Everything’s going 3D these days, even touchscreens. Most existing touchscreens only offer a 2D experience, but MIT Media Lab’s Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley have set out to create a touchscreen that offers another dimension. It’s called the Obake and it has been dubbed as the touchscreen that will ‘revolutionize all other touchscreens.’
Obake is an elastic, stretchable touchscreen. The display itself will remain two-dimensional, although you will be able to manipulated whatever is on your screen in three dimensions.
Most people aren’t aware of it, but they’re actually guilty of indecent exposure most of the time. Because even though your tush remains covered and snug inside your underpants, you’ve forgotten to cover your iPhone’s derriere–and that’s a big no-no in the phonesphere.
We kid. Obviously your phone doesn’t have any private parts (aside from the ones contained within it, both figuratively and literally) but if you want to dress your phone up either way then you can get some of these SmartPants.
Noodles are my comfort food. I know they’re not the healthiest of foods to eat, but there’s just something about it that reminds me of warm nights and better days to come. For those unavoidable times where you have to eat alone and you happen to be having some instant ramen (or some other food you’re eating in a bowl), then you won’t have to be too alone anymore with this ‘anti-loneliness’ ramen bowl by MisoSoupDesign.
The quirkier the ad, the more attention it’ll get. Every ad agency knows that, although not all of them manage to execute this in their campaigns. A Coca-Cola ad that was recently run in South America did, however, and it’s getting them a whole lot of coverage. The multi-national corporation was celebrating the one year anniversary of Coca Cola FM, so what they did was transform Capricho Magazine (where the ad was printed) into an amplifier to liven up the party.
The ad basically instructs readers to roll their magazine up and tuck a tab on the magazine’s special double cover into a slot on the other side. The last step involves putting the phone into the groove found on the middle of the makeshift amplifier. You already know what happens next.
Check out a video of the Coca Cola magazine amplifier in action after the break.
Life can get pretty hectic sometimes, and it doesn’t help to have your phone ringing and beeping endlessly with new messages, status updates, and notifications just when you’re about to grab some shut-eye. In cases like these, you need the Blokket Signal Jammer. Okay, so you don’t really need it, since you can just power off your phone or turn the airplane mode on. But will you really give up on the chance to show off to your equally geeky buddies? I wouldn’t.
The Blokket Signal Jammer is a handy dandy RFID blocker that’ll block radio frequencies up to 99.7%. Aside from coming in handy to put your phone out of commission when you want to take a break, you can also put your passport and chipped ID cards inside to protect your identity and personal information from falling into the wrong hands.
Check out another view of the Blokket Jammer pouch after the break.
The automatic garage door opener is one of those under-appreciated gadgets that—as far as I can tell—hasn’t gotten a serious upgrade since the mid 70s. Seriously. You show me a cellphone, I can give you a rough idea of how old it is. You show me a garage door opener, and I’d have a hard time knowing if you installed it yesterday, or 30 years ago. So it’s nice to see Craftsman bringing their AssureLink Garage Door Opener into the 21st century, allowing you to open and close it from an app on your smartphone. Instead of a giant, clunky remote that looks like it predates even the VCR.
From what I can glean from the Craftsman website, the AssureLink opener connects to your home’s wireless network using their “MyQ Technology” which appears to provide similar connectivity to other devices around your home. So not only can you use your smartphone to open or close the door, but you can remotely monitor its status, and close or open it while away. If a friend was stopping by to borrow a ladder, you could even program it to open and close the door for a set amount of time. Handy! It’s also got the requisite safety sensors so it won’t come down on something or someone when being closed from afar. So as a tool for tomfoolery, it seems limited. The Craftsman Garage Door app is of course free, while the actual opener is slightly less free, at $275.49.
CES 2011 is just around the corner, and while endless aisles of 3D TVs and I suspect more tablets than I’ll ever care to poke at have a tendency to wear away at a blogger’s soul, there are hidden gems that make the whole experience worthwhile. Last year it was Qualcomm’s Mirasol displays that got me really excited, and this year I have a feeling a small robotic ball recently dubbed ‘Sphero’ could do the same.
Originally shown as a prototype back in June, the slightly mishapen, smartphone-controlled ball has recently undergone a bit of a facelift for its debut at CES, and the rendered pictured above makes it look a lot slicker than its predecessor seen in the video I’ve included below. But what is it? Well in its simplest form it’s kind of a rubber ball for the 21st century. The ball is the most universal toy of all time, allowing you to play an endless number of games with it. But instead of whacking it with a bat, kicking it into a goal or throwing it through a hoop, you control the Sphero over Bluetooth via your phone’s tilt sensor, steering as it rolls around a flat surface. So imagine you and a friend placing your Spheros on a table and playing a quick game of sumo trying to knock the other ball off, or as a not-so-virtual game of golf where hitting the ball on-screen results in the Sphero actually moving towards a hole.
The company behind the Sphero, Orbotix, has already created an open API so that iOS or Android developers can write games or apps that interact ball which is great because while there’s already exciting potential, you just know that some brilliant idea is going to come out of left field that will make the Sphero a must-have product. We’ll have more info and hopefully a hands-on look at Sphero as part of our upcoming CES 2011 coverage starting in January.
Touchscreen displays not only make portable devices like smartphones and MIDs easier to interact with, but they also remove the need for a dedicated keyboard, which can take up a lot of space. However, if you still prefer the tactile feel of a hardware keyboard, the compact smallQWERTY keypad from Mobience could be a reasonable compromise.
Even though its name includes the term ‘QWERTY’ the keypad doesn’t have 26 alphanumeric keys, instead it includes a 12 button numeric keypad like on a traditional phone, with 8 additional function buttons. Typing out words either requires you to hit certain buttons multiple times to get the letter you need, or hopefully it uses a software trick like T9 to predict the word with minimal presses. Unfortunately there’s no information on when this device might be available, and the fact that the Mobience website is currently just a GoDaddy pageholder doesn’t bode well for anyone wanting to get their hands on one.
Despite the fact that the global economy is very bad, smartphones are still growing at a significant rate. More and more computer companies are announcing that they are entering the smartphone market in an effort to improve their profits.
The latest company to announce that they are entering into the smartphone market isn’t a computer maker, but a company known for LCD TVs, digital picture frames, and PC monitors. Viewsonic has announced that it intends to enter into the smartphone market with phones aimed at video, gaming, and Internet browsing with larger screens.
By Shane McGlaun