Category: Tech

January 14, 2013

CES 2013 – My Top 10

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has come to an end again and so many products have been shown off. Here are some of my favourites for this year.

1. Ultra HD TVs

Ultra HD and 4K displays was the big buzz word this year. All the big TV manufacturers announced and revealed their Ultra HD TVs this year at the CES. Ultra HD TVs have a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels which a 4 times the resolution of our current 1080p TVs.

Now all that has to happen is for all the content providers to up their game and start giving us content in that kind of resolution.

Above is Samsungs 85 inch 4K “floating” TV. It uses a metal frame that has inbuilt speakers and let you easily angle the TV to your liking. One thing for sure is that I won’t be able to afford it.

2. Nvidia Project Shield

The gaming handhelds are making a comeback. There are the Razer’s Edge Gaming Tablet and the Nvidia Project Shield.

Nvidia is known in the industry to supply some of the best graphic chips for PCs, Laptops, tablets and mobile phones and at CES this year they shows off a gaming handheld that is Android based and can mirror to your big displays while on the same network.

I think it is a nifty little device, but right now it is a niche product that hasn’t got a release date or a price attached to it. Check out some impressions in the video below.

3. Oculus Rift Virtual Headset

Remember VirtuaBoy from the 90s? Oculus Rift is the grown up version.

The headset will give the user a very compelling virtual reality experience. It will immerse the user into a wrap-around 3D world – you will feel like you are part of the game. Here are some impressions:

4. The Pebble

I pre-ordered my Pebble in September when it came out on Kickstarter and I was very happy about the fact that they will start sending it out to us at the end of this month.

Instead of packing in a ton of features, Pebble focuses on a few simple features. You can get quick notifications for texts, email, and calls along with custom watch faces and some music control. All that in a small form factor and with an e-paper display – what more can you want.
5. Panasonic 4K Tablet

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January 9, 2013

Stop eating so fast, slow down

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is on again in Las Vegas and all the big companies are there announcing all the new toys that are hitting the market soon.

CES 2013 — Consumer Electronics Show 2013

All the blogs are talking about the Sonys and Samsungs, Microsoft and HTCs, but there are thousands of other companies that hardly ever get a mention.

One of those companies that I came across is Hapilabs and their innovative product called HAPIfork. It was entered into the CES Innovations Awards that you can check out here and that have quite a few nice products in it.

The HAPIfork is an electronic fork that monitors your eating habits. It alerts you with the help of indicator lights and gentle vibrations when you are eating too fast.

You get your own Online Dashboard, you can download and install a mobile app to monitor and visualize your health and fitness progress and much more.

We have been talking about the internet of things and this is exactly what we are talking about, everyday objects are becoming interactive and are connected to each other.

I think it is a pretty nifty innovation and I am looking forward to things to come.

@maniac13

January 7, 2013

Sound Bottle – an art project that remixes the sounds around us

There are sounds around us all the time, so what if you could record those sounds and mix them up into a song? That’s what Jun Fujiwara was thinking when he created Sound Bottle. He is a student at the Tama Art University and received the Naoki Sakai Prize at the Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Awards last year.

The device uses an Arduino controller for the sound recording and crunching. The recording software will create a remix that will playback every time the bottle is uncorked. Each time it’s recorked, the Sound Bottle resets and a new remix can be created. If you want to pause the remix, give the bottle a shake.

Here is his synopsis of his work:

This is a music medium that can reproduce a recorded voice as music. It makes a database of sound sources that is managed and used as formal and automatic repetitions, and forms a music medium of the day. I felt something missing in the habitual use of music reproduction media, so I thought to create an interactive music medium that changes. By using everyday voices as sources of music, the sounds that are heard all the time every day carry infinite possibilities and help us reaffirm the enjoyment of music. I hope people can experience their own music.

You can see the Sound Bottle in action in the video below. It is a pretty nifty little project if you ask me. I especially like that you have to uncork the bottle to play back the created music.

@maniac13

November 23, 2012

My Windows 8 review

I have been following the development of Windows 8 from the get go, just as I have with most of the other Windows releases in the past. And I was excited about it being released to consumers in some kind of beta stage.

Windows 8 Metro Screen — Windows 8 Start Screen

I had a good 8 month with it now from the Consumer Preview to the Release Candidate all the way to the final product and in general I like it. But let’s take it from the start.

Installation

Installing Windows 8 was a very painless process, especially when you are used to installing previous versions of Windows. Simply select the drive you want to install in on and it will do the rest.

I installed it on my 6 year old laptop, that recently got upgraded with a bit more RAM and an SSD drive and it is as fast as you can expect it to be.

Metro

Is it still called Metro? I got a bit confused with all the backwards and forwards. No it’s not. Call it Windows 8!

To get to the point – I don’t like the Windows 8 Start screen on my non touchscreen Laptop at all. When you have a lot of software installed on your laptop, there is a lot of scrolling left and right involved. I found myself reverting back to typing, which actually works really well. On the Windows 8 Start screen just start typing on your keyboard and all programs installed that fit the criteria will be sorted in real time.

I found that I spend a lot of time on the Desktop and I pinned all my frequent apps to the taskbar there, so I don’t have to go back to the Windows 8 Start screen.

One thing that I found really annoying are the Live tiles on the Windows 8 Start screen. At the office I still use messenger a lot to communicate with people that sit on the other side of the office. The Windows 8 messenger app comes with Windows now and is a native app that has its live tile and when you receive a new message you can see a little popup in the top right corner of your screen for a second. Now if you would have missed that and you are like me, spending most of your time on the Desktop, you won’t even know that you got a new message as there is no indication. Remember the old messenger app turning orange in the taskbar? So i ended up installing the old version of messenger.

Speed

I am sure it helps that I run everything of my SSD drive, but it seems that Microsoft really optimized everything regarding speed and I am liking it.

Windows Explorer is much nicer when you are copying lots of files all the time as you get a lot more information, you can pause and restart copy processes and if you run multiple at a time they nicely line up. The task manager is better structured and more intuitive and I personally like that Aero didn’t make the cut.

TaskManager and Copy — Copy process and Task Manager

The Start Menu

By now you are probably aware that Microsoft retired the Start button in Windows 8 and personally I think it was a mistake for business use. I was ready to switch back to Windows 7 until i discovered a little app called Classic Shell (here). You might have noticed that I have a start button in my screen shots and that is Classic Shell.

It basically behaves like your current start button, but is highly customizable. Since I installed it, I haven’t looked back. It also disables the Windows 8 Start screen on startup, but you can turn that off if you want.

You get all the new features of Windows 8 with the feel of Windows 7.

Conclusion

All up I am enjoying Windows 8 now that i found a way to get my start button back (and I am not the only one, Samsung included their own in some of their Win8 laptops) and I was able to turn off the Windows 8 Start screen.

Now I am not saying the Windows 8 Start screen is wrong, I am saying that it works on touch devices, but not on Desktops that you would use for business. I had a chance to try it out on Microsofts new Surface tablet and it works well there as it is easy to swipe and “pin” programs to a quarter of the screen etc.

If you have had your own experience, please let me know in the comments what you think of it.

@maniac13

October 21, 2012

How to make music with a pen and paper – Dyskograf

It looks a little bit like a traditional record player and I am sure french new media production company Avoka used them as inspiration for creating their interactive sound installation, Dyskograf.

The device has a camera that monitors the turntable and detects marks drawn on paper records. Depending on the location and how they are drawn, the marks tell the custom software to make a different sound.

Why was it created? Their website explains that quite nicely

Through this system, the sequential ordering of music is learnt in a playful way, at the same time creating a unique object, souvenir of the musical composition.

The numeric world is a world of binary choice. The object of DYSKOGRAF is to give room again for accidents in numeric creation, accidents that often favour creativity.

Check it out in action in the video below. I am sure I could create some nice loops with it.

@maniac13

October 16, 2012

Unboxing the Makey Makey – Or how to make an Orange interactive

As soon as it was announced we wanted to get our hands on it, so Iain pre-ordered it, waited, waited a bit more, saw other people lucky enough to get it before us play around with it, got jealous, waited a little more and then it finally arrived.

So you are probably asking yourself, what is it. When you look at their website here, the explanation is quick:

MaKey MaKey is an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet.

Basically you can take any objects (as long as they are conductive), clamp them to the MaKey MaKey board and make them do things. It was invented for anybody who loves tinkering around, wants to create anything in between art and engineering.

So what else is in the box?

not much, but definitely enough to get started on a little project

And within minutes the idea was born, a few old coins were found under the couch cushions and in the back of drawers and an orange was “stolen” from the fruit box.

All of it stuffed into a cardboard box and we had our first project – the interactive Orange

When you touch a coin and hold the orange, you make a connection, and MaKey MaKey sends the computer a keyboard message. The computer just thinks MaKey MaKey is a regular keyboard (or mouse). We just build a little flash movie that makes a sound and changes the picture when a certain key is pressed.

see it in action:

There are already plenty of pretty cool projects out there, so check them out and we make sure we keep you updated with ours as well.

@maniac13

January 13, 2012

The window of the future

CES in Las Vegas is on and like every year I am jealous of everybody who can go to it.

But nevertheless I still get to see all the cool new gadgets and while I have seen prototypes of this before, but this seems to be ready to be installed in my house.

The Samsung Smart Window – a transparent display that is touch enabled and a one sided pane which means people on the outside can’t see what you are seeing.

here are some videos of it in action:

I love the blinds, also word on the street is that mass production is starting in the next few month, but no word on price yet.

@maniac13

January 10, 2012

Control Windows 8 by looking at it

I am very excited about the forthcoming Windows 8 and I have been playing around with it since the Developer Preview was released.

We have a big touchscreen in the office here so it is perfect for the Metro UI, but I have to say that the mouse interaction on a laptop without a touchscreen is very average.

Along came Tobii and at first you think it is just another gimmick, but everybody on the net who has actually tried it is blown away by it.

Tobii comes with an eye control device, a rectangular glass obilisk that is attached to the hinge of the laptop. It requires a personal calibration and off you go. It also controls all the swipe gestures available in Windows 8.

But enough said, check it out in the video.

here is another video of it in action

can’t wait to try it out

@maniac13

January 9, 2012

Another step closer to the HoloDeck

We have seen some cool stuff in the past that could bring us closer to the Star Trek HoloDeck, e.g. the HoloDesk

And now Microsoft Research has pushed a little further and gives us a 3D hologram that is floating in mid air at 15 frames per second and is viewable from 192 different points at a time.

reminds me of Star Wars

Of course Kinect is involved here and the depth sensor makes it possible to interact with the hologram – you can basically touch it.

It is still a long way off from 3D hologram telephony or a full size HoloDeck, but for now this is pretty cool.

check out the video:

@maniac13

December 1, 2011

Nokia & DJ/Producer deadmau5 lights up London with awesome 4D projection

As a massive fan of the DJ deadmau5 and an ex-Londoner this footage of the recent Nokia product launch was always going to excite me.

That said you certainly don’t have to be a supporter of either to appreciate the sheer awesomeness of this video. Well executed and totally awe inspiring. Nokia successfully bring together the world’s most advanced 4D technology with great music to create an amazing free light show at Millbank Tower in London.

What happened?

“Each of the 120 metre high building’s 800 windows were covered with vinyl as 16 powerful projectors, stationed 300 metres away on the other side of the river, beamed 3D images onto the structure. Huge butterflies flew across the London skyline and the tower was twisted, pulsated and even fell down. Billed as the “future of live events” the spectacular show was accompanied by music from super producer deadmau5, who created exclusive remixes for the performance — adding the 4th dimension.”

Prepare yourself this is a light show like never before!

@lottienorman