At CES and the NAIAS in Detroit this year we saw ever more powerful smartphone integration, but nothing like this. Nokia Asia teamed up with two Chinese coders, An Jiaxuan and an unnamed friend, to whip up a C7 app that controls a BMW 1 Series. They said it took them only 20 days to get things ready but we're thinking adding the remote controls to the car itself must have added some further time to that. The result is in the video below, a short test drive that Nokia promises "isn't special effects." See for yourself and let us know if you spot a meatbag driver hiding in there somewhere.
The latest trend in window shopping might make the interior of a store no more important than a storage closet. German research institute Fraunhofer has developed an interactive window display that sidewalk-lookers can control with their facial expressions. That's right, raise an eyebrow at a handbag and it might appear on a screen below you, rotating in 360 degrees for better inspection. Or something like that. The Fraunhofer system uses four cameras to track the spatial positions of a viewer's hands, eyes and face, then transforms her motions into commands. It even works after hours and, because the program can allow viewers to select and purchase items they have called to the screen, an interactive display could continue “making sales” when the store is closed. Although, the researchers in their news report don't mention how one would actually get the item on the other side of the glass. Unless they plan to also turn boutiques into a giant vending machines, I imagine items will be for future pick up. The Fraunhofer system does not store personal information collected by the cameras, but it does keep track of some statistics in order to make suggestions about what to display on the screen. It will also show “customized greeting texts,” according to the report, “to guarantee a close bond to the customer.” Like what? Hello young lady, who is interested in yellow shirts. Not sure I'd care much to bond with a window display, myself. And as a consumer, this seems most useful only after hours. Why bother examining an item on a screen in the window (as cool as moving it with my face might be) when I could just go inside and hold it? U.K.-based mobile phone company Orange has a gesture-responsive window display in a London storefront, but even this video about it notes that it is for “at night time, when stores are closed.” Still, I'm eager to see if this takes off. If anything it will be entertaining to watch others window shop.
The hottest concept mobile phone right now doesn't come from Apple, Google, Motorola or HTC. It was developed by a designer in his spare time as part of a Mozilla Labs project.
Seabird is designer Billy May's vision for a phone that aims to address some of the frustrations people have when interacting with small devices.
"While mobile CPUs, connectivity and development platforms begin approaching that of desktops, the lagging ability to efficiently input information has grown ever more pronounced," he wrote in a blog post describing the phone. The post includes videos--one in 3D--with a rendering of the concept phone.
Seabird has two pico projectors. When placed in a dock it uses one of them to project the screen on a nearby wall for easier viewing and the other to project a full-size, virtual keyboard on the table where it sits. A user can then type on the virtual keyboard instead of a tiny on-screen or physical keyboard on the phone.
A small Bluetooth dongle fits into a slot on the back of the phone. It can be popped out and used as an earpiece. Or, users can wave the dongle in space to move a cursor on the phone screen, clicking the dongle to select an item on the screen. May says it lets users "pan and zoom in 3D space."
The dual pico projectors, located on the sides of the phone, could also be used without the dock to project half a keyboard each -- one on each side of the phone. "The Seabird, on just a flat surface, enables netbook-quality interaction by working with the projector's angular distortion to deliver interface, rather than content," May wrote.
Seabird features other standard smartphone components like an 8-megapixel camera, a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack and a mini-USB port. May envisions that it can be charged wirelessly.
The concept phone is built on Android and has an unusual shape. With a flat face and no physical buttons, it tapers to just a sliver at the bottom, with a bulge protruding from the top at the back. That bulge elevates the projector lenses enough to project an image onto the surface that the phone sits on.
Can't get enough of the Galaxy Tab? Then Samsung's got you covered with its latest, and possibly most detailed video overview of the tablet yet. Running just over nine minutes, the video doesn't exactly offer a ton in the way of surprises (apart from a rather curious contact listing for someone named "Bill Jobs"), but Samsung's demonstration of the Tab's email client did catch our eye. As you can see above, it shows a Gmail account with what appears to be starred emails. Unfortunately, it's not clear if those stars are actually tied to Gmail, since the client also showed the same stars in a Hotmail account during our first hands-on with the device. So, is a star just a star, or a star? Just one of many things to ponder as you watch the complete video after the break.
We'll freely admit how smitten we are with Dell's concept, the Inspiron Duo. While it's supposedly coming to retail by the end of the year, it's so special that every time we spy new photos or video footage of it, we watch joyfully. Of course, Intel doesn't need to watch from afar, as demonstrated in a new video -- they simply asked Dell's Inspiron Product Marketer, Dave Zavelson to show it off on film. The Duo, in case you've been hiding under a rock since before IDF, is a 10-inch netbook with a swivel screen which enables you to use it as a sort of tablet... you know, those things that everybody's cranking out these days. It also boasts a dual-core Atom N550 CPU and Windows 7 Home Premium. Regardless, we still haven't heard any pricing or definite availability info yet, but the video is below.
