Concept - SlashGear

‘concept’ Stories

Maemo “Contagious Content” concept promises geo-linked collaborative media

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Nov 10th 2009 2 Comments

Nokia’s various open-source teams are well on their way to being the flirting teases of the mobile OS world; after last week’s Symbian Foundation demo video, showing a nifty amalgam of augmented reality, geo-location services and combined social network streams, head of Maemo marketing Peter Schneider took to the stage at Nokia’s The Way We Live Next 3.0 event to discuss his team’s vision of “contagious content”. According to Schneider, one day our mobile devices will be able to spot hot topics of information – whether they be Twitter messages, photos or something else – nearby to us, and flag them up to better involve us.

SANY0158 540x416

Continued »

Microsoft Courier UI details leak: perfect pen/finger balance?

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Nov 5th 2009 No Comments

Microsoft’s Courier project – a dual-display “book” style electronic journal – has been intriguing us since it first leaked back in September, and the latest spillage of UI details courtesy of Gizmodo’s mysterious tipster is doing nothing to temper our interest. The twin screens are both multitouch-capable and respond to fingers and the special stylus, the latter having two side-buttons (the upper one being an “undo” key), an eraser on the other end, and a rotating barrel that flips between different pen modes.

Microsoft Courier UI leak 3 540x347

Continued »

Ericsson Spider Computer projection-packed concept [Video]

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 29th 2009 1 Comment

The wisdom of designing gadgets that look like spiders when so many people find the many-legged bugs creepy is arguably lacking, but that hasn’t stopped Ericsson. The company’s latest concept is the so-called Ericsson Spider Computer, a tripod design that will incorporate a full PC, pico-projector, laser keyboard and integrated 3G, and offer the people of 2020 an easily transported computing setup.

ericsson spider computer demo 540x417

Video demo after the cut

Continued »

BMW unveils SIMPLE leaning three-wheel concept

By Shane McGlaun on Monday, Oct 12th 2009 No Comments

If you saw the video we posted last week of the Nissan Land Glider concept that leaned and though to yourself if it had one less wheel and looked like the cockpit of a Viper from Battlestar Galactica you would totally buy one, get your checkbook out. BMW has unveiled a new three-wheel concept called the SIMPLE.

bmwsimple

Continued »

Sony flexible OLED notebook concept gets second outing

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 9th 2009 No Comments

Sony may not have made any significant changes to their flexible OLED laptop concept since we saw it first at CES back in January, but the sleek prototype is so alluring that SlashGear Japan couldn’t walk past it at CEATEC this week without grabbing a photo. Intended to showcase the potential of ultra-thin OLED touchscreens, the concept combines both display and keyboard into a single, flexible layer.

sony vaio flexible oled laptop concept

Continued »

Microsoft Pressure-Sensitive keyboard contest winners announced [Video]

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 8th 2009 No Comments

The results for Microsoft’s pressure-sensitive keyboard competition are in, and there are some interesting uses for the prototype ‘board. The peripheral can track not only which keys are pressed but the force with which they’re hit, and it’s that which “Most Useful” first prize winner SafeLock takes advantage of; the password app not only matches up an eight-character code, but measures flight time, hold time, maximized pressure and a curve fit to measure pressure over time for each keypress.

pressure sensitive keyboard 540x356

Video demos after the cut

Continued »

Nissan Land Glider leaning electric car concept [Video]

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 8th 2009 No Comments

After Shane flagged up a couple of interesting and definitely distinctive electric cars yesterday, it only seemed fair to counter with this: Nissan’s Land Glider concept. Reminiscent of the VentureOne tilting trike, the twin-seater Land Glider leans into turns to avoid falling over, and is blessed with one of the coolest cockpits we’ve seen in some time (you can see it in the gallery after the cut).

nissan land glider 1

Video demo after the cut

Continued »

LBook T9 multitouch Windows 7 slate tipped for $350 in March

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Oct 7th 2009 1 Comment

lbook t9 tablet pc LBook have been quietly selling ebook devices for a while now, but the company is hoping to make a splash into the multitouch tablet market next year with their T9. The LBook T9 is an Intel Atom-based 8.9-inch slate running Windows 7, and is tipped to arrive in March 2010 with a price tag in the $350 to $375 region. If they can pull that off, it’s an excellent price for a 12.7mm-thick sofa surfer.

Continued »

Microsoft planning mid-2010 launch for Courier: perfect note-taking tablet

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Sep 29th 2009 No Comments

After the second leak of Microsoft's Courier dual-touchscreen tablet, ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley has stepped in with some leaked information of her own. It looks as though our suggestion that the origins (and intentions) of Courier lie in Microsoft OneNote was accurate, with Foley's source saying "The concept started as a software idea on how one would really build OneNote from scratch if you could for the Tablet form factor. That then morphed into building a tablet. If you look at the most successful pocket computer today - it is still the Franklin Covey Planning Products, the idea was how do you create a digital planner."