Posted 11/19/09 at 08:30:21 AM by Paul Lilly

During the TEDIndia conference, Pranav Mistry, inventor of SixthSense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and world of data, demoed several gesture control concepts and posted a video for all to see.

Among the concepts is an ultrasonic pen capable of drawing in three-dimension using IR LEDs and and an ultrasonic receiver. While not of interest to the average user, something like this could be a boon to architectures and engineers working on cutting edge designs.

But it's the augmented reality portion of the video that drew applause from the crowd. Armed with a tiny camera that acts as a digital eye, Mistry demonstrated how it's possible to take a picture just simulating the gesture of snapping a photo without a digital camera in his hand.

"I'm more excited that you can actually take it outside. Rather than getting your camera out of your pocket, you can just do the gesture of taking a photo and it takes a photo for you," Mistry said.

Watch the 14 minute video here.

Hit the jump and tell us which concept you think has the most potential.

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Posted 10/27/09 at 08:22:53 PM by Jason Barry

MTube’s latest touch screen device isn’t a new mobile phone or netbook. Instead, the Mtube Android MID is intended as a multimedia device for living room entertainment.

It offers a 7.6-inch OLED touch screen, an ARM processor, internet access and wireless streaming to your television. You can send videos and images to your television using touch screen gestures. The details on how the device communicates with your TV are not clear; it’s likely a WIFI receiver will connect your HDMI ports (on the TV) with the MTube. MTube has been in negotiations to integrate a receiver into displays.

It’s not exactly production ready (the demo unit crashed in the video) but it is an interesting use of the Android operating system and could prove to be a clever entertainment device.

Check out the video after the jump.

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Posted 09/24/09 at 01:30:35 PM by Paul Lilly

Good news for anyone who's been eyeing up Wacom's Bamboo line. The tablet maker announced it has added multi-touch and gestures to its Bamboo devices, giving users another dimension beyond the traditional pressure sensitive pen, Wired.com reports.

Three new models were introduced, including the pen only, touch-only, and one that does both. Each one comes with 512 pressure levels in the pen tip, with the active area of the tablets measuring 5.8 x 3.6 inches. The multi-touch and gestures support means users can now navigate, click, double-click, right-click, scroll, select & drag, rotate, zoom, and perform other functions all with finger taps or finger movements.

Both the Touch and Pen models are priced at $70, while the Pen & Touch runs a cool C-note.

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Posted 04/21/09 at 11:00:00 AM by David Murphy

You've tweaked everything else on your PC, so how about your mouse?  That's right.  The trusty input device that sits to the side of your keyboard needs some love too, but how many of you have thought to install applications that benefit the common features you use your mouse for?  Eh?  I must admit, I never considered much to tweak about the mouse's functionality.  You scroll the cursor to what you want to check out and give it a click.  It's a two-step process.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  What else could you possibly do with a mouse?

Spoiler: a lot.

I've found five amazing freeware and open-source applications that help you turbo-charge your ability to interact with your PC.  Give these a whirl, and you'll increase your productivity, reduce your stress, and be just that much cooler than your peers who are stuck in the Stone Age of mouse operations.  Take your final act as a generic mouse user: scroll the cursor over to "Read More," click the link, and prepare yourself for greatness.

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