I love to multi task when sitting at my desk. I’ve got four monitors running at any given time, and I think that’s a pretty good setup. However, if you really need a lot of workspace, you might just look into the Paramount Parabolic Multi-Monitor Display from Humanscale.
My configuration includes three wall-mounted monitors and one that sits on my desk. While this unit from Humanscale doesn’t actually provide the monitors, it does accommodate between two and four monitors on a single unit, which is attached to your desk. What’s better is that monitors attach “effortlessly” without the need of tools, and actually curve around you. Frankly, if I ever decide to add any more monitors to my setup, this is definitely the route I’m going to take. You have no idea how difficult it is to mount monitors side-by-side on the wall. I’ll let you in on a small secret: it’s a huge pain in the ass.
This monitor mount will be available sometime in Q1 of this year. Unfortunately there is no word on pricing.
A tablet is the only way to go if you’re a digital artist who does any kind of drawing or painting on your PC. (Even if you’re nothing more than a disembodied floating hand like in that product shot.) While Wacom is still the leader in this market it looks like Adesso, another tablet manufacturer, is going after the high-end Cintiq market. The CyberTablet M17 has a 17 inch LCD display and uses an electromagnetic stylus for input. It can detect up to 1024 different levels of input pressure and has an accuracy of +/- 0.5mm. With the bundled software you can pretty much do anything from drawing to photo touch-ups to capturing hand-written notes.
Of course the easiest way for Adesso to lure buyers away from Wacom’s offerings would be to charge considerably less for their own LCD tablet, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The 17 inch CyberTablet sells for $1,499, which pretty much falls in between the $999 Cintiq 12WX and the $1,999 Cintiq 20WSX. Given it’s priced almost exactly like the Cintiqs, I would probably just stick with Wacom if I were spending that much money.
Last week I wrote about the E-Paper Music Score concept that basically replaced a traditional book of sheet music with a flexible e-paper display. Well given it was just a concept you won’t be able to buy one anytime soon, but it looks like there’s a similar solution already on the market. Instead of e-paper the MusicPad Pro uses a readily available 12.1 inch TFT color display. While the 1024 x 768 resolution is probably more than adequate, it’s also a touch screen allowing musicians to annotate the music or jot notes in multiple colors.
As Apple has shown with iTunes, available content is just as important as the technology, so FreeHand also has an online store with over 98,000 titles of downloadable sheet music already available. The average price seems to be about $3.95, though some titles are slightly cheaper ($1.95) and some are considerably more expensive. ($59.95)
Though with a price tag of $899 on the FreeHand website, I think the MusicPad Pro should include more than just 64MB of memory, particularly since I don’t see any mention of being able to expand that limited amount with flash memory cards.
When I think of a holographic display, I’m not thinking of some kind of flat panel that fakes a 3D image. What I think of is something straight out of numerous scenes in Star Wars: objects with depth, projected into midair that I can view from any angle (kinda like this). Holocube is just about exactly what I want, except inside a box. It’s able to project a full color, 1080i 3D video into its 20-inch diameter chamber, which is supposed to be viewable from any angle. The unit can play about 18 hours of compressed video off of its internal 40gb HD, and features USB connectivity and one button operation. It seems to be aimed squarely at product marketing, which unfortunately means that it most likely costs several tens of thousands of dollars… I hope I’m wrong about the pricing, but I bet I’m not. I guess the future is not quite here yet.
What’s the point of spending all night putting together an amazing PowerPoint presentation to distract from your ignorance on the subject matter when you end up having to show it on a crappy projector setup? It’s situations like that where you wish you had something like the Nomad PS3000 Presentation Station. It’s basically a rollable cart that includes everything you could possibly need for making those overused PowerPoint templates look their best.
In addition to a 2700 ANSI lumens XGA projector, the PS3000 also includes a digital document camera, a VCR and DVD player, a preview monitor allowing the presenter to see what the audience is seeing, a Pentium 4 based PC and a set of Bose speakers complete with amplifier. It also has the necessary hookups if you’ve come prepared with your own laptop, and a very cool wireless touch screen remote from Crestron that can be used to control all of the components from up to 300 feet away.
Gesture interaction is looking to be one of the next big technologies. All of a sudden it seems to be popping up everywhere, with both Synaptics and the Macbook Air sporting multitouch enabled touchpads. This project from Cynergy Labs is a sort of a mashup of Microsoft Surface with a touchless IR gesture recognition system, based on a Wii sensor and infrared-emitting gloves:
It’s pretty cool for being developed in eight days, but I’d almost prefer something like this, since it offers the same sort of functionality without having to wear gloves.
As a technology writer walking the floor of the auto show, you spend as much time looking at the cars as you do at the booths themselves. And from all the trade shows I’ve ever been to or seen over the years, the NAIAS has some of the most impressive (and largest) booths of any show. Ford was reusing the same booth style it had last year, but there was one new addition that caught my eye. The VJ Hub Experience offered a unique way for visitors to interact with the booth’s giant displays, as well as provide valuable feedback to the company.
A set of 3 connected LCDs and a series of small camera-equipped kiosks allowed visitors to answer a series of questions or take photos of themselves that could later be included on the gigantic displays circling the booth. You could also upload photos or videos to the system with a bluetooth equipped phone. A behind-the-scenes ‘VJ’ was responsible for mixing the photos into the demo reel shown on the floor, as well as removing any NSFT (not safe for tradeshow) images.
You can find some more detailed photos of the setup after the jump, as well as some more descriptions of how the VJ Hub worked.
The thing that makes these little OLED TVs stand out from their larger prototypical OLED counterparts is that you can, in fact, buy one. Like most OLED TVs, some of the numbers are staggering, most notably the 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The viewing angle of 178 degrees isn’t bad, either… The native resolution, however, is a bit disappointing at only 960×540. The panel is only 3mm thick, which although impressive, is completely moot since it’s permanently attached to a large ugly base with a large ugly stand. The cost? $2500. The target consumer? According to the Sony rep, these TVs are for people who “want to watch TV on their boat.” Thanks, Sony.
If you work in a crowded office and find yourself battling for time in the meeting room, the RoomWizard will serve as a neutral electronic third-party. It’s a touch-screen display designed to be mounted outside a conference room that provides an easy way to either book the space for a meeting, or peruse the upcoming schedule.
If you want to just drop in, a set of LEDs on the side switch between red and green indicating the room’s availability which should prevent you from looking like an idiot when you barge in on a meeting in progress. The RoomWizard can also be accessed from your work PC since it runs an internal webserver, and can even be synced with Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook servers. Over time it will even keep track of room occupancy and reservation patterns so you can see exactly how the shared spaces are being used.
Official pricing for the RoomWizard seems hard to come by, but apparently the units cost over $2,000 each, which should bolster the sales of white boards and markers.
When it comes to displays, bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes it is, but not when we’re talking about mobile devices. Hitachi is showcasing some of their very small, yet very bright high resolution (and, in some cases, touchscreen) displays, which we’ll start seeing in cellphones, portable media players, and even perhaps UMPCs in the near future:
2.4 inch QVGA (240×320) LCD; brightness 500 cd/m2, contrast 1000:1, less than 1mm thick
2.98 inch VGA (640×320) LCD; brightness 500 cd/m2, contrast 500:1
5 inch WXGA (1366×768) LCD; brightness 350 cd/m2, contrast 500:1
Related Tags: Displays, Furniture, LCD
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By Andrew Liszewski
