Unlike most external displays, the D-Link SideStage USB monitor is able to both connect to your computer via USB, and power itself via USB… Just one cable does it all. The SideStage has a 7″ LCD with a resolution of 800 x 480 and can be formatted either horizontally or vertically. It weighs about a pound and a third, and is only three quarters of an inch thick, making it something that you could rationalize carrying around (without the base, of course) to add some extra desktop real estate to your netbook.
The SideStage comes with software that allows it to operate painlessly with most other monitors, and you can designate it as the default display for specific applications. D-Link hasn’t released a price yet (rumor puts it at around $100), but it should be showing up by the end of this year.
This transparent touchscreen at the Intel booth was being used to demonstrate how powerful their new Core i7 processors are. The screen was performing all kinds of fancy interactive visual tricks with a framerate readout in one corner that managed to hit 1500 fps (!) on occasion while never dropping below 400 fps.
The screen itself is nothing more than a capacitive touch panel (single touch, boo) sandwiched between two sheets of glass, which allows it to create a sort of glasses-free 3D effect. At first glance I got all excited thinking that this WAS the entire display, but it’s actually just a screen of sorts with a projector behind it. Oh well.
There’s no way this transparent touchscreen is going into production, which is a shame… It’s gorgeous, and would work brilliantly paired with one of those ultra short throw projectors.
LG Objet 15″ AMOLED TV, 720p resolution, 0.85 millimeter thick (!) and super bright. It’ll be showing up in the US, but there’s no price or timeframe yet.
LG Prada cellphone controlled by matching watch via Bluetooth. 600 Euros for the phone, another 300 for the watch.
LG digital TV chip, watch DTV on your phone in realtime. Works in mobile devices without a significant cost increase, 4+ hour battery life in cellphones. Will be available in LG phones in September, after the US transitions to digital TV from analog.
This is a demo of Microsoft’s SecondLight table, which takes their totally awesome Surface technology and adds a see-through dimension that looks like black magic. Or semi-transparent magic, I guess. SecondLight is just like Surface, except it uses a display that switches back and forth between transparent and opaque so quickly that you can’t tell it’s not a completely opaque surface. This switching is synced up with a projection system that projects an alternate image through the display surface whenever it’s in transparent mode. In effect, SecondLight is able to project one image straight through another. When you put a diffuse surface (like tracing paper or plastic) on top of the primary surface, the second image that’s being projected straight through appears on it.
There are other advantages to a surface that’s effectively transparent half the time. For example, a camera can be synced to the transparent periods, giving it the ability to look straight through a seemingly active, opaque display. The camera can see the faces of people sitting around the table, and even tell if they’re looking at the table or not. Or, transparent objects can be placed on the table, and alternate images can be projected through them. Designers suggest that “game pieces, such as chess pieces, designed in this way [could allow] animated graphics to be rendered onto their faces and bodies.” Wow.
Any chance we’ll see this built into Oahu? Um, let’s just go with yes, and keep our fingers crossed.
Oh Microsoft Surface, why do you have to be so sexy, and yet so unattainable? If you’ve ever played with a Surface table (at an AT&T retail store, maybe) you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you’ve never seen one, just watch the demo and you’ll get the idea. No matter how sexy it is, though, the price tag of $10k+ is a bit of a turn-off.
A recent Microsoft market research survey asked participants what they’d think about the following device, called “Oahu:”
Oahu is a flat screen that sits horizontally like a table top. You can interact with Oahu by touching the screen, instead of using a mouse, and more than one person can interact with Oahu at the same time. You and others can move objects on the screen with your hands and touch icons to open up programs, games, or music. People using the device can also use their fingertips to expand and shrink objects on the screen. The screen recognizes people’s hand movements and touches and reacts accordingly. You can bring up an on-screen keyboard to input information.
This is a little monitor. A tiny monitor, really. It measures 77mm x 127mm x 17mm, with an LED backlit 4.3 inch WVGA (800 x 480) display. It comes with a little kickstand, and is designed to be used in conjunction with your primary monitor. It’s not specifically a SideShow device (like this), but it kinda acts like one, providing a handy space to stick chat windows or widgets or whatever. The real kicker, though, is that it interfaces via USB and it’s entirely USB bus powered. No inconvenient additional power cords, just plug it into a USB port and it’s ready to go. And, um, it costs about $200.
Yes, it’s really freakin’ expensive, but my best (and only) guess is that you’re paying for the fact that it’s small and bus powered. I hate power cords so much that I’d just about be willing to pay this ludicrous price and have the option to attach a secondary monitor to my laptop (or even to one of these) without having to worry about an outlet.
Tired of people trying to sneak a peek at your screen while you’re surfing at the airport? Or maybe you have a penchant for clicking NSFW links even while at work? If that’s the case, the next time you upgrade your laptop you might want to seriously consider the Latitude E6400 from Dell. It’s the first in their lineup to include an electronic privacy screen that can be quickly activated or deactivated using a keyboard shortcut, or with Dell’s ControlPoint bloatware. The privacy screen is actually software based, and it creates a pixel-based pattern on the screen that dramatically reduces the side viewing angles, while having a minimal impact on the screen’s brightness. Unfortunately the privacy screen is a ridiculous $139 option, but since it’s a software solution, I would just wait for the inevitable third-party alternatives that should be popping up for download any minute now.
If you’ve ever been to the hospital for a broken bone, or have seen a character on House or E.R. suffer the same fate, you’ve probably seen those old-fashioned lightboxes hanging on the walls that doctors use to read x-rays. But a company called BrainLAB is bringing those lightboxes into the 21st century by replacing them with a 30-inch iPhone-esque touch screen that’s linked to a hospital’s digital PACs or Picture Archiving System.
The Digital Lightbox can be mounted in an O.R., treatment room or doctor’s office, and it uses an intuitive touch-based interface like Microsoft’s Surface or the iPhone OS. It allows medical personnel to examine various types of images including MRIs, x-rays, PET scans as well as 3D data, and even allows multiple scans or photos to be layered so they can be easily compared. Like the iPhone, images can be navigated or enlarged with the flick of a finger but unlike the iPhone, the Digital Lightbox can also load non-proprietary file types like WMVs or AVIs.
Developed by the Teraokaseiko company, this double-sided touch panel was recently shown at the 2008 Sign & Display Show in Tokyo. While the orange monochrome electroluminescent display has a less than impressive 256×120 pixel resolution, it’s the functionality provided by the two resistive touch panels attached to each side that will get people excited. Besides making my ‘2-player touch version of tic-tac-toe while the players are in different rooms’ dreams come true, the technology should also facilitate those concept PDAs and UMPCs we’ve seen where you navigate by touch on the underside of the display so the content isn’t blocked by your hands. (And yes, the touch panels do allow you to tap, slide and even “pinch” the content just like on the iPhone.)
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