the user’s fingertips. Specifically, when the user sets eight fingers on the device, virtual keys align underneath each of the user’s fingers. The team’s Braille keyboard is comprised of eight keys: six that are used to compose a Braille character, a carriage return, and a backspace key. If the user gets disoriented, he or she can re-establish the keyboard layout with a lift and re-application of the hands.

“The solution is so simple, so beautiful. It was fun to see,” Lew said. Such a keyboard is also useful because it customizes itself to the user, adjusting the onscreen keys based on the user’s finger size and spacing. (I wish my iOS keyboard did that!)

Duran demoed the app blind-folded, typing out an email address as well as complicated mathematical and scientific formulas, proving the keyboard could be useful to educators, students and researchers. He also got to see a blind person use his app for the first time, which he said was an indescribable feeling, “It was the best.”

Lew said via email, “We do not yet know how exactly this will reach final users, but we are committed to make it happen.” The team has several options they will be considering over the next few weeks, so perhaps we could even see an app end up in the Android Market soon.

The tablet-based system costs 10 times less than most modern Braille typing solutions, and, based on the video below, appears to be anything but vapor.

Image and Video courtesy Steve Fyffe/Stanford University

Boring laundry could be obsolete, with new tech from UC Davis researchers. Photo Paolo/Flickr

Forget washing your clothes. In the future, you may be able to clean your shirt just by taking a walk in the sun.

Students at UC Davis have worked out a way to mix cotton with a compound that reacts to light. When hit by photons, the compound — 2-anthraquinone carboxylic acid — reacts and produces hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen peroxide, you will remember, is used to bleach hair and propel rockets. The released chemical will also kill bacteria and “break down organic compounds such as pesticides and other toxins.” Perhaps you wouldn’t want to actually be wearing this when the light hits it.

Self-cleaning clothes would be great. Imagine a hiking trip. Instead of having to wash and dry your clothes, you could just leave them out on a rock to clean them. Ning Liu, who worked on bonding the chemicals to the cellulose in the cotton, says that the fabric “has potential applications in biological and chemical protective clothing for health care, food processing and farmworkers, as well as military personnel.” Whatever. I’ll settle for claiming back the space the washing machine takes up in my tiny kitchen.

Self-cleaning cotton breaks down pesticides, bacteria [UC Davis via CNET]

See Also:

• Self-Cleaning Shower Uses Nano-Coatings to Destroy Dirt
• Litter-Robot: Self Cleaning Cat Box
• Swedish Self Cleaning Toilet Hoovers Up Cocaine
• Scientists Copy Nature For Self-Cleaning Plastics

Microsoft patent shows how a modular smartphone could be realized. Image: RegHardware

We know Microsoft for its software chops, but the company is tinkering with some innovative hardware design concepts on the side.

A recent Microsoft patent describes a smartphone with a slide-out section that can house one of several modules, including a QWERTY keyboard, a gaming pad, a second display or a battery pack. Even better: The modules work wirelessly when they aren’t docked in the smartphone’s slider. Another useful way the modular smartphone concept could be used: The keyboard can be used as a controller while the smartphone acts as a TV-connected media hub.

Such a modular design combines capabilities normally found in different phones or accessories. For a gaming pad, your phone of choice right now would be something like the Xperia Arc. Want a slide-out QWERTY keyboard? You’re probably looking at one of several Android smartphones. If you’re looking for extra juice, you’ll need a special case or a phone with a removable battery.

How would something like this work if it came out within the next year or so?

With continued Xbox Live integration with Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango), gaming would definitely be fun with the d-pad module.

If you’re writing long emails or sending text after text, a QWERTY keyboard can be more comfortable to use but not something you necessarily need all the time. Windows Phone has tight social media integration, which would make it easy to stay connected with friends and family and keep chatting via email, Facebook or other methods.

Windows’ Live Tile-based UI looks fantastic on a single display. I can only imagine that spreading to dual screens — the ability to check status updates, weather notifications and more on one, and watch video, check email or browse the web on the other. However, dual-screened devices have largely disappointed in practice. Perhaps the slide-out, rather than the folding-style double screen, could be an improvement though.

A battery-pack module would be ideal for a long day (or weekend) traveling when you may not have access to an outlet for charging, like on a camping trip. Your phone would be alive — but would you have access to 3G or 4G? At least you’d be able to take photos and perhaps access some sort of offline map app. Along the same lines, a battery pack could keep the phone juiced up while you use the gaming pad wirelessly.

Would such a design be practical? Smartphones wear many hats these days, especially if it is being shared among members of a household (web-surfing mom or dad, text-happy kids who also suck batteries dry playing games … you get the picture). The biggest problem might be misplacing modules and the risk of dirt or debris damaging the slider.

Microsoft’s patent isn’t the first of its kind. Other modular cellphones include the Modu Phone, which featured interchangeable cases and a prototype from NTT Docomo. More recently, we’ve seen the smartphone itself work with larger accessories, like with the Motorola Atrix and its laptop dock.

RegHardware via Geek

BMW plans to give its owners more weaponry in their antisocial mission: laser headlamps. Photo BMW

Wonderful. Technology has added yet another way for BMW drivers to show complete disregard for other road users — laser headlights. Projected use: Zapping cyclists.

LEDs are obviously over already, and BMW plans to further enable its over-entitled, road-owning customers in their war on civility. The lights burn so much brighter than LEDs (170 lumens per watt instead of 100 lumens), and the diodes are so much smaller (10 microns) that they could disappear into the bodywork the way Apple hides the lights in its MacBooks. Kinda.

Of course, BMW won’t actually be ditching the headlamps, as they “play an important role in the styling of a BMW,” and let you know what kind of car it is that has been tailgating you for the last five miles (as if you even needed to check).

Instead, the biggest advantage will be to save power, as lasers are more efficient. And BMW might consider removing the indicator lights from its cars, too — it’s not that the drivers ever use them.

BMW develops laser light for the car [BMW]

HP’s webOS had a feature called Touch to Share which allowed information to easily sync between devices, like the TouchPad and the unreleased Pre 3. Photo by Jon Snyder/Wired

These days, accessing the same files across multiple devices can be a feat. Services like Dropbox can help transfer files from one device to another, but it’s not the most elegant solution.

We’re moving toward a world in which you can swipe, flick and tap to share data from one piece of hardware to another, effortlessly. One where you never have to worry about which device you stored that file on. We want a seamless, integrated computing experience.

Software company Nsquared is working hard to make this a reality. Using a Windows Phone 7 device, a Slate tablet, a large Kinect-controlled television display and a Microsoft Surface smart table, Nsquared came up with a model for how information can be shared and manipulated among a variety of like-branded devices.

When the smartphone is placed on the Microsoft Surface smart table, information instantly branches out onto the table around the perimeter of the phone, displaying the e-mail itself in larger text to the left while other relevant information sits above the top of the phone. The information can be touch-manipulated from either the phone or the table.

When the tablet is placed on the smart table, it renders a different, more detailed view of the floor plan that’s displayed on the table. You can pick up the tablet to provide a 3-D view of that same information, then manipulate your position on the blueprint in the tablet by touching a different point on the smart table. This could foreseeably be convenient for a contractor to show a client details of a space or project — the contractor can manipulate the client’s view on the tablet by tapping on the smart table, guiding them through the project detail by detail, without needing to zoom out on the tablet to figure out where you are in the blueprint again. All you have to do is glance down at the table to see that.

But mobile OS developers themselves have also started implementing features that are bringing us towards a completely integrated computing experience.

HP’s webOS could have offered a really convenient way to share and sync data between devices (before HP killed off its mobile hardware division, that is). The “Touch to Share” feature allowed things like open web pages to be shared between webOS devices like the HP TouchPad and the Veer smartphone with a simple nearby wave.

We’ve also seen that Apple is taking steps toward making seamless computing a reality. Apple’s iCloud service will help make data a non-issue as you switch from one device to another, and iOS 5 will have AirPlay mirroring, so you can wirelessly stream video on your iPad to a larger display. A patent for projection technology, with a feature that allows for information to be swapped from one projected display to another, is another forward-looking implementation of the concept. And if rumors prove true, Apple’s got some sort of revolutionary television up its sleeve that would have iOS integration. You could use your iPhone as a controller for games using its accelerometer and gyroscope, easily swipe what’s playing on your iPad to the TV, and then back to your phone or MacBook Air.

Samsung, which makes a variety of smartphones, televisions, and tablets, is another solid contender for developing its own in-house, completely seamless computing experience. Though it isn’t remarkably popular here in the U.S., the company could use its Bada operating system across its devices to unify the experience and allow for information to easily be shared, swiped and synced between devices.

With its new Tablet S and Tablet P, e-readers, and televisions, Sony is another company that could break into the space if a software platform was unified across its different devices.

There’s obvious incentive for companies to provide a high degree of compatibility and integration between its devices — it means you’re more likely to buy more of their products, rather than their competitors. Customer loyalty.

Currently, Apple is the only one who seems to really be taking advantage of this in-house, but as Nsquared’s video shows, it could certainly be accomplished with other-brand devices.