GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Next time you splash around at the Six Flags water park you may be doing some significant–like contributing to some research on computing.

A fish-shaped musical instrument that spouts water jets into which users dip their fingers is being hailed as an example of a new user interface. The instrument called hydraulophone involves putting your fingers on tiny water jets and producing a soothing, organ-like music.

It’s an example of what’s being called a “Flexible Limitless User Interface” that doesn’t demand any level of skill from its users, yet can offer an experience that’s deeply satisfying.

“What we really do with these kind of interfaces is make them as addictive as possible and to do that we have to find a way you can exert your own influence on a system,” Steve Mann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, told attendees at the Singularity Conference in San Francisco held over the weekend. “It can be a very absorbing experience.”

Mann and his colleague Ryan Janzen gave attendees a performance of the hydraulophone.

The instrument resembles a large flute, except with water flowing through it instead of air. It has 12 holes, each of which spews out a water jet. The chords are played by blocking one or more of the water jet holes with the fingers.

Mann has been billed as the world’s first cyborg. For about 30 years now, he has been wearing some sort of wearable computing device including an Eyetap, a pair of glasses that allows the eye to function as a camera, as well as digital systems monitoring his heart and brain. These devices are part of a world he calls computer-mediated reality.

The hyradulophone is an idea that Mann started working on in the 1990s. The device blends art and technology, he says. Early versions of the device were hard to play because the water jets had to be pressed down very hard to create the musical notes. But now the instrument has been refined to respond to the slightest of touches.

“It let you express yourself in a very rich way, which is why flexible user interfaces will be important,” says Mann. “We need to get tactile information into a machine and back to the human.”

Having people in the feedback loop such that the human and computer are linked closely could lead to a new form of intelligence called ‘Humanistic Intelligence,’ says Mann. Ultimately this could lead to a reciprocal relationship, where a computer uses a person’s mind and body as as one of its peripherals, even as the human user thinks of the computer as a peripheral, he says.

The hydraulophone has been installed as a large scale public installation at the Ontario Science Center. There’s also a concert version with precise scale and range.

Mann and Janzen also recently built a hyadraulophone in a hot tub and showed it to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

“He loved it!” says Mann.

Take a closer look at the hydraulophone shown at the Singularity conference and listen to what the instrument sounds like:

The hydraulophone has 12 water jets, one for each of the 12 notes.

Photos: Priya Ganapati/Wired.com

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A homebrewed graphing calculator called Open SciCal promises to put a powerful machine built entirely from open source hardware into the pockets of quant jocks and statisticians.

“This is for the alpha nerds of the geek kingdom,” says Matt Stack who built Open SciCal. “The calculator used to be the ultimate status symbol among the nerdiest of the nerds and I wanted to bring that back.”

Open SciCal has a 4.3 inch color touchscreen and is just a little bigger than an iPhone. The device uses a BeagleBoard, a low-power, single-board computer that’s based on the same 1-GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor that drives most sophisticated smartphones today. It also has a 8 GB SD card, Wi-Fi capability and can run a web browser.

“It’s about the same weight as my Logitech G9 mouse (which weighs about 1.6 pounds),” says Stack.

A graphing calculator can take data sets and plot graphs in addition to running scientific functions on it. Many graphing calculators allow users to attach sensors to them so they can log data directly into the device. But as data sets increase in size and complexity, they are outgrowing traditional graphing calculators available from companies such as HP and Texas Instruments. Add to that restrictions on the kind of external sensors that can be attached and it makes a device built on open source components an attractive alternative, says Stack.

Open SciCal can run Linux, R–a programming language used in statistical computing–and will let users can program in C or Perl. All this for just $200.

“Texas Instruments has a calculator called Nspire that cost about as much but doesn’t do half that this calculator does,” says Stack.

To test Open SciCal, Stack used existing data to predict sunspots and understand the statistical significance of a recent solar storm.

Another task for the Open SciCal: Pull stock data from the sites like Yahoo Finance and run auto-correlation on the data to discern trends in the stock.

“It’s like every hedge fund quant’s dream,” says Stack, “and I have a device in my pocket now that can do that.”

Check out more photos of the Open SciCal:

The SciCal calculator is not much bigger than an iPod.

The SciCal can predict sunspots by using existing data to create graphs.

Photos: Matt Stack

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Someday humans and computers will meld together to create cyborgs. But instead of waiting for it, Martin Magnusson, a Swedish researcher and entrepreneur, has taken the first step and created a wearable computer that can be slung across the body.

Magnusson has hacked a pair of head-mounted display glasses and combined it with a homebrewed machine based on a open source Beagleboard single computer. Packed into a CD case and slung across the shoulder messenger-bag style, he is ready to roll.

A computer is a window to the virtual world, says Magnusson.

“But as soon as I get up and about, that window closes and I’m stuck within the limits of physical reality,” he says. “Wearable computers make it possible to keep the window open. All the time.”

Magnusson’s idea is interesting though one step short of integrating a machine inside the body. In 2008, a Canadian film maker Rob Spence decided to embed a tiny video camera into his prosthetic left eye. Spence who is still working on the project hopes to someday record everything around him as he sees it and lifecast it.

For his wearable computer, Magnusson is using a pair of Myvu glasses that slide on like a pair of sunglasses but have a tiny video screen built into the lens. A Beagleboard running Angstrom Linux and a Plexgear mini USB hub that drives the Bluetooth adapter and display forms the rest of this rather simple machine. Four 2700 mAh AA batteries are used to power the USB hub. Magnusson has used a foldable Nokia keyboard for input and is piping internet connectivity through Bluetooth tethering to an iPhone in his pocket.

Magnusson says he wants to use the wearable computer to “augment” his memory.

“By having my to-do list in the corner of my eye, I always remember the details of my schedule,” he says.

Check out photos of his gear:

The innards of the homebrewed machine are glued to a CD case. The CD case is slung across the shoulder by attaching it to a strap using velcro.

What the homebrewed computer looks like:

Photos: Susanna Nilsson

Source:wired.com

Posted under Gadget Reviews