Leap Aims to Make Motion Control Ubiquitous -- and Awesome You know that bit in The Avengers where Tony Stark spreads his fingers apart in mid-air and the stuff on the screen in front of him instantly appears on displays throughout the room? A company called Leap Motion wants to make that kind of gesture control a reality, and it hopes to take the first step with a new type of motion controller. The Leap is a simple motion controller that you can plug into any USB port on your computer. Once it's plugged in and you've installed the Leap software, it turns the 8-cubic feet of air in front of it into "3D interaction space" — basically, it'll track any and all motion within that space, letting you use your hands to do whatever you could do with a mouse. How is that different from Microsoft Kinect? Precision — the company claims the Leap is 200 times more sensitive than current gesture-based tech, able to track movements down to a hundredth of a millimeter. Can't wait to try it out? How do you like the Leap?
SOEmote implants your facial expressions, movement, and voice onto your EQ2 avatar The future is here and it's full of Ratonga. SOE is adding new facial recognition tech to EverQuest 2 that lets the game track your movement and facial expressions and replicate them on your avatar in real-time. Voice chat is also built into the feature so that your character will animate naturally while you talk. We have a full demo video of the tech below, and the inside scoop on how it works and why the devs think MMO players will love it from EQ2's Director of Development David Georgeson and the CEO of the company that developed the technology, Robert Gehorsam. PCG: Aside from it being cool future-sci-fi-world technology, why is it important to get this tech into MMOs?? Dave Georgeson: Any game that calls itself a roleplaying game absolutely needs this feature. Pick a character. You’re you for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. PCG: Can you explain exactly what the software is tracking? But what we found after we got it into the game was surprising. DG: Absolutely. DG: Absolutely not.
Doors Unlock With Smartphone Vibrations It gives the term skeleton key a whole new meaning: a prototype system from AT&T Labs that beams a unique vibration through a user’s bones to be picked up by a receiver in a door handle, automatically unlocking the door at the touch of the handle. Using piezoelectric transducers, the system could someday be embedded in smartphones or wristwatches to create doors that automatically unlock when the right person touches them and stay firmly dead-bolted when anyone else tries to gain entry. In the future, in other words, you are your own set of keys. According to InnovationNewsDaily, the system works via frequencies that humans can’t feel but could hear in a very quiet room. But it’s not just the raw acoustic signal that the door is analyzing. All that is pretty neat, especially considering that the applications for this wouldn’t have to stop at door locks.
Audio-Powered City Map Enables Geolocated Eavesdropping GPS maps are a remarkable invention on their own, but when coupled with satellite photography and tech like Google’s Street View, they enable us to see anywhere. It’s unbelievable, when you fathom the true scope of it all. But even still, these perspectives are limited to only one sense: sight. Listen Here! is a concept by Nicola Hume that allows a map to be heard. It’s an interactive guide that visitors explore with a stethoscope. (Technically, the stethoscope is just for show. It’s a brilliant idea. But as a less free-spirited, civically organized tool it’s just as interesting. In other words, it is time for us all to take the reins of covert ops, to hide microphones under one another’s seats and just wait for the hilarity to ensue.
Smart Shirt Syncs To Your iPhone, Trains You In Pilates As the weather warms and we all realize that we’ll be removing clothing in public for another summer, pilates seems like a better and better idea. But how do you--what’s the verb I’m looking for--pilate? Pilatorize? Pilatiocize? Move, by ElectricFoxy, is a prototype tank top that uses four stretch sensors to feel the postures of your shoulders through your back and recognize the poses of exercises like yoga, pilates and even sports like baseball and golf. But what makes Move a bit different is that it actually syncs with an iOS app in real time, not so differently from what we see in Nike+ products. I don’t envy the development team, but the idea has extreme potential. Indeed, maybe the best part of Move isn’t that it will prepare your body for the beach, but that it will be an excuse to cover it. [Hat tip: ecouterre]
Leap 3D motion control system is 100 times more accurate than Kinect, will cost $69.99 Motion control startup Leap Motion has demoed its Leap 3D motion control system, which can track motion to around 0.01mm accuracy — 100 times more accurate than the Kinect. Rather than taking Microsoft's approach, Leap Motion creates a personal 3D workspace of about four cubic feet. The Leap consists of a small USB device with industry-standard sensors and cameras that, in tandem with the company's software, can track multiple objects and recognize gestures. In a demo given to CNET, Leap's designers showed off OS navigation and web browsing using a single finger, writing, pinch-to-zoom, precision drawing, 3D modeling, and gaming. Although Leap Motion is a startup, it has significant funding behind it, and the system is scheduled to launch early next year at $69.99.
Chameleon - A Better Home Screen for your Android Tablet by Gabor Vida - Teknision While this campaign has been very successful due to everyone's support, due to unforseen problems with our Amazon Payments account we cannot accept any new pledges and all existing pledges will be cancelled. We have spoken with Kickstarter, who have told us the best way to resolve the situation is to close the current project, and create a new Chameleon backing page, where you can re-pledge to receive your Chameleon App. We are grateful for all your support and have upgraded all rewards $5 and above with 5 Bonus Chameleon backgrounds. People who have existing credit card authorizations from this project will be cancelled when this project is closed - and thus no charges will be applied to your credit card. We appreciate your patience, we are very excited to deliver world class software to everyone! We are aiming to have the Kickstarter page live early next week, we will be sure to share it with everyone. Looking for a better Home Screen for your Android Tablet? Device Type Android Tablet
MIT creates glucose fuel cell to power implanted brain-computer interfaces Neuroengineers at MIT have created a implantable fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose present in the cerebrospinal fluid that flows around your brain and spinal cord. In theory, this fuel cell could eventually drive low-power sensors and computers that decode your brain activity to interface with prosthetic limbs. The glucose-powered fuel cell is crafted out of silicon and platinum, using standard semiconductor fabrication processes. The platinum acts as a catalyst, stripping electrons from glucose molecules, similar to how aerobic animal cells (such as our own) strip electrons from glucose with enzymes and oxygen. The glucose fuel cell products hundreds of microwatts (i.e. tenths of a milliwatt), which is a surprisingly large amount — it’s comparable to the solar cell on a calculator, for example. Size-wise, the MIT engineers have created glucose-powered fuel cells that are as large as 64x64mm (2.5in), or as small as just a few millimeters.
(Slide 1) | iPad App Retells Frankenstein, And Hints At The Future Of E-Books The concept of an “e-book” is a strange one. Just consider the idea of pages on a screen--is that metaphor really the best way for us to explore written content? And do e-books still need to books at all? Without the limitations of paper, typewriters and letter presses, what can a “book” be? In the App Store, you’ll find a lot of experiments incorporating sound, video, and interactive elements into e-books. “When we use computers, it’s like having a conversation. So Inkle built a book interface to give the reader a constant feeling of control. These story threads were the work of writer and game designer Dave Morris, who started with Mary Shelley’s text and essentially renovated it for the iPad experience, gutting, rebuilding and, sure, taking a lot of artistic license in the process. “It helps that Frankenstein is a little bit of a broken classic,” Morris writes. One of the app’s many amazing illustrations. Download it here. [Hat tip: The Chimerist]
Paper Note - A Tangible Paper Waveform with #Processing This project, made at CIID (Copenhagen Institut of Interaction Design), was part of their Generative Design class ran by Joshua Noble. Paper Note creates a tangible waveform from laser cut disks of paper. The user records a message, a sound or loads up music, and the system analyses the sound to map each moment to a corresponding slice. The circles are laid on a sheet, lasercut and put together to form a unified shape, representing the original sound wave. The team programmed it using Processing. Each Paper Note is made up of around 450 stacked disks of paper. Credits: Andrew Spitz and Andrew Nip with help from David Gauthier, Joshua Noble and Marcin Ignac for their help with the code
Kinect for Windows 1.5 released with '10-joint' skeletal tracking and Kinect Studio Microsoft is improving the functionality of its Kinect for Windows hardware this week with the release of a 1.5 version of its Software Development Kit (SDK). The latest Kinect for Windows 1.5 software includes support for a new "seated" 10-joint skeletal tracking system to enable developers to track the head, neck, and arms of seated and standing users in default and near mode. Kinect for Windows 1.5 also introduces a Kinect Studio developer tool. Kinect developers can use the tool to record and playback Kinect data in their applications to assist with debugging and app improvements. Microsoft is also supporting additional languages with its 1.5 release, including French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese speech recognition.
Google Drive vs Google+ Photos vs Picasa Web | shahidhussain.com After the launch of Google Drive, I was excited to use it as a photo backup & sharing service. Unfortunately, the features for what I consider a good photo viewer are spread out over different Google products (Drive, Google+ photos, Picasa Web.) I want to back up my photos online This is easiest in Drive – drop your photos into the Drive folder, and you’re done. You can’t do it on Google+. Yes, you can upload photos (including the neat Instant Upload function from your phone) but it won’t be an archive, because photos over 2048 pixels get resized from the original. You can’t do it easily on Picasa Web. Let me qualify that last statement. I want to be able to view them online and on mobile in a decent interface All three products have different photo viewers. Google+ photos Picasa Google Drive Google+ has the best viewer – there’s a grid of photos on the web and the Google+ mobile app, and a useful fan / zoom animation. I want to be able to share photos easily Google Drive sharing Google+ sharing
Unmanned Lockheed Mach 20 An unmanned hypersonic aircraft made by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) crashed into the Pacific Ocean after reaching about 20 times the speed of sound and flying for more than nine minutes, a Pentagon agency said. The experimental Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2, or HTV-2, lifted off today in a Minotaur IV rocket made by Orbital Sciences Corp. The arrowhead-shaped aircraft soared to the edge of space, separated from the booster and was “on track” to enter its glide phase, during which it would reach speeds of Mach 20, or about 13,000 miles per hour, before diving into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Kwajalein Atoll, according to the agency. Around 8:22 local time, the agency reported engineers “lost telemetry” with the aircraft. In a statement released later in the day, the agency said the aircraft successfully made the transition to Mach 20 aerodynamic flight and “more than nine minutes of data was collected before an anomaly caused loss of signal.” Close Open Source: Darpa Mach 20