Google is gradually spilling more details on Project Glass, with co-founder Sergey Brin revealing a hidden trackpad that can be used to navigate when speech input might be too distracting. Brin brought the wearable device to The Gavin Newsom Show, with the California Lieutenant Governor being one of the first outside of Google to try Project Glass on and later telling Wired that “you can easily forget you have them on” and that despite the bright studio lights the “image was remarkably clear.”
Your one and only chance to own an official landscape-oriented iPad may be here, ladies and gentlemen, ad an eBay seller has one that they want to unload on you. The auction appeared in the last 24 hours with not one, but two 30-pin dock connectors, one in the normal position, the other on the long end of the tablet. This device seems to confirm the validity of the original dual-port iPad cases that popped up before the original iPad was released in 2010.
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American Sign Language happens to be the sixth most-used language in the US and yet there are few options when it comes to bridging the communication gap between those who understand the language and those who don't. However, that may soon change with an interesting project by three engineering students from Cornell University who have developed a glove that can translate gestures into spoken letters.
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Another day, another step closer to wearable computing: German researchers Fraunhofer have been polishing their own Project Glass alternative, boosting the resolution of their eye-tracking microdisplays. While Google may have got most of the attention recently for its voice- and gesture-controlled headset, Fraunhofer has been quietly working away with some big-name partners to commercialize its own augmented reality alternative that uses your own eyes for navigation.
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Android has certainly come a long way from Google's first mention of the Open Handset Alliance, and little shows it quite so well as the Google Sooner. HTC's first prototype for Google's Android development, the Sooner was a non-touch QWERTY handset used for the earliest demos of the platform, five years ahead of flagships like the Galaxy S III and the One X. App developer and serial prototype acquirer Steve Troughton-Smith managed to pick up a Sooner device and has shared some details.
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There have been some crazy tech related auctions thrown up on eBay over the years, but this one could possibly be the rarest of them all. A new listing is offering a prototype Macintosh with the Twiggy drive. Originally, the Macintosh was supposed to use the 5.25” Twiggy drive, but high error rates with the system forced Apple to switch to Sony’s 400k 3.5” drive instead.
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Terrafugia announced today that its production prototype flying car, the Transition, has successfully completed its first test flight. The company has been promising to deliver the a mass-market street-legal vehicle capable both on the road and in the air since they flew an earlier proof-of-concept version back in 2009.
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RIM will be giving away prototype BlackBerry 10 devices to developers attending its annual BlackBerry World Conference in early May. According to Bloomberg, RIM's VP of developer relations Alec Saunders revealed in a phone interview today that as many as 2,000 units of the prototype device will be given out to developers to get a head start building applications for the next-gen QNX-based platform.
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Toshiba has unveiled a new prototype tablet, the AT330, at Toshiba World 2012 in Germany and it's a huge 13.3-inch slate sporting the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Beyond the massive screen size, the AT330 also features a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and a TV tuner that includes a pull-out antennae. The folks at Techfokus spent some hands-on time with the tablet, the video of which is posted below.
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Microsoft researchers have created a prototype universal translation software that not only translates your speech into foreign languages but uses your own voice to output the translation. The software preserves your accent, timbre, and intonation while translating between 26 languages. The software has been developed at Microsoft's labs in Beijing and was unveiled at TechFest 2012 by chief research officer Rick Rashid along with researcher Frank Soong.
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In the world of video game controllers, force feedback has been around for many years. Force feedback allows the controller to pull against the player to make things such as flight simulations and racing games feel more realistic. For instance, on a driving video game, you can feel the forces as you turn the car into a corner and on flying games you can feel the G forces pulling back against the stick.
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Fujitsu had a prototype Tegra 3 Android smartphone safely hidden behind a glass wall at CES in Las Vegas, but here in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress we were able to get up close and personal with it. This new waterproof quad-core powered prototype smartphone was out in public and all they are calling it is "quad-core prototype" until further notice. More details and video below.
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