A group of MIT students have developed a wearable computer that projects its display onto any nearby surface, and is controlled by hand gestures and voice-recognition. A prototype was demonstrated at TED this week, capable of projecting a watch face onto the user’s wrist after they trace a circle over it, capturing images framed by their fingers, and pulling up information about an individual and projecting it onto them during conversation.
Video demos after the cut
After talking the big talk last week, NVIDIA are looking to walk the walk this week with preview samples of the NVIDIA Ion reference nettop hitting at least two review sites. Both LaptopMag and PC Perspective have been playing with the Ion platform, which couples an Intel Atom CPU with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400 chipset for improved gaming performance together with 7.1 HD audio and Blu-ray full-HD video.
Clearwire are preparing to launch a portable WiFi router compatible with a Motorola WiMax USB stick modem, intended for sharing a WiMAX connection with more than one user. The router, seen here in prototype form, was demonstrated at the official Clear launch in Portland, Oregon, yesterday.
Video demo of the Clear router after the cut
Qualcomm today demonstrated a Snapdragon-based reference prototype running Google’s Android OS. The setup includes a large WVGA display, together with Snapdragon’s always-on wireless connectivity, and is intended to demonstrate the open-source platform’s suitability for larger-scale devices than the current smartphones it’s usually seen running on.
If the Eee Keyboard is a concept ASUS could pretty easily bring to market, their Shared Computing Concept is slightly more left-field. Designed around an origami theme, the notebook has a quad-fold format whereby the screen and keyboard sections fold into – and cover – the hardware. More interesting than the physical design, however, is the software; ASUS are really pushing the idea of collaborative working.
The software emphasizes shared experiences, either online or locally. For instance the laptop can be folded flat for two people to work at, or two of the devices can be pushed back-to-back and automatically interfaced. In one video demo, four people were shown collaborating on a presentation, sorting images and charts together while communicating through instant messaging.
As monstrous beasts of laptops go, HP Voodoo’s prototype Firefly certainly stomps its way near the top. Intended to demonstrate some of the innovation coming out of the hardcore gaming team, the Firefly pairs a 17.1-inch 1920 x 1200 main display with a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 sub-display underneath (similar to the Fujitsu N7010), together with Intel’s 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme Quad Core processor, 4GB of RAM, a pair of ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs running in CrossFire mode, and a 7,200rpm 250GB hard drive. That’s comfortably enough to run Far Cry 2 with its graphics set to max.
Quanta has been demonstrating multitouch touch-sensitive displays using an optical recognition system rather than the more common capacitive or resistive panels. The technology, which the company calls Optical Touch, relies on two cameras embedded into the top left and right corners of the display, which track the user’s fingers. It will be compatible with the multitouch functionality coming as standard in Windows 7.
HP and Arizona State University have demonstrated what they’re calling the first prototype of “affordable, flexible electronic displays”. Constructed using the self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL) technology invented by HP Labs, the display also uses E Ink’s Vizplex bi-stable electrophoretic imaging film that requires no power to maintain an image; the end result is a low-power, low-manufacturing-cost display suitable for color text and graphics.
As more and more people have multiple mobile devices, it becomes more of an issue of how you’ll keep your gadgets charged while on the go. But Mojo Mobility may have just come up with something that will put an end to your charging troubles that utilizes Near Field Power to charge up your devices.
It’s always interesting to see the various iterations of a gadget’s design, before it reaches the shelves in all its shiny splendor, and today it’s the family album of WowWee’s Rovio mobile WiFi webcam robot. Released at the beginning of October, the Rovio hasn’t always had its Stealth Bomber-style, as these balsa prototypes from RoboCommunity prove.
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