NeatTrix

The first Kindle active content, ie applications and games, have started to appear.  The first offerings, released this week,  are two similar games, both free, and are available to Kindle users through the Kindle Store (link below).

The games are Every Word, and Shuffled row.  They both involve creating words from a set of letters.  In Every Word, you are given six or seven letter and then have to find every word you can using those letters. Your attempts are checked against the dictionary.  In Shuffled row, you are also given a set of letters, but in this game,  letters are constantly being added and removed adding an element of strategy to the game.

Hopefully, more and more games will start to show up now that Amazon has opened the gates. Then maybe they’ll let me try and make something.

http://www.amazon.com/s?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Amazon%20Digital%20Services

UPDATE – I noticed a few days ago that Every Word was no longer available for download.  I guessed it might have something to do with some potentially offensive (not to mention illegitimate) words that I noticed while playing the game.  Amazon is apparently working on fixing this and will release an updated version of the game soon.

A great example of complexity from simplicity.

Finally, I no longer have to feel inferior to those swarthy human lifeguards.  EMILY, or EMergency Integrated Lifesaving lanYard (why do people love acronyms so much, especially when they have to go to such linguistic lengths to have it come out as the desired word; apparently we can just pick letters at random to get the desired effect [LOVE or Leave grandma in the nursing hOme two states oVer and wait for her to diE] but I digress) EMILY uses sonar to track a drowning person, jets over to them at 28 mph, and then either takes them to shore or waits for the puny human lifeguard to get there. (continue reading…)

With fewer pickups and sensors than the Emotiv EPOC headset (Emotiv Epoch Continued… & Emotiv Epoch) the NeuroSky headset offers the simplicity of a single brainwave pickup on the forehead and Bluetooth audio.

Not our usual fare, but pretty cool all the same. This apparently came from Music Hack Day, a music software developer event held in San Francisco last week. The creation of Tristan Jehan, Swinger, is a python script that converts any song to a swing song (See example below). By careful time stretching, the original tempois altered to create a novel version of the song. In some cases a great improvement. In some, well you decide.

More examples here.
Jehan’s Website here.

Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay

From the MIT Media Lab is BiDi, short for “bidirectional”. This display can “see” what happens in front of it. For more information see: New Scientist Article, Details.

In the Lumino post, we saw how object placed on a Microsoft Surface project patterns of dark and light that can be used for 3D interaction with the computer. According to Microsoft, the Microsoft Surface “uses cameras and image recognition in the infrared spectrum to recognize different types of objects such as fingers, tagged items and shapes”.

BiDi, then, is an enhancement of that concept and extends the interaction depth to 50 cm.

Now, add multi-colored gloves …

Lumino is an concept for interacting with touch screen computer in 3D. With a system of glass-fiber-filled objects, Lumino is able to discern the particular block, or stack of blocks and modify the output accordingly. So it not only knows what’s sitting on it surface, it knows what’s sitting on top of that. Check it out.

OK, it just looks that way. Still, an interesting and inexpensive implementation using a webcam as input device. For more information please see: web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/gesture-computing-0520.html

Gestural Interface Gloves

Is this the next step toward really useful wearable computing? Yes, there are other projected keyboards, but this seems like it would work better. Making the projected display sunlight readable may be a challenge relative to battery power requirements (It always boils down to batteries, doesn’t it?). The acoustic sensing requires the skin taps and makes a mouse-like pointing device problematic.

Why not just project on a flexible multi-touch surface?

More information.

Or Roboplow rather.  This is awesome. I’m always looking for new ways to get snow off my driveway.  I like the remote control, but something autonomous would be cool too.

I was playing around with my black light the other day, and when I put my Kindle under it’s light, I saw this:

I’ve asked a few people and they can’t seem to make anything of the pattern of florescent (or non-florescent) keys.  One suggestion was the first character (if that’s indeed what it is) is an ‘a’ presumably for amazon, but it’s less clear what the second thing is.

I suppose one explanation could just be a coincidental mixture of florescent and non-florescent keys were used to make my particular Kindle (perhaps they’ve changed the formula for the plastic in the keys, who knows?)  This explanation is easy enough to test.  I just need some other people with Kindles to check their keyboards under a black light and get back to me.  Does Kindle 1 have the same pattern, or any pattern?

If however, everyone sees the same pattern of lighted keys, then what does that mean? Does anyone see some significance in this pattern? Or perhaps with the individual letters themselves? Something I didn’t think of?

I’ve seen technology like this before. They were demoing it at a simulated medical disaster event almost 10 years ago, but this looks more user friendly, and I’m sure the accuracy of all the component parts is much better than it was: speech recognition, translation, and text-to-voice. One ability that’s always appealed to me is languages. I’m glad the technology is catching up to my lack of ability. Step two, read my thoughts, or at least the electrical signals being sent to my vocal chords and do the translation in actual real time. Step three, rule the world. Step four, tacos.