It looks like a team of Georgia Tech researchers is in the business of making wondrous, high-tech gloves — their most recent one, for instance, can teach you Braille even if youre doing something else. Similar to the piano-teaching glove they designed years ago, this new pair has vibrating motors on each knuckle that buzz in different patterns to correspond with preset Braille phrases.
Read More: High-tech gloves can teach you Braille even if you’re distracted | Engadget
Like the color of that flower? Your friends tie? With this new Scribble pen making a run on Kickstarter, all the hues of the world could be yours.
Read More: Wow, this pen can write in any color on Earth | CNET.
Leave it to Lego to use the word “fusion” correctly. The construction-toy companys new Lego Fusion analog-to-digital game sets are a true blend of real-world Lego building and tablet-app play.
Announced on Wednesday, and shipping in August and September, Lego Fusion boxes each come with 200 Lego pieces. They let you build and play in app-based virtual worlds that include a tower-defense game called “Battle Towers,” a town-building game called “Town Master,” a racing game called “Create and Race” and “Resort Designer.” What you build in the real world can be captured and used in the iOS and Android tablet apps. Each structure then becomes part of the game, and each game can be a part of your world or the larger Lego social community, where others are using their Fusion sets to build similar worlds. Towers can battle towers, race cars can compete against each other and townspeople can take virtual metros to visit other player’s towns.
Read more: Lego Fusion Blends Virtual and Physical Gameplay | Mashable
Digitised content is more convenient in many ways, but there’s one thing that it can’t provide: the tactile pleasure of a physical collection. The world may have made a sharp turn away from CDs, but one company believes that physical media can make a return — if, perhaps, that physical media is also beautifully designed.
Qleek, created by Ozenge Studio in France, certainly fits the bill. It consists of the basic Qleek player, a sleek, beechwood-clad player, and wooden hexagons called Tapps — which can be customised with images of your choice — that can be placed on the player to play your content.
The content, however, is not stored on the Tapps. Rather, each Tapp has an NFC chip inside that links to media of your choice, such as a playlist or a season of TV, stored on your PC; or a YouTube channel, a Spotify playlist, an Instagram feed or a podcast. It connects to your devices via Bluetooth, then streams it to your Bluetooth-compatible television, stereo or speaker.
Zoe Quinn doesn’t just make heartfelt, experimental games like Depression Quest. She’s also pretty set on becoming a cyborg, judging from the cyberpunk as hell implants she’s gotten over the last couple of years.
READ MORE: Woman Puts Deus Ex On Computer Chip In Her Hand | Kotaku
portland-based photographer jim golden delivers a hearty dose of nostalgia in his series ‘relics of technology’, comprising animated gifs and still life images. geometrically placed in a palette of vintage tones, the documented objects are society’s ‘technological’ media devices from the past, brought to life in a collection of moving images
See all the images: jim golden animates vintage devices for relics of technology | designboom
As our primary computing environment gradually shifts from the desktop to mobile, so too will our interface needs. To that end, a group engineers in Mountain View, Calif. believe that they have the solution for the next phase of interfaces, and it comes in the form of a ring.
The Nod ring is a Bluetooth-enabled gesture controller that connects to your smartphone to accomplish a number of input and controller tasks all by using natural motions with your finger.
In addition extending the capabilities of your smartphone, the ring can also be connected to other smart devices, such as a smart television and other Internet-connected devices like the Nest. If a device doesn’t have Bluetooth capability, you can connect the ring to your smartphone, which will then connect to the device via Wi-Fi. Read more: Nod Bluetooth Ring Controls All Your Smart Devices | Mashable
At MIT’s Media Labs, researchers Roy Shilkrot, Jochen Huber and others are working on the “FingerReader,” a ring-like device that straps itself around your finger and reads printed text out loud with a synthesized voice, thanks to a mounted camera and heavily modified open source software. Read more: MIT’s FingerReader Helps The Blind Read With A Swipe Of A Digit | TechCrunch.
Scientists working on a two-way dolphin communicator have made a breakthrough — their device may have translated a single whistle in real time. Read more: Dolphin translator chirps out first word | CNET.
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