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Cisco buys MOTO Development Group to beef up consumer design chops
Cisco's already taken some big steps into the consumer market by buying the Flip cam line and releasing the Valet routers, but the company isn't done yet -- it's just acquired the MOTO Development Group, a San Francisco design house that's worked on a variety of high-profile products like Zune 2.0 and the LiveScribe Pulse. MOTO's also done some work on Android-based e-readers and MIDs that never really went anywhere, but you probably know the company best for its controversial smartphone touchscreen linearity test, which caused so much ruckus the firm actually re-did the whole thing with a robot in charge. Cisco says the MOTO crew will live in the consumer products division, alongside Linksys, Valet, and Flip, so we should see some interesting cross-pollination soon -- and based on Cisco's middling recent efforts like the Flip Slide HD, we'd even say MOTO might do well to lead a total revamp of the company's approach to consumer design. We'll see how it goes.
MOTO touchscreen comparison recruits robotic implements for heightened precision (video)
So you saw that the first MOTO smartphone touchscreen comparison was done with a fleshy humanoid controlling the testing finger and discounted it as scientifically flawed? Well, MOTO's back and this time the arm of judgment is operated by a coldly mechanical and ruthlessly precise robot -- a machine in itself, we'll assume the robot is intrinsically immune to developing fanboy tendencies. Joining the iPhone, Droid Eris, Droid, and Nexus One of the earlier test are Palm's Pre and RIM's BlackBerry Storm 2, whose results you can see at the source link below. The full test methodology is also explained there, including a list of the drawing apps used, which were selected with a view to minimizing smoothing algorithms that may prejudice the outcome. We're not gonna tell you who won, you have eyes of your own after all, and will just direct you after the break for the full robot-on-smartphone video action.
Video: MOTO Lab's multitouch display scalable up to 50-inches
When the heads over at the MOTO Development Group aren't busy outfitting E-Ink devices with Android, they can often be found looking for bigger, better, and cheaper ways to build multitouch surfaces -- and they seem to be on to something. The video below shows full multitouch on a 19-inch display, although the company promises it is scalable up to at least 50-inches -- and it does this without the bulky projector. The capacitive touch screen forgoes the ITO (indium tin oxide) used in devices like the iPhone, relying instead on "extremely fine" wires to conduct the signals (which are lit up here for effect -- the company assures us that this will not be the case in production units). You know what this means: we may be getting that touch screen coffee table sooner than we thought! And we won't have to buy that yacht, either. But don't take out word for it -- peep for yourself after the break.
Video: Android-powered E-Ink display kindles our e-book fantasies
Someday soon, we expect Google's Android OS (like Microsoft's ubiquitous WinCE platform) to power pretty much any consumer device available. Until then, we're left to peer wistfully into the misfit laboratories of the hacking community to get our open-source kicks. The cats at the MOTO Development Group have written a custom driver to create what they claim is the first instance of Android running on an E-Ink display. Unfortunately, there's plenty of that annoying white / black E-Ink flicker as the display refreshes. While that won't be eliminated anytime soon, it's certainly possible to minimize the effect through some future optimization -- this is just a first step, after all. See it in action after the break.
