Optimus keeps trickling out even more impressive photos of the Upravlator keyboard, a grown-up version of the Optimus Mini Three with a four by three key matrix that are larger to boot. This time using LCD rather than OLED screens, running at a far greater resolution, Upravlator is aimed at macro-using graphic designers, computer musicians and people doing video processing, hooking up to a spare graphics card port to drive the mini-screens.
A lady I work with uses a Tablet PC to interview and assess clients; it means has all the forms she might possibly need on-hand, without carrying a massive file around. I’m not sure what she’d say to me if I suggested she store her keys and make-up in it – probably ask me if I was trying to make some sort of filthy PC-Card innuendo – but hopefully she’d understand if I showed her UML’s purse-style UMPC concept, The Walletino.
Having got my hands on a 3G cellphone the other week (the Nokia N80, actually), I excitedly prepared to make my first video call… only to remember that I’m the only person amongst my friends, as far as I know, to have a 3G phone. So I’m very pleased to hear that the GSM Association is calling for manufacturers to design a new breed of lower-cost 3G handsets that would put them on a price level comparable to 2G phones. Apparently the number of people considering the high-speed capable units has, much to the chagrin of operators, decreased, with mobile data costs highlighted as particularly to blame.
Sounds like HP has been doing some “outside the box” thinking lately, if the prototypes in its Concept & Design Innovation Tour are anything to go by. Charged with designing the shape and ethos of the gadgets we’ll be playing with in 2016, HP’s futurologists have decided that less is definitely more – both in aesthetics and in componentry. Central to the concept is a futuristic bracelet watch, similar to the Fossil Starck watch to my eyes, which satisfies the eye candy with a holographic display and connectivity with UWB (Ultra-Wide Band) radio, which is far less power-hungry than Bluetooth or WiFi. Read on to find out just exactly what this clever watch will connect to…
Perhaps the only worse thing than some sort of gorgeous prototype by a manufacturer which you know will never be built is a gorgeous prototype by someone entirely unconnected with the company – at least in the first scenario you know there’s a chance elements of the concept willl get picked up in later handsets. Okay, so often the fan-designs aren’t up to much and you wouldn’t want to upgrade to them anyway, but occassionally a really hot piece of industrial design comes along. Well, meet the Sony Ericsson Adriana…
Twiddling your memory knobs back to August this year you might remember SlashGear’s coverage of the Onyx concept phone, designed and crafted by bespoke hardware and interface designers Synaptics and Pilotfish. With no physical controls such as the keypad, joystick or scroll wheels found on traditional phones, Onyx instead relies on a system of touch, proximity and gesture.
Built around a high-resolution LCD screen and Synaptics’ ClearPad touchscreen technology, a transparent touch-sensitive capacitive sensor, Onyx can discriminate between one and two finger use and can even tell 
when it is being held against a cheek. This opens up whole new avenues of interface design: pop-up onscreen scrollwheels for volume and moving through contact and media lists, “flicking away” text messages to send them, dragging photos and files from screen to screen.
SlashGear has been lucky enough to visit Synaptics and get a live demonstration of Onyx, from none other than their Human Interface Architect, John M. Feland. Under the ever watchful eye of Clark Foy, the company’s marketing VP, we filmed some exclusive footage of the prototype in action. The ethos of Onyx is “All About Fun”, about using technology in a humanistic way; hopefully you’ll have fun looking at what might just be the phone of the future.
I’m a total Tablet PC convert, so the sight of a renovated Intel Ruby prototype brings joy to my pen-loving eyes. Ruby was a design concept by the processor firm to signpost the direction it saw its ultra-mobile, energy efficient chips heading in; a thin framed compact touchscreen tablet, the media inevitably compared it to Star Trek’s PADD portable computers (which it kinda resembled) and then unfavourably compared the chunky first-gen UMPCs to it.
During a senior citizen’s charity barn dance last year, my grandmother was the victim of a very slow hit-and-run incident when one of the other participant’s wheelchairs ran over her foot. With tragedy like this lacing our streets on an almost bi-daily basis, it’s a corn-fed shock to the system that wheelchair users are not required to pass some sort of pavement safety testing scheme. Thankfully, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) are doing something about it.
Scientists are often characterised as geeks lacking in even the most basic social skills, but someone over at New Scientist obviously thinks that robots should not be excused from minding their Ps & Qs.
In fact, they suggest that all robots that come into contact with humans should have kansei, a Japanese term for emotional notions; intuitiveness, mood, sensitivity and feeling. That way, your electronic home help wouldn’t offer you a freshly cooked meal while you’re sleeping (probably exhausted from working all the hours in the day to buy batteries for him), nor start doing loud housework while you’re suffering from Linux-induced headaches.
Treehugger have an intriguing post about a self-rearranging home that gradually alters its configuration with the changing weather and time of day.
“A small channel in the floor has stopped streaming cold water, and now appears to be releasing steam. Presumably this is was intended to add a dash [of] humidity and warmth to the room”
It’s not just minor features that react, it’s whole walls too – shifting to maximise the sun or keep out the wind. Each change is heralded by what they describe as “small audio clues”, hopefully not of the sort that trucks make when reversing.
I’d love to hear some more details about this, if anybody has them?
Self-Rearranging Homes That Optimize Themselves [Treehugger]
SlashGear Japan
