Technology
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MaKey MaKey turns anything into a touchpad
As I discovered when reviewing the Minty Geek Electronics Lab a while back, experimenting with circuit building can be a great deal of fun. There was one particular project in this kit that made use of the human body to complete a circuit, with a simple lie detector test being the end result. With their Makey Makey open source hardware project, Jay Silver and Eric Rosenbaum have taken such touch interaction to a much more entertaining and inventive degree. Everyday objects like bananas, coins, and even Play-Doh can be transformed into a computer keyboard key or mouse click to control onscreen gaming action, play software-based instruments or type out short messages.
Last week, we reported on a cool, if seemingly far-fetched, UI concept that’d let you drag files from your phone to your computer with a swipe of the finger . The idea is “so simple and clever, you wonder why it doesn’t exist already,” we wrote. Hours later, an email appeared in our inbox, subject line: “it exists!” The message came courtesy of Natan Linder, a PhD student in the Fluid Interfaces group at the MIT Media Lab. Linder and undergraduate researcher Alexander List are developers of Swÿp , a piece of open-source software that facilitates “cross-app, cross-device data exchange using physical ‘swipe’ gestures,” they write on their website.
It Exists! MIT Creates Tech For Moving Files Across Devices With A Swipe
Touché laat objecten aanrakingen onderscheiden | Core
Wetenschappers van Disney Research hebben capacitieve aanraakgevoelige technologie ontwikkeld die allerhande objecten kan laten herkennen welk soort aanraking er plaatsvindt. Ze zien onder andere toepassing in deurknoppen. De onderzoekers van Disney Research en Carnegie Mellon University hebben hun aanraakgevoelige technologie Touché gedoopt .Maybe you have heard about Cloud Computing, maybe not. One thing is for sure: It is all "the-buzz," and companies like Google and Microsoft are investing in it, along with many others. Here is a quick primer on Cloud Computing, what it is, how it can be used and more.
Basics of Cloud Computing
If you read any science fiction or futurism, you've probably heard people using the term "singularity" to describe the world of tomorrow. But what exactly does it mean, and where does the idea come from? We answer in today's backgrounder. What is the singularity? The term singularity describes the moment when a civilization changes so much that its rules and technologies are incomprehensible to previous generations. Think of it as a point-of-no-return in history.
What Is The Singularity And Will You Live To See It?
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology
Has anyone seen an application of this technology yet? by Mar 5
Light Blue Opitcs (LBO) has won the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Awards 2010 prize for Product Design with its Light Touch interactive projector. The device uses an infra-red touch sensing system that transforms a projected image into a virtual 10-inch touch screen. It allows users to interact with multimedia content and applications by touching the image, which can be projected onto any flat surface. LBO’s proprietary holographic laser projection technology (HLP) was first reported on by Gizmag in 2009 , while still in development. The system creates bright, high-quality WVGA resolution video images that are kept in focus with software that corrects for distortion and optical aberrations, enabling table-top projection.
Interactive projector that turns any flat surface into a touch screen wins UK design award
A Wearable Computer Turns Any Surface Into A Touchscreen | Co.Design
Chris Harrison, a PhD student in Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, is full of interesting interface ideas . One of his latest projects is called OmniTouch , whose prototype design uses a shoulder-worn, depth-sensing camera/projector to create interactive "touchscreens" on anything from a nearby wall to your own forearm. The technology is amazing: OmniTouch’s screenless interface can distinguish between a touch and a "click" (i.e., a command to do something), auto-detect the size of the interface surface (e.g., it will project a short strip onto your arm, but a large rectangle onto the wall), and even recognize the orientation of the image in 3-D space (if you tilt your screen-hand toward yourself, it will consider it "private"; a more flat orientation will be deemed "public"). But oh, that rig--are normal people really going to be walking around someday with shoulder mounted screen-guns like the Predator?
"In the future, your house will send you a text message to warn you that your basement is flooding." Sounds like the kind of hooey you only hear in those fantastical "future of…" videos , doesn’t it? Not anymore. Two MIT Media Lab graduates have created a "2.5-inch chunk of the future" called Twine that does exactly that, and more, and is available right now . Well, not quite: It will be available in early 2012, thanks to its wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. And the best part about it, the part that surely made that fundraising surge to over $170,000?
Twine, A Tiny Gizmo That Holds The Internet's Future | Co. Design
Abstract We present a system that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels; these are found by searching the Internet. Although online image search generates many inappropriate results, our system is able to automatically select suitable photographs to generate a high quality composition, using a filtering scheme to exclude undesirable images. We also provide a novel image blending algorithm to allow seamless image composition.
PhotoSketch
Is Origami the Future of Tech?
In 1996 a young mathematician and computer scientist named Erik Demaine became fascinated by a magic trick that Harry Houdini used to do before he made his name as an escape artist. The magician would fold a piece of paper flat a few times, make one straight cut with a pair of scissors, and then unfold the paper to reveal a five-pointed star. Other magicians built on Houdini’s fold-and-cut method over the years, creating more intricate shapes: a single letter, for example, or a chain of stars.
3D Printing