Apple in a low-key move has hired Richard DeVaul for what may indicate the long-term direction of its devices.

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Scott Jordan, CEO of SCOTTEVEST/SeV and Gadget Lover: Apple hires …

Apple in a low-key move has hired Richard DeVaul for what may indicate the long-term direction of its devices. The AWare Technologies founder has been a Senior Prototype Scientist at the company since January and is best-known for his …

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Scott Jordan, CEO of SCOTTEVEST/SeV and Gadget Lover: Apple hires …

While resistive touchscreens are being phased out in favor of capacitive screens, Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft are working together on touchscreens for your body, called Skinput.

Sure, you could just get one of those laser keyboards and project it onto your arm, but Skinput actually recognizes which part of your body you’ve tapped, based on the sound that’s made on either the skin, muscle or skeleton. The wearer must strap on an armband containing piezoelectric cantilevers, or sensors that measure pressure, acceleration and force, with a pico projector similar to what’s found in phones beaming the interface onto the skin.

The technology could be used with gaming, or even pair up wirelessly to phones or PCs for a different form of input. I quite like the idea of texting just by dancing my fingers on my forearm, with the message sent by Bluetooth to the phone in my pocket—or taking my shoe off and beaming the keyboard and menu onto the sole, just like Maxwell Smart. [New Scientist]

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Skinput, the Touch-Interface For Your Skin, Brings a Whole Nother Meaning to Touch Typing [Science]

While resistive touchscreens are being phased out in favor of capacitive screens, Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft are working together on touchscreens for your body, called Skinput.

Sure, you could just get one of those laser keyboards and project it onto your arm, but Skinput actually recognizes which part of your body you’ve tapped, based on the sound that’s made on either the skin, muscle or skeleton. The wearer must strap on an armband containing piezoelectric cantilevers, or sensors that measure pressure, acceleration and force, with a pico projector similar to what’s found in phones beaming the interface onto the skin.

The technology could be used with gaming, or even pair up wirelessly to phones or PCs for a different form of input. I quite like the idea of texting just by dancing my fingers on my forearm, with the message sent by Bluetooth to the phone in my pocket—or taking my shoe off and beaming the keyboard and menu onto the sole, just like Maxwell Smart. [New Scientist]

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Skinput, the Touch-Interface For Your Skin, Brings a Whole Nother Meaning to Touch Typing [Science]

While resistive touchscreens are being phased out in favor of capacitive screens, Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft are working together on touchscreens for your body, called Skinput.

Sure, you could just get one of those laser keyboards and project it onto your arm, but Skinput actually recognizes which part of your body you’ve tapped, based on the sound that’s made on either the skin, muscle or skeleton. The wearer must strap on an armband containing piezoelectric cantilevers, or sensors that measure pressure, acceleration and force, with a pico projector similar to what’s found in phones beaming the interface onto the skin.

The technology could be used with gaming, or even pair up wirelessly to phones or PCs for a different form of input. I quite like the idea of texting just by dancing my fingers on my forearm, with the message sent by Bluetooth to the phone in my pocket—or taking my shoe off and beaming the keyboard and menu onto the sole, just like Maxwell Smart. [New Scientist]

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Skinput, the Touch-Interface For Your Skin, Brings a Whole Nother Meaning to Touch Typing [Science]

Microsoft looks to be on a bit of a hot streak with innovations lately, and though this here project hasn’t received much hype (yet), we’d say it’s one of the most ingenious user interface concepts we’ve come across. Skinput is based on an armband straddling the wearer’s biceps and detecting the small vibrations generated when the user taps the skin of his arm. Due to different bone densities, tissue mass and muscle size, unique acoustic signatures can be identified for particular parts of the arm or hand (including fingers), allowing people to literally control their gear by touching themselves. The added pico projector is there just for convenience, and we can totally see ourselves using this by simply memorizing the five input points (current maximum, 95.5 percent accuracy), particularly since the band works even if you’re running. Make your way past the break to see Tetris played in a whole new way.

Continue reading Skinput: because touchscreens never felt right anyway (video)

Skinput: because touchscreens never felt right anyway (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skinput: because touchscreens never felt right anyway (video)

Augmented reality is stupid as a marketing gimmick—hold a Pepsi can in front of your webcam and be underwhelmed!—but this use of it is both practical and amazing. As you drive, this system displays surrounding buildings as see-thru.

This system works by using two cameras. One is placed behind a blind corner, while the other is in a car pointed forward. By combining the two views and using shared landmarks to match the content, the system then projects the combined image with the transparent building on the windshield. The driver then sees the puppy running towards the street before its too late.

Obviously, a lot needs to happen for this sort of thing to become commonplace. For one, every blind spot will need a couple of cameras pointed on it from various viewpoints, and cars would then need to be able to tap into all of their feeds. But hey, we’re already living in a world where CCTV cameras capture our ever move, so why not add a few more? [New Scientist via Boing Boing]

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Augmented Reality Makes Buildings Transparent as You Drive Past [Car Tech]

When I reviewed MotionX GPS Drive for iPhone, I said it offered the best value but had some UI issues. Newly redesigned, the app’s 3.0 version is far better—with landscape view and a more logical user interface.

Yes, the landscape mode I was lamenting its lack of in the last edition is there, and it looks great. As you can see, even pulling up iPod controls doesn’t hog the screen. Remember, naysayers, it’s not that you need widescreen for the road ahead, you need it for extra info, and you need it because it fits on the windshield better.

Time till arrival, distance till arrival and estimated time of arrival still all scroll through to the right of the “upcoming turn” text. I would prefer that I could pick one (I’m an ETA man—though not the Basque nationalist kind), but you can’t do that, yet.

The interface has a nice menu system that shows more priority to things I really use, and buries things like Compass and iPod where they need to be, on the periphery of my awareness. The only thing I’m missing still is the ability to navigate to a point on the map. That may be a trick, but one worth pulling off. There isn’t a lot of custom routing options in there yet, but if you really care about prioritization of stops, you should buy something more elaborate anyway—perhaps a portable GPS unit.

As you can see, even in portrait mode, the menus are cleaner:

All in all, it’s a palpable improvement for a worthwhile product, especially one so durned cheap. That’s right, it’s still just $1, with $3/month or $25/year turn-by-turn voice service. You may hate GPS navigators, you may even hate GPS apps, but if you are on vacation and you don’t have this app—at the very minimum, that is—you are just crazy. [Motion X GPS Drive iTunes Link]

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MotionX GPS Drive 3.0: The Best Value GPS App Just Got Way Smoother [IPhone Apps]

Taking a hint from how the F-35 demon helmet maps multiple video feeds into a 3D space, a Carnegie Mellon University team has created an augmented reality car system to see through any massive obstacle. The objective: Avoid car collisions.

The system takes video from two cameras and mixes them into one, creating the illusion of being able to see through any object. A video processing system compares the feed from one of the cameras—installed in the car—to the other camera—installed on a street. By identifying common points between the two sources, the software can distort the street camera’s video feed to match the driver’s view. The matching perspective video gets projected onto the windshield, allowing the driver to see through walls in a natural, seamless way.

The Carnegie Mellon team, lead by Yaser Sheikh, thinks that the system could be easily implemented by tapping into the CCTV camera networks available in most major cities.

I’m glad to see that someone is thinking about making CCTV useful for everyone. On the other side, I wonder why people spend time creating these absurdly useful, accident-preventing augmented reality systems, instead of working in making a software like iNaked (NSFW) a reality. Get on the with the program, people. You need to get your preferences right. [New Scientist—Thanks Jimmy Flores]

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Now You Can See Through Buildings Like Batman Bin Suparman [Augmented Reality]

Taking a hint from how the F-35 demon helmet maps multiple video feeds into a 3D space, a Carnegie Mellon University team has created an augmented reality car system to see through any massive obstacle. The objective: Avoid car collisions.

The system takes video from two cameras and mixes them into one, creating the illusion of being able to see through any object. A video processing system compares the feed from one of the cameras—installed in the car—to the other camera—installed on a street. By identifying common points between the two sources, the software can distort the street camera’s video feed to match the driver’s view. The matching perspective video gets projected onto the windshield, allowing the driver to see through walls in a natural, seamless way.

The Carnegie Mellon team, lead by Yaser Sheikh, thinks that the system could be easily implemented by tapping into the CCTV camera networks available in most major cities.

I’m glad to see that someone is thinking about making CCTV useful for everyone. On the other side, I wonder why people spend time creating these absurdly useful, accident-preventing augmented reality systems, instead of working in making a software like iNaked (NSFW) a reality. Get on the with the program, people. You need to get your preferences right. [New Scientist—Thanks Jimmy Flores]

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Now You Can See Through Buildings Like Batman Bin Suparman [Augmented Reality]

There’s been tons of great tech-related charitable news this week, and here’s a little more: As of last Thursday, T-Mobile USA has waived all international calls to and from Haiti. The program will last until January 31. Every little bit helps, and if you haven’t donated yet, it’s as easy as texting HAITI to 90999. [Ubergizmo]

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T-Mobile Waives International Call Charges To and From Haiti [Haiti]

Another day, another story about some cheap, plastic Wii motion control accessory finding an application outside of gaming. In this case, it’s the balance board, and not only this device helping stroke victims recover, it’s saving them money, too.

In fact, doctors at the University of Melbourne found that the balance board, normally used for pseudo Yoga or navigating Mii’s down a virtual ski slope, was so sensitive it could very well replace traditional laboratory-grade “force platforms” doctors use to assess a patient’s balance.

When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.

Even better, Clark’s team has already published a paper that verifies the Wii balance board is “clinically comparable” to the nearly $18,000 lab force platform. That’s great news for many smaller physio clinics that would otherwise be unable to afford the traditional rig. [New Scientist]

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In Early Tests, $99 Wii Balance Board Outperforms $17,885 Medical Rig [Wii]

A technology psychologist ponders whether twitter, smartphones and push email alerts are making us sad in The New Scientist this week. Yair Amichai-Hamburger author of Technology and Psychological Well-being says that people today experience more depression than previous generations and…

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Is technology making us sad ?

Imagine a disaster scenario: burning lava, an earthquake or maybe just the fusebox has blown and you need a light – where’s your flashlight? Your pocketknife? Your energy pills? Why, of course, they’re in pockets on the cat’s emergency jacket….

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The Pet Evacuation Jacket: is your cat ready for the apocalypse?

New Scientist has a feature on five conceptual successors to flash memory. These are all technologies currently under development that could fit terabytes of information on a single tiny chip—and some of them aren’t too far off.

The five here considered are MRAM (using two thin layers of magnetic material), FeRAM (which creates polarization through ferroelectrics), PCRAM (using lasers, sort of like with CDs and DVDs), RRAM (a variation on PCRAM that uses electrochemical reactions instead of heat-induced changes), and Racetrack (which, frankly, I understand even less than the other four, hard as that is to believe). If you’re not a sciencey type, descriptions of these technologies may sound like adults in Charlie Brown’s world, but they could be the next revolution in data storage—so read up. [New Scientist]

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Five Possible Futures of Computer Memory [Memory]