GadgetReview

The Microsoft Surface is super old news at this point, but that hasn’t stopped Sony from teaming up with a company called Atracsys to build their own version of a multitouch table.  Unlike Microsoft’s version, though, Sony’s uses some sort of camera that can be used for not only measuring hand placement but can see faces as well.

Hit the video above.  You’ll notice that their seems to be some lag time on the touchscreen.

[via Hardocp]

And there’s yet another competitor throwing its hat into the steadily crowding e-reader arena (we get any more hats in there and we could open up a millenery shop!), but it’s not exactly from a source you’d expect.

Creative Labs is taking a run at the market, with a unit they’re calling the Zii MediaBook.  Now, this actually has some pretty choice add-ons with it, like a touchscreen, text to speech functionality (it will READ you a book) and an SD slot, plus, it will be “Internet-enabled”, though no one’s sure if it means 3G or WiFi.

Also on the unsure list are the Zii’s release date, its price structure and any content delivery methods, (pictures of the device were also in short supply) though word is Creative’s in talks with several different providers, and not just for books, either.  This could be one to watch…or Creative Labs could think better of it and stay out altogether.

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So remember just yesterday, when I was getting all poingy happy about the half e-reader / half netbook hybrid?  Well, I think I may have just beat that level of awesome but in a totally different direction.  Today I’m talking about the Kohjinsha PA, a combination netbook and tablet PC.

No, seriously–this sucker has a 4.8″ WSVGA touchscreen, 1.33GHz Atom CPU, 512 meg of RAM and a 32 GB SDD.  The battery is slated to run for 7.5 hours, and it even comes with an SD slot and a 1.3 MP webcam, all in a netsurfing portable tablet PC.

I am profoundly impressed by this, even though my chances of ever using such a device are so slim as to approach zero.  I draw like a cat with a pen in its mouth after ingesting large quantities of peyote, so a tablet PC to me is almost less than useless. But still, I’m impressed–and the price is pretty impressive too.

If you want one of these bad boys, you’ll have to shell out a whopping $758 in Japan.  Preorders are going on, and the prices range between $867 and $921.

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With winter fast approaching and the cold weather coming to match, you may well start to wonder how you’re going to keep your hands warm and still manage to work your iPod and whatnot.  Clearly you can’t hold a stylus in your mitten, and gloves are nice, but their fingers are way too big for a touchscreen.

Enter the Etre Touchy line of gloves, themselves a gadget, because they’re simultaneously fingered and fingerless.  More specifically, they’re missing their thumb and index finger.

You may wonder why you’d want to pay $33 for a pair of gloves that are missing a finger and a thumb.  I don’t much like to bandy around the phrase “doomed for failure”, because you never really know what’ll take off.

But I really can’t see this working, especially when you could crack out the scissors and make your own pair for much, MUCH, less money. Are they preparing for a slew of patent infringement lawsuits for anyone who makes their own at home?

In all honesty, I’m not sure why the makers of the Etre Touchy didn’t think of that either, but I guess it just doesn’t make for as entertaining a story.

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Sometimes, you wish you could get access to shaky, variable quality information about just about any topic.  it’s times like these that we usually turn to the internet–but what if we’re away from the wireless internet or what have you?

That’s where the WikiReader device comes in.  It’s powered by two AAA batteries that are estimated to last a full year in this device, and comes with a monochrome touchscreen so you can scroll and track things.

I admit, it’s probably pretty cool to have access to three million articles worth of Wikipedia, especially wherever you happen to be at the time.  Updates are delivered on a quarterly basis, and you can also get a microSD card option added to your WikiReader for just an extra $29 a year.  It will probably do horrible things to barroom trivia contests–NTN is probably freaking out and wetting itself as we speak–but the idea is still plenty cool.

The base unit itself costs $99, and will be available on Amazon on the order of Real Soon Now.

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The more I can touch something without having to press it is the way I want to deal with everything.  Being touchscreen is obviously going to make something cooler. But what about when it comes to a Rubik’s Cube, whose traditional experience was some good old fashioned twisting and turning?

An expensive upgrade at $150, I can see this being cool for a couple minutes and fun to pass around at a party or amongst friends.  The touchscreen Rubik’s Cube is expected to ship by the 15th of this month but you can pre-order one now.

This is the touchscreen version of the Rubik’s cube that first challenged puzzle-solvers nearly 30 years ago. Instead of turning each face of the cube to line up colors, modern-day players need only lightly swipe a section of lights with a finger in the same manner as the original.
Touch sensors on all sides detect your finger and a motion detecting accelerometer determines which face is active; the colors change according to the direction of your finger’s swipe. Its built-in memory saves your puzzle so you can pick up where you left off. It can offer hints, or if you are truly exasperated, it can solve itself. The cube recharges in eight hours using its display stand, allowing one hour of play.

[via RandomGoodStuff]

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There are days when we’d all love nothing more than to do some serious damage to those devices that we all know and love.  That mysterious whatever it is that led Elvis Presley to shoot his television has happened to all of us, and it just reared its ugly head again.

For Donald Goodrich, he just couldn’t take his iPhone’s antics one second longer.  He stormed into his local Apple Store and insisted that the gadget had made him “so mad, (he) could pop a 9mm at it”.  That’s a quote, except he used “I” where I have he.  This by itself may not have been any big deal–if Apple Store employees haven’t heard people threaten their devices before then they’re clearly in the wrong line of business–but where Donald Goodrich went too far was in showing the 9mm handgun he was carrying at the time TO said Apple Store employee.

Goodrich was charged with “aggravated menacing and causing fear of harm” to the Apple Store worker, though I don’t think he ever actually threatened the worker, just the iPhone.  Plus there was a concealed weapons issue, but puzzling your way through a state’s concealed weapon law is almost as tough as multivariable calculus.

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A guy over at Wi-Fi Planet by the name of Mike Flynn put forth an interesting idea, one that’s almost as terrifying as it is plausible, and is possibly terrifying because it’s plausible, is the idea that the iPhone is actually a kind of disease.

Flynn believes that it has one primary symptom, to spread virulently through your life and force you to filter all your experiences in life through it.  The sheer number of applications, Flynn posits, allow you to do just about everything with your iPhone.  For instance, Flynn planned to take his wife to a movie.  His first thought was to check his Moviefone app, which he did, and the results it gave altered his plans.  An iPhone app changes his reading habits from magazines to books, since the iPhone doesn’t allow for magazine reading.  An iPhone app changed his music listening habits, his workout habits, and plenty else.

Flynn traces back the common cause of all this to one key point–the iPhone.  Without its many apps and sheer ubiquity, he wouldn’t have these problems, he claims, especially since he’s used Blackberries and similar devices without trouble, nor does he recall other people having these same issues with any other device.

So is the iPhone a kind of parasite?  The idea’s worthy of a horror movie, but whether or not it’s true likely depends on the user.  I personally wonder if he’s describing not so much a disease as an addiction (which are admittedly very close in nature, though addiction really isn’t caused by bacteria or viruses but rather at the genetic level), but that’s a fairly fine point on its own.  These things are here to stay, so we’re going to have to learn to live with them.

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So there’s been an announcement that Best Buy means to sell the iRex book reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, among numerous others.  It’ll cost a whopping four hundred bucks, but come with an eight inch touchscreen (8.1, actually), connect to Verizon Wireless networks, but while Verizon itself is open to connecting other e-readers through its networks, it’s not willing to sell the iRex in its own stores, at least for the time being.

This is probably the best move Verizon can make, even if it isn’t exactly good news for Best Buy.  However, even Best Buy can get away with a little piggyback advertising with “Verizon’s network”, and of course, the first mover advantage will be a big help for the iRex.

Keep your eyes front, folks–this could be a real donnybrook, with plenty of new players moving for the Kindle market.

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Now available in the United States is the Viliv X70EX, a mobile internet device weighing in at just under one and a half pounds with a seven inch touch screen.

The basic model starts in with an Atom Z515 CPU and a hundred and sixty gig hard drive, while the upgraded model has an Atom z520 processor and a three hundred twenty gig hard drive.  A final version boosts the upgraded model to include a gig of DDR2 ram, wireless internet and Bluetooth, plus a web camera, a mike and speakers.

The idea of a really tiny netbook is actually kind of interesting, though I’m not really sure any of these will ever truly replace the laptop.  Especially when you consider the price–the entry level model retails for six hundred bucks whilst the next two are seven hundred thirty and eight hundred eighty respectively.  That’s pretty salty for a tiny little webcrawler.

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