Current generation consoles are old. Hella old. It used to be that we’d get new ones on a 5 year cycle, but it looks now like it’s a 7 year cycle we’re on. The next Xbox for example is rumoured to be scheduled for 2013, a little over 7 years since it was launched at the end of 2005. We don’t know what specs it’ll have, but if some folk at the University of Utah have their way, the next generation of controllers could have some added haptic feedback, besides the usual rumbling. The idea is that the thumbsticks could have a “round, red “tactor” that looks like the eraser-head-shaped IBM TrackPoint or pointing stick now found on a number of laptop computer brands.” This extra nubbin would tug at your fingertips in different directions, “simulating the tug of a fishing line, the feeling of ocean waves or the recoil of a gun. If a gamer’s avatar runs into a wall, the tactor under the thumb moves back to mimic impact. Both tactors can move from side to side to mimic ocean waves.”
There doesn’t seem to have been any actual contact between the researchers and anyone at Microsoft or Sony, so there’s no certainty any of this will ever make its way into our hands. But with several months before anything is due, who knows what ideas might trickle into the right offices…
Much as the industry is constantly evolving in terms of faster computers and ever more ingenious and polished operating systems, the very basic interaction between man and machine has remained pretty constant over the last decades. You still have a flat screen projecting flat images at a user sitting in front of it. Sure, some of these images may depict a three dimensional object, but the images themselves are still 2D. A project by Jinha Lee and Cati Boulanger, former intern and researcher respectively, at Microsoft Applied Sciences would change all that. They’re using a special transparent OLED screen from Samsung and a series of sensors, along with custom software that reshuffles the keyboard to the back of the screen. So in a way, you’re now working with your hands inside the virtual desktop and you’re free to manipulate what you see. Sensors detect your motions and even where your head is in relation to the screen so as to maintain proper perspective at all times (think of that scene in the latest Mission: Impossible).
There are no concrete plans to put this into production but as a proof of concept allows us to play and discover potential new interfaces for systems of tomorrow. Watch it in action below.
Tokyoflash’s design blog is where a lot of user-submitted designs go from concept to reality. One example is the Optical Illusion watch we posted about a while back. And being discussed right now is the above V-BL47, which not only looks cool sporting a Tron-inspired design, but happens to be ridiculously easy to read once you know how. No solving of puzzles (like the Sudoku watch). The lines on the display are simple regular digits, only distorted radially onto polar coordinates, each filling a quarter circle. You read the time from the bottom quadrant in a clockwise fashion. So the time on the picture above reads “03:59″. After a little bit of practice you’ll be able to read them at a glance.
Just hit the jump for a bunch more pictures. You’ll see how simple it is and there will also be links so you can harass the fine folk at Tokyoflash into making this asap.
The thing about Bluetooth headsets is that they require you to spend an extra three or four seconds putting them on. And they’re yet another item to carry around in your pockets or in the car. The Angle Bluetooth headset pictured here solves those two admittedly non-problems. Designed by Antoinne Coubronne, Michael Harboun and Thomas Chabrier in the context of a design competition at Orange (the telco), The Angle is a detachable part of a specially made case that places the headset in the exact spot it needs to be so that when you simply lower your hand, a hook keeps it attached to your ear. Describing the process doesn’t do its elegance justice; you have to watch the video below. It’s all so natural and effortless, the way that you bring the phone up to your ear, lower it back down and keep talking.
Sadly this seems to be nothing more than a concept at the moment, although Orange’s involvement gives hope that it can one day see the light of day.
Concepts are a love/hate sort of thing at OhGizmo. Mostly hate because we rarely get to buy and own them, although there have been exceptions. We wish the Digimo Camera becomes one such exception as it looks like a really cool way to take pictures. The device would essentially be two cameras joined together. When used in this way, you can capture pictures in 3D. The fun really begins when you split them. You can then position one camera somewhere and control it remotely via the other one. This can create picture taking opportunities that traditional cameras can’t give you, as people and animals tend to behave differently when they know they’re about to be shot. It goes without saying that the LCD on the remote camera would display what the picture-taking cam is seeing.
Check out the rest of the post for a bunch more pictures showing you the different types of scenarios the Digimo could enable. Again, this is just a concept right now, but here’s hoping that it somehow makes its way into a real product.
The iTar is not a real product yet, it’s a conceptual accessory for the iPad that will make it easier to turn it into a guitar. Which is where we imagine the iTar name came from: “i” and “guiTAR”. Still, at first glance, iTar looks like something nefarious, something oily and perhaps cigarette related. Or perhaps that’s all in this author’s mind and in reality it couldn’t be anything further from that. We actually do like what it will do if its Kickstarter campaign takes off. It combines a button-based guitar fretboard (Starr Labs patented fingerboard) with your iPad to create a multi-talented instrument. Dock the iPad in and you’ll be able to play, quasi-virtually, a number of instruments, not just the guitar. It can be a keyboard, a drum set, a synthesizer; everything hinges on the related application and its bevvy of instruments that are at your fingertips.
Of course, the iTar will only exist if the Kickstarter campaign gains steam. As of writing, they’ve raised $4k of their $50k goal, but there are a little over 50 days left. If this is your sort of thing, the smallest contribution that will net you an iTar is $200, although you can pitch in at any level.
If you like your gadget main dishes served cute with a heaping side of commentary, Art Lebedev’s latest concept design will certainly whet your appetite. Called the Svintus, it’s a novel take on the boring power strip that takes its inspiration from the farm’s most delicious animal. The design seems a bit localized though. While the spiral cord that plugs into the wall certainly looks like a pig’s tail, the repeated snouts, or snoutlets, that cover its body only work as a visual gag in a country that uses that specific plug format. Here in North America, most of the novelty would be lost.
On the functional side of things the Svintus does provide a whopping seventeen outlets for charging the vast majority of your devices. And they even look like they’re adequately spaced to accommodate a good number of oversized wall warts. On a deeper level, though, I can’t help but feel the use of the pig is commentary on our ever increasing power needs… But I’m just not ready to feel guilty about it this early in the morning.
With the advent of Kickstarter, a lot of previously unfeasible ideas(due to lack of capital) are now hitting the marketplace. Kickstarter is a distributed funding platform, and if a product gains enough momentum usually it can get reach its funding goals. Today we look at something that has only a rough prototype in the pipeline (call it a proof-of-concept device) but could have a lot of potential if funded: self-inflating bicycle tires made by a nascent company called Pumptire. This is my understanding of how they’d work. On the outer edge of the tire, there’s a hollow tube called a lumen. As you roll, this tube is compressed, like squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. Ahead of the point of contact with the ground, in the lumen, is compressed air which goes into the tire through a special valve. Behind the point of contact is a vacuum, which draws more air in through another part of this special valve. It is this valve which also senses when the correct inner pressure has been reached and stops drawing in more air. You’ll never need to “top-up” your tires with air again!
Besides world peace, free energy and a “fat-free fudge cake that doesn’t let you down in the flavor department like so many others”, mankind’s greatest pursuit has been a solution to the problem of dirty laundry. And it turns out it’s been sitting right under our butts the whole time. It just took the designers at elementodiseño to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
What they’ve come up with is a brilliant way to ignore and avoid the issue of washing soiled garments, by turning them into the stuffing for a padded stool. Now I know what you’re probably thinking: “Andrew, I’ve been wallowing in a mountain of dirty laundry for months now, this isn’t new!” And I can’t argue with that. But, have you been wallowing in it while it’s stuffed inside a stylish blue canvas bag with reinforced seams? I didn’t think so. So let’s give the credit where the credit is due ok?
Related Tags: Concept, future, Gaming
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