Posts Tagged ‘turning’
Ubi Interactive: Turning any surface in to an interactive touch surface
Author: Jamie Colby
Ubi are one of 11 startups participating in the Kinect Accelerator in Seattle. Their application uses a projector and Kinect for Windows sensor to turn any surface in to a interactive touch “screen”.
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Facebook Engineer Behind ‘Presence’ Is Turning The Concept Into A Standalone Company
Author: Ang Nguyen
One of the geeky, cute contraptions of the early Facebook days was a web-enabled beer keg at company headquarters. Whenever an employee swiped their RFID badge on it, a camera would snap a photo of them pouring a beer and post a status update to Facebook. Whenever it ran low on beer, the keg would post pictures of BevMo to Facebook as a desperate refill reminder.
Even though Facebook’s beer keg world domination plans never played out, the technology behind the keg, called Presence, may still show up in the wild. That’s because one of the engineers behind Presence, John Stockdale, is starting a company around the concept. It’s aptly named Presence. Apparently, the naming and IP rights around the technology aren’t issues for Facebook.
A spin-off of Presence doesn’t mean beer kegs powered by ‘The Cloud!’ will suddenly appear everywhere. Presence happens to be a much broader concept than that. There isn’t a product out yet, but Stockdale’s calling it “digital identity for the physical world.”
Here’s what Stockdale posted about the company on Presence’s new page:
We aim to simplify and modernize a whole slew of ordinary interactions that you have with the real world. Many of you will remember Super Secret Door (http://facebook.com/supersecretdoor), a facebook-enabled door that three of us* built during Hackathon 18. It was only a proof of concept, but it’s one of many ideas that Presence as a platform will enable.
Using our platform, your home will know who is trying to access it. A hypothetical lock application allows you to specify access rules for your door and garage (…car, ski-house, bike, etc.), on an individual or group basis. You and your roommates have 24/7 access. Your housekeeper has access between 2pm and 6pm on Tuesdays. When you’re out of town, your kickball group can get into your garage over the weekend to pick up and drop off the bases and gear. Any unauthorized access results in an email notification explaining who attempted access and when.
By giving the places and things we interact with the capability to understand who is interacting with them, and in what manner, we can enable a whole new generation of real-world user experiences.
It might be easy to slot Presence into the whole slew of “Internet of Things” companies that connect physical objects like thermostats (Nest) or souped-up pedometers (Fitbit, Nike Fuelband) to the web. But Stockdale thinks many of the companies from the previous generation are more about elevating the status of objects in people’s lives instead of merely allowing the material things we own to enhance our interactions with other people.
“This is about making your interactions with spaces and objects more similar to your interaction with people and friends,” he says. Stockdale isn’t very explicit about what kinds of technology he’ll end up using. It might not even be RFID or NFC, which is what was used for Google Wallet. It should be more ambient.
Presence actually made a more public debut back in 2010 at Facebook’s f8 developer conference. It powered a bunch of different stations at the venue where attendees could “check-in” or have their photos taken by swiping their badges. It raised speculation that Facebook was going to pursue more ambitious concepts around “location” involving RFID, but that didn’t end up being the case in the short-term. However, Facebook recently acquired a mobile loyalty startup called TagTile earlier this month. That company gave away free hardware to merchants, who would let their customers collect and redeem loyalty points, coupons and other rewards through mobile apps.
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Tags: behind, company, concept, engineer, facebook, into, Standalone, turning, ‘Presence’ | 
No Comments »AT&T’s hungry eyes turning toward Leap, Dish or MetroPCS?
Author: Eric Moss
Image courtesy of Fierce Mobile Content
AT&T’s hungry eyes turning toward Leap, Dish or MetroPCS? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple files patent for interactive 3D interface, keeps rumor mills turning
Author:
Murmurs of an iPad 3 on the horizon not doing it for you? How about a new pseudo-3D interface? A patent filing has whet our appetites with the possibility (that’s what it is; a possibility) of a future Apple device capable of gauging depth and displaying a 3D environment based on the user’s eye movement. On-screen content would adjust to your eye movement, expanding items where ever your eyesight falls. It would also create a “virtual 3D operating system environment,” where the user would feel like the UI projects beyond the two-dimensional screen. The patent includes details on ‘realistic’ drop shadows for icons and other OS furniture based on the degree and angle of ambient light. The filing, from April 2010, says that the technology would use an accelerometer, GPS and ‘gyrometer’ to reference the placement of the device and report on its movements. Sound interesting? Those in need of more foggy details and line drawings can hit up the full patent request at the source below.
Apple files patent for interactive 3D interface, keeps rumor mills turning originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 04:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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how can I keep people from turning off my samsung galaxy s2?
Author: Tiffany Shoman
Question by : how can I keep people from turning off my samsung galaxy s2?
I have the Samsung Galaxy S2 with Sprint and I have the where’s my droid app and the protection app which locates lost or stolen phones. But I want to keep anyone who doesn’t have the unlock code from turning it off thus preventing it from activating the location GPS. How is this possible to do?
Best answer:
Answer by A
Even if there was they could still pull the battery out.
You can protect your phone in the event that it is lost or stolen by an idiot but if it’s stolen by anyone with any sense at all then there is nothing you can do about it.
Give your answer to this question below!
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How to get the data off my samsung galaxy tab without turning it on?
Author: Heather Brown
Question by : How to get the data off my samsung galaxy tab without turning it on?
I have a tmobile samsung galaxy tab but it died because coffee got spilled on and it had a lot of stuff on the internal 16gb of memory. is there anyway that i can get the things from the internal memory without the device being on? I cant turn it on because of the coffee and it has been three days since it wouldn’t turn on in and it still wont work.
Best answer:
Answer by Caoedhen
Unless you can remove memory chips from a surface mount installation without destroying them (good luck with that, by the way) the answer is no.
What do you think? Answer below!
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Student spends summer turning a tablet into a Braille writer, says mowing lawns is for chumps
Author: Melissa Shroeder
Lots of us spend the summer by the pool, sipping Mai Tais and working on our tans, but Adam Duran had better things to do with his vacation. Instead of engaging in such lethargy, Duran attended the Army High Performance Computing Research Center’s summer course held at Stanford, where he and his mentors developed a Braille writer app for tablets. You see, the average 8-key Braille writer is a custom laptop that costs $ 6,000, so given the paltry pricing on today’s slates, this new solution is considerably more economical. Users place their fingertips on the display and the app populates keys underneath them, rendering tactile indicators of the keys’ location unnecessary. Plus, the virtual keyboard provides a custom fit for your phalanges no matter how big or small they may be. The project has some “technical and legal hurdles to address” before it’s made available to the masses, but here’s hoping they can clear them soon. Video of the app in action after the break.
Student spends summer turning a tablet into a Braille writer, says mowing lawns is for chumps originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Oct 2011 22:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Turning The iPhone Into A 350x Medical Microscope For Under $50
Author: Tiffany Shoman
Using the iPhone (or any mobile smartphone or tablet device, really) for medical purposes isn’t a new thing, but it’s nice to see the applications people cook up. Just recently at Disrupt we saw Smartheart, and apps like Skin Scan are decentralizing some simple self-monitoring tasks like melanoma detection.
We’ve also seen lots of physical additions to the iPhone camera. You can get wide-angle lenses, telephotos, and even a 12x microscope lens. But a team of researchers at UC Davis has one-upped the competition by making the iPhone into a 350x microscope for very low cost. Now you’ll be able to send people Instagrams of your blood cells.
It should be said right off the bat that this isn’t something that only the iPhone can do. But it’s the go-to device for proof of concept stuff like this for obvious reasons.
The project is actually quite a simple little hack. They use a 1mm ball lens and attach it to the outside of the iPhone lens array with a rubber sheet and some tape. The little lens technically only offers 5x magnification, but the way it focuses creates a tiny in-focus area that can resolve details down to about 1.5 microns. The field of view is very small and there’s distortion to deal with, but by combining the in-focus areas of several pictures you can get a clear enough image to identify cell types, make counts, or even take spectroscopic readings.
Take a look at these images: the ones on the top were taken with a full-on commercial medical microscope, the ones on the bottom are from the iPhone setup:
There’s obviously a major difference in quality, but the difference in price is even greater, and high-quality microscopes aren’t very mobile.
Essentially it’s one more step towards a tricorder. With a general-purpose CPU, modular inputs, and a versatile imaging unit, the smartphone is useful for far more than calling friends and playing Angry Birds. It may not be a mobile clinic, but in areas where money and electricity are hard to come by, an iPhone could be a valuable diagnostic tool. Extending the “senses” of our devices via cheap components and elbow grease could seriously empower decentralized medical care.
You can read the whole paper here. The study was funded by the NSF.
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Hackers turning e-readers into tablets
Author: Eric Moss
Hackers turning e-readers into tablets
Computer tablets are the latest buzz word. From the Apple iPad to the Motorola Xoom and beyond there are dozens of models to choose from. The problem is most of them have a price tag of $ 500 or higher.
Read more on FOX 31 Denver
Tablet Market Has Room for Many, Developer Says
Apple may have created the tablet market, but iPad competitors have plenty of growth opportunity, says iOS app developer Raven Zachary.
Read more on PC World
The Macalope Special Edition: Fools of the Year
Editors’ Note: Each week the Macalope skewers the worst of the week’s coverage of Apple and other technology companies. In addition to being a mythical beast…
Read more on PC World
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Hokies give (tactile) sight to the blind so they can drive, no word on turning water into wine
Author: Anthony Kristo
Daytona International Speedway is synonymous with speed, auto racing, and . . . blind people? Virginia Tech’s Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), along with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), recently debuted its sight-optional and street-legal SUV at the famed racetrack. Dr. Dennis Hong and his students first let blind folks drive a dune buggy without the help of a sighted copilot in 2009 — as a first step to achieving the goal of a street-legal SUV for the sightless crowd. The SUV in question was designed for the NFB’s Blind Driver Challenge, and is equipped with a drive-by-wire system — also seen in the RoMeLa autonomous vehicle — that was modified for use with RoMeLa’s SpeedStrip and DriveGrip tactile interface technology. It works by using a laser rangefinder to map the surrounding area, relaying information for acceleration and braking to the driver by rumbling the SpeedStrip seat, and passing along turning info through vibrations in the DriveGrip gloves. The system was not developed solely for the purpose of getting blind drivers on the road, however, as Virginia Tech suggests that its technology could also be used in gaming applications. We’re not quite ready to see blind drivers on actual roads just yet, but why shouldn’t our sight-impaired friends get to enjoy Gran Turismo 5 with the rest of us? Video’s after the break.
Continue reading Hokies give (tactile) sight to the blind so they can drive, no word on turning water into wine
Hokies give (tactile) sight to the blind so they can drive, no word on turning water into wine originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Jan 2011 19:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Switched | National Federation of the Blind | Email this | Comments
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