interface
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Thunderbolt peripherals announced at NAB this week
Sure, you've got a shiny new MacBook Pro with that top-of-the-line Thunderbolt interface, but odds are that you don't have anything besides a DisplayPort adapter to plug it into yet! Worry not -- the National Association of Broadcasters is meeting in Las Vegas this week, and a few companies there are announcing new products designed to work with the Thunderbolt interface. Matrox and AJA are announcing breakout boxes to hook up current products to the Thunderbolt port, while Blackmagic Design has a box called UltraStudio 3D designed to transfer high-quality 3D video (that's two different streams in full resolution), and PROMISE is showing off both SAN/FibreChannel adapter boxes and the previously announced RAID hard drive solutions. Not so coincidentally, we were just talking about the likelihood of new Thunderbolt gear on last night's Talkcast. Before you get too excited, know that most of these product announcements are just that -- the actual products probably won't be out later this year, and most of these products are for high-end audio or video editing rather than anything your average consumer would need. But the key here is that we are seeing some adoption of this new standard at the highest levels, and that's good news for anyone who owns an Apple computer, since Apple has already decided that Thunderbolt is the new interface of choice. Bottom line: That new port on your MacBook Pro has more uses every day. [via MacRumors]
The Awesome button is...
Ever struggled to find the perfect adjective to articulate your admiration for a given article of awesomeness? Matt Richardson over at Make felt exactly the same way, so he perfected himself an Awesome button, designed specifically to spit out synonyms for his favorite descriptive word. To accomplish the task, he had to gut a Staples "easy" button and arrange a Teensy USB microcontroller inside it, before making the resulting mini-thesaurus compatible with his computer. Don't worry, full instructions are contained in the video above. Just mash the play button.
Evoluce releases Kinect-based 'Win & I' gesture interface for Windows 7
We've already seen Evoluce toy around with using a Kinect to control Windows, but it's now taken things one step further with its new "Win & I" software, which promises to let anyone do the same with minimal effort. That comes in both a home edition that offers gesture controls for Windows 7 itself, plus Media Center and other applications (which could be particularly handy for a home theater), as well as a business edition that apparently adds some extra controls specifically tailored to Microsoft Office, and PowerPoint in particular. Head on past the break for a quick video demonstration, and hit up the link below to snag the software if you're interested -- the home edition runs €20, or just under $30 (Kinect not included, obviously). Update: Well, it looks like Evoluce already has a bit of competition. Upstart company So Touch has now also released its Air Presenter software that will let you liven up your next presentation with more gesturing and hand-waving than usual.
MakerBot's Interface Board Kit does PC-less 3D printing, turns your superhero fantasies into reality
If you're like us -- that is to say, wildly popular and devastatingly good looking -- then you're probably wondering why someone hasn't produced an action figure in your likeness yet. Well wonder no longer, for the folks over at MakerBot just announced yet another handy tool to make at home 3D printing even easier. An addition to the aptly titled Thing-O-Matic, the Gen 4 Interface Board Kit v1.1 is billed as a DIY interface that lets you operate your thingy printer without having to attach it to a PC. The kit comes equipped with an SD card slot for easy independent operation, and because the board's fully hackable, you can use it to control your robots or homebrew CNC devices, too. It sports nine programmable buttons and an LCD screen for feedback, and allows you to set and read temperatures, view build progress, or start a new project stored on the SD card. So what are you waiting for? Your self-aggrandizing bobblehead isn't going to make itself.
Researchers show off 'flex' interface for touchscreens
No, it's not an actual flexible touchscreen, but this so-called "flex" interface developed by some researchers at Osaka University is still pretty novel. Rather than simply moving content off the screen when you're browsing something like Google Maps, it treats what's on the screen as an elastic, flexible material and squishes the content as it gets closer to the edge of the screen, which still lets you see it while you focus on a different area. That, the researchers say, would be just as effective on phones and other devices in addition to large touchscreens, and it would obviously be fairly easy to implement. Check it out in action in the video above.
Pioneer demos new iPhone-powered in-dash interface
We first heard about Pioneer's AVIC in-car units back at CES earlier this year, but earlier today, the company was kind enough to drive a Land Rover up to my curb here in Los Angeles, and I checked out the system in action. The main unit, as you can see in the picture above, is a pretty standard touchscreen in-dash interface -- you can use it to flip between any in-car audio or video controls you have, and of course, it has a built-in GPS unit and can do all of the usual navigation things, like give you a route or check traffic. But the interesting thing about this one is that it hooks up to your iPhone -- you can just barely see Pioneer's demo iPhone in the picture above, plugged into a dock cable that runs up through the glove compartment. And indeed, that's where your iPhone stays. The idea with this unit is that it works as an interface for your phone while driving, rather than replacing it completely.
Students build self-balancing TIPI robot, plan new world order (video)
Remember this guy, the QB robot that was priced at a whopping 15 grand? Seemingly, the webcam wheeler inspired a team of young minds at the University of Waterloo, who've unleashed the DIY in themselves to build one of their own. TIPI, or Telepresence Interface by Pendulum Inversion, was designed to give humans the feeling that they're not actually talking to a six-foot tall cyclops cyborg with an LCD face and webcam eye, but rather, evoke the emotions drawn when speaking the old, conventional, face-to-face way. Thanks to this team of mechatronics engineers, the low-cost TIPI uses an accelerometer, gyro and pendulum to balance by itself and can be remotely controlled while communicating via its Beagle Board and Polulu Orangutan SVP brain. Head past the break to see the robot struttin' its stuff -- oh, and get ready to rave. You'll see what we mean.
Gold Capped: Improving the default auction house interface
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house. Email Basil with your questions, comments, or hate mail! The default interface for the auction house could use some loving. It's an essential part of players' gaming experience, and whether they use it or not, its design has an effect on them. We've seen many examples of Blizzard designing parts of their UI to include features provided by addons that had become so prevalent that everyone had to run them. For example, threat didn't always show up on the default frames -- back in my day, we had to run Omen to avoid pulling aggro from the tank. It's important to recognize that not every valuable interface tweak belongs in the basic WoW UI, though. If it's a feature that's only used by a small segment of players or is unnecessarily complex, it's probably best off in an addon. You won't see me advocating that the base AH UI keep historic pricing numbers, for example. It is, though, a travesty that you have to page through hundreds of pages of single auctions to get to the lower priced stacks.
Optical tweezers manipulate microscopic objects using an iPad, raw brainpower (video)
Okay, so maybe the whole brainpower thing is a distant second to the iPad itself, but still -- being a rocket scientist probably doesn't hurt when manipulating microscopic objects via a multitouch display. That's the kind of setup that students and boffins alike have going at England's University of Bristol, where iTweezers are being used to control a tiny rod about 300 nanometers wide, amongst other things. Essentially, the iPad is able to display what's under a microscope via a wireless display transfer, and then, touch points are converted into laser movements that are used to handle objects that are far smaller than those visible particles clogging up your left ear right now. All told, a user can select up to 11 different objects, and in theory, the iPad could enable scientists to do this remotely. Hey, we're all about new and improved ways to telework. Vid's below, kiddos.
NEC turns your arm into a touch-sensitive remote control
You may ask yourself, why bother tapping touchscreens or physical buttons when an accelerometer can be strapped to the wrist, turning any ol' arm into a wireless touch panel? That's the claim that NEC is making today. A wrist-worn band of compact acceleration sensors divides the arm into seven sections along the upper, middle, and lower arm that can then be assigned as virtual inputs to an electronic device. No more reaching into a bag to answer the phone, no more plucking at the strings of a guitar to create song -- everything is controlled through a natural tap of the arm or clap of the hands. Once in a lifetime tech that feels the same as it ever was.
The Daily Grind: Would you play a motion sensor-controlled MMO?
As great as MMOs can be, they are still limited to a mere two senses -- sight and sound -- and have their interfaces strapped to either controllers or a mouse-and-keyboard setup. It doesn't take much to spark the imagination for possibilities to expand beyond these limitations, such as using your entire body to control an avatar instead of just your hands and fingers. Lately we've been seeing a few studios and enterprising hobbyists experimenting with Kinect-like controls as a way to interact in a whole-new way with MMOs. It's not hard to see the potential for increased immersion (and increased silliness, perhaps) as you wave your hands to cast spells or chop the head off an innocent villager. Er, I mean "rampaging Orc." Yeah. So if this technology advanced to the point that your favorite MMO was using it, would you play a motion sensor-controlled game? Does it seem as if it would suck you more into the game or just frustrate you? Would this be an excellent way to both exercise and level up? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Aza Raskin shares Jef Raskin's 1981 memo on the genesis of the Macintosh
If you don't already know Jef Raskin's name, you should spend some time getting to know his work. His son, Aza Raskin, turned out to be a bit of a prodigy, eventually doing important and amazing work at Mozilla in the Labs department. Aza's latest endeavor is a company called Massive Health. His dad, Jef, was a true visionary in user experience and wrote a book called the Humane Interface, a must-read if you design interfaces for human beings. Oh, and Jef is largely credited with this whole "Macintosh" thing, often called the "father" of the Mac, even though he opposed the use of a mouse! So if you're steeped in Mac lore, it's a wonderful thing to see his son Aza posting Mac origin-story documents with the man's comments inline. Jef was quite opinionated, and it's worth reading comments he added to "Macintosh Project Genesis and History" -- a document he wrote in 1981. Read the story of the document, excerpts and the full thing at Fast Co.Design or check out the full thing with Jef's handwritten notes on the next page (sorry, a Flash embed from Scribd, so it won't work on iOS). The document makes clear why Apple chose to rigidly control the hardware in the Macintosh platform and sheds some light on key design considerations. The integrated monitor, for example, made it much easier to design a standard user interface, legible fonts and maintain consistency throughout the OS and third-party applications. Aza notes that Android currently suffers from issues similar to those that the Apple II line suffered from then: fragmentation. Although it's weird to think about now, I do remember radical display differences when going from my Apple II to my Laser 128 to my dad's Apple //c. Also, a standard set of hardware made everything from manuals to marketing easier. As the guy behind many manuals at Apple, Jef understood how good that would be. But the marketing? To quote Raskin: "The secret of mass marketing of software is having a very large and extremely uniform hardware/software base." I think anyone can understand how that fits into the current iOS strategy at Apple.
Macworld Expo 2011: Smart Technologies' interactive whiteboards
One of the most interesting booths at last week's Macworld Expo was that of Smart Technologies, who were showing off their interactive touch surface systems. These aren't necessarily Mac-related, unfortunately -- the equipment Smart sells is just an interface, or rather a series of interfaces designed to work with touch-based software. But Smart has supported the Mac platform for over 15 years, we were told, and the demo units on the floor were running OS X. There were a few different concepts up and running (including a table-style touchscreen that used a camera in the table looking up at the touch canvas to optically detect where you were touching), but the most interesting was probably the interactive whiteboard system -- it's a traditional whiteboard with four cameras mounted on each corner facing the board itself, tracking optically on where and when the user is touching the board. The technology works great -- it can tell the difference between a finger, a paintbrush or a full hand swipe, and while Smart's drivers do work with the normal OS X system, they're also building hooks for their technology into various apps -- ArtRage is one that works well with the tech -- and Smart Technologies has their own app called Notebook as well. Again, all of these things run on almost any platform, but Smart says they're committed to "the Mac customer base." Not only has Apple brought touch interfaces to the forefront with the iPhone and the iPad, but Smart told me that Apple is "now bringing the concept of touch into the [desktop] operating system" as well. Smart's solutions for touch will likely live outside of Apple's own definitions, but it was interesting to see what's possible these days in terms of these interfaces. We've got a video demo from the show floor, embedded in the rest of this post.
Papershow for Teachers introduced at Macworld 2011
Papershow made a big splash last year at Macworld during its introduction, and since then has apparently sold fairly well in business circles (the product is now being sold in Staples as well). This year, Papershow is introducing a new edition styled for education applications, called Papershow for Teachers, that features not only a few upgrades to the functionality, but a few targeted extras meant specifically for the classroom. Just like the previous edition, Papershow for Teachers has a special pen (with a camera built into it) and a Bluetooth-enabled USB drive that hooks right into your Mac with all the necessary software pre-installed on it. The pen's camera can only be used with special paper (a pad is included with the package, and you can, of course, buy more) that has a series of dots on it to tell the app where and when you're drawing on the screen. So very easily, anything written on the special paper gets translated up to the screen. That's the basic functionality, but a printed toolbar on the paper adds a lot more. By "pressing buttons" on the printed toolbar, the pen can change colors, change shapes, or even do things like pull up graphics or draw shapes on screen. The new teacher edition includes an extended toolbar with even more functions -- teachers can now pull up a virtual calculator on screen, and even do things like draw an angle and then ask the software to calculate exactly what it is. Any images created with the app can be exported out to email or PDF, so teachers can share notes with their students right away.
Vudu 2.0 interface moves beyond PS3 & Boxee Box, now available on most TVs, Blu-ray players
Just shy of a month after it launched on the PlayStation 3 and days after debuting on Boxee's Box, the new Vudu 2.0 interface is live on most TVs and Blu-ray players with access to the service. Check out our earlier gallery if you're not familiar with the new look, it should be identical across the lineup (sans-Move support of course) with recommendations, enhanced sharing options and optimized for HD. For now it looks like the Yahoo! Widgets based Samsung and Vizio versions are the only ones still lagging but they're on deck for an update "soon." %Gallery-107570%
Boxee demonstrated on iPad at CES 2011
As soon as we heard that Boxee was demoing their iPad version at this year's CES conference, we had to hunt them down and see it. We found them over at Iomega's booth (stay tuned for a writeup of an Iomega product designed to help iPhone backups as well), and asked to see the app. It's about what you'd expect from a Boxee interface -- slick and clean, with four different options across the top. Friends videos are first, allowing you to tune in to any videos your friends have flagged on various social networks. Featured videos is the second option, where you can watch any videos that Boxee wants to show off. Watch Later allows you to watch any videos you've marked on the Boxee service. And Files is the last option, letting you pull up any videos (in almost any format) stored via a Boxee media server on a Mac or PC on the same network. As you watch any of the videos, you can click a button in the iPad's interface that will also send that video right off to your own Boxee installation to watch. It's pretty awesome -- browse around for a video on your iPad, set it to start playing, and then either watch it there, or send it AirPlay-style right out to your Mac, PC, or a media player equipped with Boxee. Boxee says the app will be released for free later on this year, with another version for iPhone and iPod touch eventually as well.
SD Association triples SDHC and SDXC speeds with UHS-II standard, adds secure eBook specification
Don't ever knock the SD Association for lagging behind. A scant seven months after the aforesaid entity revealed the UHS-I specifications, in flies the predicted successor at CES. UHS-II is a newfangled bus-interface system that promises high-def recording speeds of up to 312 megabytes per second, enabling pro shooters and videographers to actually consider an SDHC or SDXC-based camera rather than relying solely on CompactFlash or SSD. The protocol will be an integral part of the SD 4.00 specification that's going out to members later in the quarter, and naturally, it'll only be useful to SDXC and SDHC cards. We're looking at a 3x increase in transfer rates, and these same upticks will be gracing UHS-II microSDXC and microSDHC cards, too. Best of all, UHS-II cards will be fully backwards compatible with older devices and readers, as the speed increase simply relies on a new row of pins on a familiar form factor. In related news, a new eBook SD application has been announced, though the details surrounding it are murky at best. So far as we can tell, eBook SD cards will have their content pretty well contained, giving publishers the ability to rest easy while still getting content out to the myriad products that can understand SD. Peek the full release after the break. %Gallery-112383%
The Daily Grind: How many hotbars do you have?
It's been argued that MMORPGs are being "dumbed down," and while there may be some truth to that in broad terms, one thing that is most certainly not being dumbed down is MMO combat. On the contrary, combat is getting more involved with each new release, whether it's a result of action titles like DC Universe Online or TERA (which require the player to have a certain amount of twitch skill and situational awareness), or more traditional fare like World of Warcraft, Aion, and RIFT, all of which are special-ability spamfests with a huge number of said abilities for each class. With such a plethora of attacks, defenses, buffs, and crowd-controlling maneuvers at the player's disposal, it's a wonder that the entire screen isn't covered with hotbars. Keybindings play a big role here, of course, but today's Daily Grind is all about your UI. How many hotbars do you have? How are they set up? Do you use a lot of keybindings and macro-enabling peripherals or are you a mouse-clicker? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Cambridge developing 'mind reading' computer interface with the countenance of Charles Babbage (video)
For years now, researchers have been exploring ways to create devices that understand the nonverbal cues that we take for granted in human-human interaction. One of the more interesting projects we've seen of late is led by Professor Peter Robinson at the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, who is working on what he calls "mind-reading machines," which can infer mental states of people from their body language. By analyzing faces, gestures, and tone of voice, it is hoped that machines could be made to be more helpful (hell, we'd settle for "less frustrating"). Peep the video after the break to see Robinson using a traditional (and annoying) satnav device, versus one that features both the Cambridge "mind-reading" interface and a humanoid head modeled on that of Charles Babbage. "The way that Charles and I can communicate," Robinson says, "shows us the future of how people will interact with machines." Next stop: uncanny valley!
Apple patents Cover Flow-like spiral interface
Patently Apple has unearthed a new patent that shows off a Cover Flow-like interface for browsing icons or album covers, only instead of Cover Flow's linear layout, this one organizes content in a spiral. We've seen rotating menus in Apple's patents before, but this looks more involved. It's described as a "receding spiral in a virtual 3D space," and you would use your finger (so probably in an iOS interface) to spin the spiral around and browse through whatever you were looking for. There's also a "V" shaped display listed, and users might even be able to reorganize icons or art in the display (while creating or sorting a playlist, for example). A finger is explicitly shown in the patent, but presumably this would work with a mouse, or even a scroll wheel, as in the case of the non-touchscreen iPods. It's definitely an intriguing idea, and it adds a little more visual variety to browsing through various media or icons. As with all of these patents, there's no guarantee that Apple will actually use this plan in a future product, but clearly someone in Cupertino is thinking about how to put a new spin on the Cover Flow interface.
