CrunchGear

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• CEATEC: Hands on with Wink Glasses
• Japan finally completes its gigantic Gigantor statue (video)
• Daily Crunch: Death Defying Jumps Edition
• DIY – A wooden hand crank iPhone dock
• Get your hands on the wall now! …with this multi-touch projector
• Palm: Free Apps For The Web, Free Development For Open Source, And Free Phones!
• Now your MS Paint sketches can be rendered into full-blown photochops
• New technology will detect chemical weapons in seconds
• Remember this thing? The Apple Quicktake 200
• Someone loves chrome logos as much as I do
• The Dyson DC25 Blueprint is probably not meant for you
• MyStuff organizer: Keep track of important stuff
• Ducati Hypermotard 796. No, really. That’s what its called.
• More Microsoft labs: webcams, anechoic chambers, and audio gear – oh my
• Microsoft’s Project Pink Might Be Dead In The Water
• Microsoft’s insane new multi-touch mice demoed on video
• Ultrathin Sony X Series coming next month along with a touchscreen laptop
• Dear Hollywood: Wanna stop BitTorrent piracy of your TV shows? Make them available overseas in a timely manner!
• Canabalt: Amazingness in an iPhone game package
• The common peephole finally goes digital

CEATEC: Hands on with Wink Glasses Posted: 06 Oct 2009 04:30 AM PDT Matt wrote about Wink Glasses a couple of months ago. He was skeptical of their value. I found them on display at CEATEC 2009, and just had to try them out! In the photo above, you can see them in the “active” state, helpfully reminding me that it’s time to blink. In the photo below, you can see them in the inactive state, which means I’ve blinked within the last 5 seconds. How well do they really work? Here’s a quick video showing them in action. Maybe they just don’t work so well on gaijin eyes.

Japan finally completes its gigantic Gigantor statue (video) Posted: 06 Oct 2009 02:20 AM PDT Move over, Gundam, your time has passed. It’s now Gigantor’s turn to protect Japan from alien intruders. Based on the giant robot from the anime that was first aired in the 1960s in Japan, the city of Kobe in central Japan is now the proud home of a 18m high statue of the Tetsujin 28 (Iron Man 28), which is the robot's name in Japan. The dedication ceremony was held on Sunday, October 4th, following several months of construction work. It took $1.5 million to complete the so-called Kobe Tetsujin Project [JP], with the money coming from the city of Kobe, a handful of corporations and individual Gigantor fans. The statue was designed and erected under the supervision of an NPO. Gigantor weighs 50t. Here’s a video from yesterday that shows him protecting Kobe: Via Robot Watch [JP]

Daily Crunch: Death Defying Jumps Edition Posted: 06 Oct 2009 12:00 AM PDT Canabalt: Amazingness in an iPhone game package Someone loves chrome logos as much as I do Microsoft's insane new multi-touch mice demoed on video Bugathermo Heated Boot: Don't do it Ghostbusters action figure sets

DIY – A wooden hand crank iPhone dock Posted: 05 Oct 2009 10:00 PM PDT So you’re finally decided that you have too much finely shaped plastic, aluminum, and steel in your life. You’ve got a woodworking shop in your garage that would make the amish cry, and you just can’t figure out where to put your iPhone when you’re not using. Worry no more friend, you can make a hand crank-able wooden iPhone dock, just like this man did. Sure, you could go buy a dock for $10 and call it good, but where would you get that sense of accomplishment that only comes from crafting something with your hands? All joking aside, this thing is pretty cool. It’s something called “Automata” and seems to be a pretty big thing on the web right now. It’s not quite and done to death and steampunk, nor does it have the freakish followers. This is I trend I might be able to get behind. Even though I secretly love steampunk keyboards. [via Make]

Get your hands on the wall now! …with this multi-touch projector Posted: 05 Oct 2009 09:22 PM PDT What if, instead of a touch screen, you could reach out and touch (and manipulate) an image on any surface? Seems like a cheapskate alternative to buying a touch-screen white board to me. Japanese company Funai Electric is setting up to do just that. They’ve created an alternative to the standard touch screen, using a projector that is capable of creating the functionality of said screen on any surface. The projector uses a system of laser light and sensors to tell when an object (say a finger) has been placed over the image, allowing a user to manipulate the image using gestures. The projected image is decidedly low resolution, so it may not be a complete replacement for the Microsoft Surface technology, but it could be a budget alternative. The projector is currently just a prototype, but the company developing it has stated that they hope to have a commercial version available as soon as early 2010.

Palm: Free Apps For The Web, Free Development For Open Source, And Free Phones! Posted: 05 Oct 2009 08:21 PM PDT I'm here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform. The two, along with Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein and some other executives spoke at length about the hardware, the platform, and the plan going forward. The message was pretty clear: Web development is the future, and openness is the way. They also made a few big announcements.

Now your MS Paint sketches can be rendered into full-blown photochops Posted: 05 Oct 2009 06:30 PM PDT This is utterly insane. A research team from several universities has put together a system whereby you can draw a terrible stick picture sketch, label your blobby objects what they’re supposed to be, and it will essentially photoshop something together for you that meets your criteria. I kid you not. It’s early, experimental, and questionably useful, but it’s just too cool to not share with you guys. Photosketch uses a sophisticated image filtering system (as well as humans) to pick objects that are what you’ve written and more or less in the position you want them to be. It then takes just the object and pastes it in over the background — whatever you’ve decided that is. It’ll come up with a few composite images, based on different parts, and then you get to choose the one you like. Are you kidding me? I don’t want to be premature here, but I’d say tentatively that this does appear to be the greatest thing of all time. They showed it at SIGGRAPH. If this works the way they say it does (and I doubt it does at this point, really), it’d be a party game all to itself. And can you imagine playing with this thing on a tablet? God damn! The future, people! [via Metafilter]

New technology will detect chemical weapons in seconds Posted: 05 Oct 2009 06:00 PM PDT In the never-ending battle to protect our freedoms, detecting chemical agents and illegal drugs remains a top priority. Luckily, the smart people at Queen’s University in Belfast have just come up with a new way that will provide instant results, and won’t be something that can be tricked by covering scents or other materials. There’s an obvious problem with the current technology. The cheery TSA person rubs a swab on your shoe, and then on a pad that changes color if you’ve been say, walking through fertilizer and fuel oil recently, or possibly working with aluminum powder, and then you end up spending some time in a locked room explaining exactly what you were planning. Lots of false positives, and likely a fair amount of false negatives as well (we’ll never know how many). The new technique will use the “Raman Spectroscopy” method, which involves shining a laser beam into the sample, and then measuring the energy of the light that is scattered by it to determine what exactly the chemical compound is. This method allows for near-instant measurement of minuscule particles, making the detection processes extremely fast and accurate. The technology is not currently available however, since it is only about halfway through the development process. The applications, aside from the obvious Homeland Security use, will include a new generation of breathalyzers and field testing equipment.

Remember this thing? The Apple Quicktake 200 Posted: 05 Oct 2009 05:30 PM PDT It’s possible that this escaped my attention in 1997, because at the time, I would have been listening to Smashing Pumpkins and playing Riven most of the time. Meanwhile, Apple was slapping its name on a Fuji camera and trying to pioneer a new industry — and failing. It was a noble effort (like the Newton), but ultimately the Quicktake 200 was too early and probably too expensive. This is a pretty good retrospective of the device, which took 640×480 pictures onto a 2-megabyte flash card. That was a lot of space back then, remember? I’m actually surprised it didn’t take 3.5″ floppies. If they were each about 40-50kb, you’d be able to get 35 or 40 pictures on there, no problem! Unfortunately, at $600 it was kind of expensive, and you could get much better quality from a scanned 3×5″ photo. Hell, you can still get great quality out of a scanned 3×5 today! In any case, it went the day of the dodo and until relatively recently, Apple (bitten once) was twice shy about returning to the imaging field.

Someone loves chrome logos as much as I do Posted: 05 Oct 2009 05:30 PM PDT I can’t get enough of the awesome raised or etched lettering you see on high-end and old-school hardware. You know, like the Leica symbol, or the great old lettering on the backs of cars. It has a very permanent feeling, and these days there isn’t enough of that. Too much plastic, too much dye, too many displays. Luckily for me (and people like me, if there are any), there’s a whole blog dedicated to this kind of stuff. It’s mostly car lettering, but they recently put of some great shots of some great old Leica and Kodak cameras, so that makes it relevant to this blog. Don’t you want your gear to be this real? To have this kind of weight? I’ve got a Fujifilm Finepix F70EXR on my desk, as well as my two Canon DSLRs and the Casio FC-100. None of these, as excellent as they are, have the same feeling of weight, power, and style that my old Ftb had, and it was basically just a steel brick with a lens on the front. The blog itself, Chromeography, is mainly just a repackaging of a Flickr stream, which you can see here if you want to get the high quality stuff.

The Dyson DC25 Blueprint is probably not meant for you Posted: 05 Oct 2009 05:00 PM PDT People, stop everything that you are doing and let me introduce to you the sexiest vacuum of all time: the Dyson DC25 Blueprint. This my, friends, is the epitome of unnecessary but totally rad luxury items. First and foremost, it’s a Dyson DC25 ball vacuum, which is a great vacuum as I found out last year, but this one’s done up in a special edition livery dubbed Blueprint. It’s a white vacuum in case you haven’t noticed which means once you’re done vacuuming, you’re going to have to grab a dust rag and clean this guy too. That’s crazy. And doesn’t it look somewhat like R2-D2? Expect a full review in a week.

MyStuff organizer: Keep track of important stuff Posted: 05 Oct 2009 04:27 PM PDT Receipts and warranty information have a tendency to get lost, usually when you need them most. You throw them all into a folder on your hard drive (or if your older than sin, a physical box), and have to search through countless PDFs and e-mails to find what you need. It might be a simple model number, purchase date, or even purchase price. Minder Softworks has a fantastic piece of software that keeps track of all of your stuff, that is predictably titled MyStuff. MyStuff is a centralized location to keep all of the information relating to pretty much everything you have in your house. Okay maybe not everything, but close to it. There are various “filing cabinets” for categories of stuff, such as auto, computer, electronics, tools, as well as any custom categories you want to make. You can make a record of each item, where you bought it, how much it cost, even warranty information. You also have the option of adding PDFs of the receipt, owner’s manual, or anything else you might need to know. Even pictures to make it easier to find devices. There are also multiple locations you can assign things too, meaning you can keep stuff from work, home, and your underground lair all separate. MyStuff is currently on version 1.0, and is only available for Mac OS 10.5 and up. $29 to download immediately.

Ducati Hypermotard 796. No, really. That’s what its called. Posted: 05 Oct 2009 04:03 PM PDT Seeing as how all of our readers are avid motorcycle enthusiasts who can drop ten grand for the latest crotch rocket, here’s Ducati’s latest street machine. If you are one of those lucky few, how about purchasing a fleet and donating it to your favorite tech blog? Advertised as “The new way to go hyper”, the Hypermotard 796 is Ducati’s newest model. The focus seems to be directed more toward making this bike not as ridiculously expensive as for the average consumer and commuter. Not to say that it can’t keep up with the rest of the pack. Weighing in at 368 lbs, the engine will still pull 81 horsepower and 55.7 ft·lbs of torque. The 796 comes in a complete matte-black, a matte-white tank with matte-black frame, or the traditional Ducati red and black color scheme. No official word on pricing yet, but you can take it from us, it’ll be under 10,000 USD. Look for this marvel of Italian engineering at any Ducati dealer come November 2009. Or for less than half the price, you could get your own powered robotic exoskeleton. Your call.

More Microsoft labs: webcams, anechoic chambers, and audio gear – oh my Posted: 05 Oct 2009 03:33 PM PDT While the multi-touch mice took up most of my visit to the dark corridors of Microsoft Labs, I did get to see some other fun stuff. The first thing I saw was the pressure-sensitive keyboard I wrote up a little while ago; its creator took one apart for me to show how it worked. It’s remarkably simple: it’s the exact same technology used to detect keydowns on almost every keyboard out there, essentially a tiny circuit that gets completed when you press the key down. They’ve simply added a way for the key to increase conductance the harder you press it, and it requires almost no new parts at all. The biggest change is in the drivers, but they’re working that out, and one fortuitous side effect is that there will be no keydown limit on these keyboards. You could be pressing every single key and it would still be pulling an 8-bit pressure state from all of them. Really, it’s all shown quite well in the video above, which I posted before but is worth seeing again. I have to say, the analog input for movement in games was everything I wanted it to be. Very sensitive and very fun to use. Next we went over to the rapid prototyping workshop, where they use a fabrication machine to create whatever mockups they needed or make, say, a stand to hold a webcam while testing it. You can see something like that in the photo at the top of this post. I would have liked to get some pictures and video, but they were skittish about it. The fabricator was in the middle of creating a new mouse, and who knows what else might have snuck into one of my photos. Then we were off to the sound testing lab, which is in a special enclosure and placed in the building so as to avoid acoustic interference. Here they tested microphone sensitivities and such like, and had all manner of cool audio gear, speakers, and reference boards lying around. The coolest thing, though, was the anechoic chamber. This was where you’d actually have testing done — it’s designed to completely deaden all sound from inside or out. I thought the lab area was quiet, but when we stepped into this thing, it was like I was dead. The spiky things you see there completely absorb the sound you make, so the only sound you hear is a direct wave from the source to your ear. Wilson at Gizmodo took the same tour I did and has a more thorough look at this anechoic chamber, so if it sounds interesting, check it out. If you ever have the opportunity to get inside one of these things, go for it. I got the feeling that behind every door in that enormous building was some new and exciting project. And really, that’s true, except usually they share spaces so there are several behind each door. As much flak as Microsoft gets for being gigantic and inflexible, I’m always amazed by the variety of things that take place on that huge campus.

Microsoft’s Project Pink Might Be Dead In The Water Posted: 05 Oct 2009 02:34 PM PDT To say we were unimpressed with the first leaked shots to come out of Microsofts "Project Pink" would be a bit of an understatement. This was Microsoft's first in-house foray into the mobile hardware space, and we'd been hearing tales of it for years; yet in the end, what we were seeing was bad enough that we equated the two leaked devices to "a midgie Pre and a Touch Pro crossed with a jellybean". And now, it all begins to make sense. We were recently contacted by a source with a seemingly exhaustive knowledge of Microsoft's Project Pink, and what they've shared with us doesn't sound good. If what they've shared is true, it seems that the project as a whole began -- and will likely end -- in vain.

Microsoft’s insane new multi-touch mice demoed on video Posted: 05 Oct 2009 02:26 PM PDT The other day, I went on a short tour of some of Microsoft’s Labs, where they do everything from rapid prototypes of new products to acoustic testing in anechoic chambers. Most of my time was spent in the Applied Sciences group’s labs, where they are working on some seriously interesting devices. And they’re not just into mice; in fact, the lab’s specialty seemed to be anything to do with optics and/or input. This lab worked on Project Natal, and also on the pressure-sensitive keyboard I wrote about a while back. They were kind enough to show me all these crazy multi-touch mice, and, when I was too inept to demo even one of them solo, offered to go through them with me on video. Remember that none of these devices are final in any way! The side mouse, for instance, would be much smaller if it were a product, and these weren’t really sculpted at all to fit in your hand. Let’s just go through them again in text form so you know what you saw. Click the legend here to embiggen. The Cap mouse is the one I picked as the most ready for deployment. The curved capacitive sensor that makes up the “head” of the mouse is known technology despite being one of the only curved sensors out there, and the form factor of the mouse will be familiar to anyone. The Side mouse is perhaps the most unorthodox of all the mice shown. It throws out a swath of IR light and watches what it hits; it sounds strange but watching video of the sensor’s view, you can tell that it’s a perfectly good way of telling depth and so on. I personally thought this would do better at the top of a mousepad, to be activated at will while you have a normal mouse for everyday stuff. Here’s that video: Frustrated Total Internal Reflection, or FTIR, isn’t a catchy name for a mouse, but as a technology it’s quite interesting. The arched acrylic sheet you see has IR LEDs shining light into it at all times. It’ll travel along the sheet and dissipate harmlessly, but if you touch the sheet anywhere, it’ll reflect off your finger and be picked up by the camera that’s underneath. It’s extremely high-resolution and can detect the tiniest movements. This one retained the mouse shape almost as well as the Cap mouse. As he notes, it does remind one of the Arc mouse, which I liked a lot. One I thought might come out as a completely different product was the Orb mouse. Like the FTIR mouse, it has a camera, but this camera is pointed at a chrome dome that allows it to see every part of the frosted orb. This means it can detect touches anywhere on the thing’s surface. It works as well as you’d expect, but what set me off was the idea that you could actually have a little projector in there that could rear-project images and controls onto the frosted surface of the orb. It’s a bit like the way the Surface display works. I mentioned this and they implied that they were “aware of the possibilities” (I think I hit something good). Lastly, you have the Arty mouse, short for articulated. This thing is like a cross between a regular mouse and the Novint Falcon. Its little limbs are for resting your thumb and forefinger on, and each is equipped with an optical mouse sensor. It’s like a regular mouse with arms, and it’s a bit disturbing to use. But it is cool — I can see this kind of thing being used for perhaps 3D model editing, but it seemed foreign and fragile, not very easy to sell. Does it matter? Multi-touch mice, eh? With laptops ascendant, touchscreens multiplying, and stuff like Natal on the horizon, isn’t it barking up the wrong tree to be putting this stuff on a mouse? A little bit, but not entirely. The mouse is still the standard interface for probably 90% of computers out there, and if they can improve it, they can both extend the life of the decades-old device and introduce multi-touch controls softly into both the OS and the user’s mind. If Microsoft can make a device that is as easy to use as a normal mouse, but with the added benefit of multi-touch (I see the Cap mouse doing this in the shortest time), people will eat it up, provided it’s not too expensive. At any rate, it’s projects like this that push the boundaries of input technology. If multi-touch mice aren’t be a hit, there were advances made and experiments done that will enable or ease other advanced input techniques. Regular readers will know that the demonstration of these mice follows closely on the rumor that Apple is creating a new Mighty Mouse, perhaps to be multi-touch as well. That’s all well and good, but there are two reasons why that really doesn’t matter. First, Apple has never made a good mouse. Never. Every mouse they’ve ever made has been bad, from the puck mouse to the clear “pro” mouse to the Mighty Mouse, they’re awful one and all. So I don’t think these guys, who could design a better mouse than Apple in their sleep, are worried about that. Secondly, Microsoft sells mice to Windows users primarily. The software and optimizations are for Windows 7 with its touch support built-in. The Mac mouse market isn’t big enough or important enough to worry about. Thanks to the Applied Science teams for letting me into their lair. The mice are all very interesting devices, and it’s fun to see them in their larval forms. Update: There’s more video and documentation of the mice and project here if you’re interested.

Ultrathin Sony X Series coming next month along with a touchscreen laptop Posted: 05 Oct 2009 02:08 PM PDT Hungry for the ultraslim Sony X series thin and lightbook? It will be coming to SonyStyle stores next month, replacing the current TT line. Our tipster also reports that a touchscreen laptop – not a tablet – is hitting Sony stores at the same time. Not sure on the model number but it should use Windows 7’s touch capabilities.

Dear Hollywood: Wanna stop BitTorrent piracy of your TV shows? Make them available overseas in a timely manner! Posted: 05 Oct 2009 02:00 PM PDT What’s wrong with sites like Hulu? Well nothing, per se, except for the fact that they can’t be used anywhere outside of the Unites States. As if other countries don’t want to watch… um, really great shows like "Extreme Makeover" and "The [American] Office"! Perhaps that’s why, then, BitTorrent site EZTV has seen traffic double, mainly from non-American IPs, in the past year? For whatever reason, people want to watch these shows, but since there’s no legal outlet to do so, well, it’s not exactly hard to configure uTorrent or Transmission, now is it? The problem goes back to a time before the Internet ruined Hollywood’s business model. Back in the day (and still today, actually) people in other countries had to wait months, if not years, for "American TV Show" to show up on their local TV networks. That wasn’t much of a problem before the Internet, because how could you get jealous in London that a new season of The Simpsons started when all you had access to was whatever the hell Sky put on the air? You can’t want to see something if you don’t know it exists. With apologies to alt.tv.simpsons, where I used to hang out for a minute. But now you can’t visit Digg or Facebook without seeing your online, American buddies chatting about "30 Rock" or "Curb Your Enthusiasm. These shows won’t show up on your local TV stations for months, but that’s why there’s BitTorrent! It’s like this: would you rather wait months and months to see "Whatever" when you can download it in seconds from EZTV? That’s what I did when I was in Barcelona and wanted to see "Generation Kill." I downloaded the episodes a few minutes after they made their way to whatever site I was using at the time. Is that piracy though? I mean, I guess it is, but what are you gonna do? Wait around like a jerk for Local TV Station to pick up the shows? What the studios should do, but probably never will, is either A) eliminate staggered release schedules or B) set up international versions of sites like Hulu. I mean, why do they do that staggered release nonsense anyway? To protect the local market from imports or some nonsense? One World, baby, so treat it as such. And why can’t a Web site be set up where my BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER MOTHER~! can stream "Family Guy" from the comfort of their home in Vienna, Melbourne, or Rio? It’s a stupid, Old World restriction that no longer make sense in this environment. And yes, I know you can merely use a U.S. proxy, but that’s not the point, now is it?

Canabalt: Amazingness in an iPhone game package Posted: 05 Oct 2009 01:30 PM PDT Did you see this? This is Canabalt, a crazy little game that involves a man running and jumping in an 8-bit pixellated world that seems to be falling apart around you. I’m reminded of Half-Life, Mirror’s Edge, and like some kind of weird Sonic game that doesn’t require you to remove your testes to play. The best thing is that they’ve included a working demo of the game on the web page so all you have to do is sit there and tap your life away until those monsters in the background come and eat you. Fun, fun stuff.

The common peephole finally goes digital Posted: 05 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT It's 11:30 PM. You're all alone. Suddenly!! A knock at the door!! "Who could it be?" you wonder. Oh, two large pizzas just for you. That's right. You ordered them directly from your TiVo in a fit of self loathing. Better make sure it's the pizza guy, though. Oh, actually it might be the frozen yogurt you ordered too. Time to use the digital peephole viewer. Yes, for $138 you too can have your very own digital peephole. Is it far more expensive than the standard peephole? Absolutely. But was it high time that peephole technology finally got an upgrade? Sure. The thing installs just like a regular peephole and then the camera apparatus snaps into place. The result is a 1.3-megapixel CMOS lens that sends images of whomever's on the other side of your door directly to a 2.5-inch LCD – no weird peephole angles, either. Looks like it's out of stock right now but it is a new product so it might still be slowly making its way to the marketplace. Product Page [Brinno via Likecool/Red Ferret]

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