Sony's 360 degree display

WOW... imagine this on a really really large scale

First mobile OS (android) based TV?

Not sure if this is a first, but either way it's a clear pointer towards the future of device convergance

Thanks Tech Crunch

Swedish Company, People Of Lava, Creates An Android-Based TV

by John Biggs on Apr 5, 2010

Remember Android? Don’t worry. You’ll remember next week once this whole iPad thing blows over. Anyway, a Swedish company called, inexplicably, People of Lava has announced what they’re calling and Android-based TV. The TV, called the Scandinavia, comes in a 42-inch configuration that costs about $2,500.

The Scandinavia Android TV – which will first be released in a 42” version, followed by 47” and 55” – is built without compromises. It features top-of-the-line components and is carefully put together by hand to ensure the kind of quality that customers expect from a People of Lava Full- HD LED TV set. Its Android platform and internet capabilities provide a wide range of functionalities, including:
- Out of the box Android TV applications such as: – YouTube, Google Maps ,Weather, Time, Calendar, Internet Browser
- Downloadable Apps, both free and from coming App-store: – Facebook, Twitter, Email and more…
- Internet connection
- USB connection

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Flashlight Projector Map Concept

Nice idea... why use a screen to augment reality when you can just shine the layers anywhere! Thanks Toxel

February 21st, 2010 | Tech |

Tamtam flashlight map concept tells you where to go by projecting directions right in front of you, thus generating a whole new playful and intuitive way of experiencing navigation.

In case the user gets lost, Tamtam can also project a more traditional map onto any surface. The map is zoomable and scrollable like any digital map.

Ready For a Multi-Touch Web?

OK, and the following re-posts might be a little old, but i liked em when i read them

This one, from Read Write Web on a keyboard free net! Cool

Imagine a world without keyboards. Futurist Ray Kurzweil did 10 years ago when he predicted that by 2009 most portable computers would not have them any longer. Chances are you're still using a mouse and keyboard to point and click your way through this post (and the thousands of other Web pages you view every week). Yet a change is fast approaching, and it's based on touch.

Gesture-based interaction has been around since the dawn of computing, really, and Kurzweil's vision has come true, at least in part, thanks to the widespread adoption of trackpads for laptops (not to mention their predecessors: the trackball, stylus, and light pen). Meanwhile, touch-enabled screens are all around us: in ATMs, GPS navigation systems, grocery checkout lines, bars and restaurants, and TV (think CNN's election maps, and remember Star Trek: The Next Generation from the 1980s?). Yet single-user desktop systems are still mostly dependent on mice and keyboards.

With the advent of Apple's wildly popular iPhone (soon to be joined by the Palm Pre), we've gotten a taste of the potential of multi-touch technology, at least for mobile devices. Now they're being joined by a new wave of interactive walls and tables: Microsoft's Surface, Hitachi's StarBoard, and Sony's new multi-touch LCD screen.

The New Metaphors of Touch

Multi-touch and other touch surfaces offer a more intuitive and natural interaction with PCs, transforming the way we use computers, much the way GUI systems did when they were introduced 25 years ago. While some tasks may still be easier to perform using traditional input devices like the keyboard and mouse, multi-touch is ideal for manipulating objects; creating, editing, and scanning pictures; navigating maps; and even surfing the Web. Gesture-based human/computer interaction represents an evolutionary step, not just in the design of hand-held devices and PCs but also in the look, feel, and functionality of websites.

"Pinch," "de-pinch," "flick," "stretch." This is the growing vernacular of multi-finger and gesture motions. Our current devices (mouse, trackpad, etc.) are designed to focus on a single point and manipulate that point around the screen. With multi-touch, no longer are you limited to double-clicking, dragging, button-pushing, and working pull-down menus. You can sketch, paint, re-size, and crop with a single finger, multiple fingers, multiple hands, and even multiple users. Objects become things you swipe, zoom, push, pull, spin, rotate, and flip.

A More Interactive, Collaborative Experience

Following the introduction of the iPhone, Surface, TouchSmart TX2 multi-touch tablet, and N-trig's DuoSense digitizers, we wonder, too, what's coming next? More intriguing for us as a Web hosting company is how this will transform the online experience: the look and feel of websites, their functionality, and your interaction with them?

There are a few hints of the multi-touch future to come. Bill Buxton is a pioneer in the field of multi-touch. His "Multi-Touch Systems That I Have Known and Loved" outlines degrees of freedom, a concept central to expanding the boundaries of how we interact with computers:

"The richness of interaction is highly related to the richness/number of degrees of freedom (DOF) and, in particular, continuous degrees of freedom, supported by the technology. The conventional GUI is largely based on moving around a single 2-D cursor, using a mouse, for example. This results in 2DOF. If I am sensing the location of two fingers, I have 4DOF, and so on."

DOF then opens up nearly endless possibilities for one-surface computing based on your actions: discrete or continuous, horizontal or vertical orientation, pressure sensitivity, angle of approach, friction, and so one, all influenced by the single or multiple points and gestures you use.

Multi-Touch Made Real

Buxton, Kurzweil, and visionary Jefferson Han provide only a glimpse of what tomorrow's multi-touch websites might look like. No one really knows for certain. Yet they will likely contain at least a few of the following elements:

• Virtual buttons and signatures;
• A faster, more efficient GUI in which the user can customize their own site menu size and shape: for example, by representing layers as individual cards of a card deck;
• Items with 3-D characteristics, with fronts and backs that can be flipped over and rotated.

Joel Eden, a user experience consultant, provides some excellent suggestions for "Designing for Multi-Touch, Multi-User, and Gesture-Based Systems," listing several characteristics that apply as much to website design as to software development. These include:

• Affordances: focus on features, actions, and interactions that can be represented visually;
• Engagement: focus users on simple, quick, natural interactions;
• Feedback must be immediate and easily noticeable by all concurrent users;
• Don't make us think: minimize hidden functionality, except for contextual features that only make sense when revealed during specific interactions.

It may not be time yet to ditch your keyboard and retire your mouse. But sometime between the iPhone and Surface table-top computing, laptop and desktop multi-touch applications will emerge. Interested in a sneak peek at what a multi-touch website might look like? Take a look at these prototypes, and share your examples and ideas!

• Digital Volvelles 1.0
• Kyle Phillips: What Matters Most
• Multitouch-Barcelona Natural Interaction Project

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Mobile Devices For Kids On the Go

Thanks Next Great Thing

June 23rd, 2009 by NGT

For many young people, the mobile phone is a status symbol and an extension of identity. For aspirational young kids and tweens, this is no different. For them, getting a phone is a rite of passage, and the age at which this happens is getting younger and younger. According to Nielsen Mobile, the average age a kid starts using a borrowed cell phone is 8.6, and they typically get their own at 10.1.

However, most handset manufacturers don’t cater this this market — only recently shifting their adult-centric view. Parents may also be relutant to pass back their new iPhone (though we’re seeing this as well). This has opened up a market for special mobile devices just for kids. Here are some of the players:

• Fisher-Price offers the Pixter, a PDA-style portable activity center for kids. It has a color touchscreen and stylus with which children can draw, color and play with, not entirely unlike Adobe Illustrator. Separate software adds more features like math lessons, and an extra snap-on digital camera makes the “phone” just like Mom and Dad’s. While the Pixter is a fun tool, it still seems more like other handheld gaming devices for children than an actual mobile.

• If realism is what you’re going for, Bandai has you covered there with the “Mobile Communicator Smart Berry” for kids. This Japanese “toy” lets users actually email, text and play online games with each other as long as they’re within 10 meters of one another. It works on a wireless network and comes with a keyboard and an LCD touchscreen. Following this TotBerry trend, LeapFrog recently introduced the Text & Learn, affectionately known as the ‘baby BlackBerry.’ It even looks like a giant, colorful version of the real thing. Made for kids ages three and up, the Text & Learn features a full QWERY keyboard and pretend browser, and encourages little users to “text” with the virtual guide Scout.

• For slightly older children with a desire for phone-like capabilities, there’s Firefly Mobile, “the mobile phone for mobile kids.” It has actual voice services and a pay-as-you-go-plan. However, it’s made for smaller hands and instead of a regular dial pad, there are just five keys. Parents use a PIN to program up to 22 outgoing numbers into the phone, putting adults in charge of just who their kids are talking to. The Firefly has struggled to find a market though. Tweens, who now increasingly own real phones, find it too babyish, while younger kids have less of a need since they are almost always with adults. Still, the Firefly can be seen as the training bra of a mobile lifestyle.

• Aware of tweens’ fashion sensibility and love of “real” phones, another contender for the tween market, Kajeet, offers LG, Samsung, and Sanyo phones that parents (with their kids) can customize. The Maryland-based company offers shared payment plans (the kids can pay the texts, the parents can pay the calls), limits for call or text usage, blockable contacts, and GPS for the restless children. On the other hand, Kajeet does not offer any kind of data service, a crucial feature for generation Y.

So what does this mobile mania for pre-teens mean? Some are concerned. In France, there are even new laws in the works that crack down on children’s use of mobile phones. Advertising these devices to children under 12 will be prohibited under the legislation and steps will be taken to ban the sale of any phone designed to be used by kids under six years old.

However, if the trend we’re seing in youth adoption continues, pacifiers will soon come with keypads. If nothing else, we’re breeding a tech savvy generation who will be the next wave in mobile innovators.