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LCD Display/Image Capture Device
Jon writes "Remember jokes about clueless newbies trying to fax documents by holding them up to the monitor? Perhaps they were just ahead of their time. Toshiba has developed a combined LCD/optical sensor, according to EETimes. It isn't monitor sized yet, but in a few years, perhaps?"
Aaarrgh! My screen is watching me!
That opens up an interesting question, can some one exploite this to see what you are doing at your desk?
ie picking your nose =]
Ok, I'll just come out and say it: ball sack mashed against the screen = a shockingly revolting image to be sent around the world.
To be able to position a webcam from computer A in front of a monitor from computer B, and reverse it. So each camera is looking at each other's monitor.
Then I want to display crap on the screen which then gets interpreted as data (Imagine a 4x4 checkerboard, black=0, white=1, so each screen displays 16 bits at a time)
Now use this to bridge two networks.
Questions: How many cells can be fit on a monitor?
How fast can you change/read the data?
Ideally if your webcam is 320x200, you could get 64kbits per flash. If you can use 4 colors instead of two, you're upto ISDN speeds...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Certain companies already monitor their employees to what I believe is an obsessive extent, and the ability to take a "scan" of what's in front of the monitor every X minutes is something I can see being used and abused by the "w3 0wnz j00" philosophy that a lot of businesses have with respect to their employees. Worse yet, look at this technology after a few iterations and a few million dollars, and you've got screen = scanner = webcam.
In the dark, uncertain future of cubicle dwellers, there will be no need for paranoia...your computer is, in fact, watching you.
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy
Faxes around my office are usually printed computer documents that perhaps have a hand written signature. This fits beautifully into the sending slot. Why would anyone want to stand there holding the thing still while they press a button / click a mouse. No way.
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well, a Floppy drive or a cd burner or hard drive are Input and output devices - not a totally new concept to do both I and O on the same device. Given these are all storage medias and a monitor is presentation media - but how many presentation medias are there (I can think of 2) I'd be pretty suprised if there weren't speaker / microphone combos out already.
and if it worked really well It might be nice to free up that large portion of my desk that the scanner is taking up
This solution must be somewhat intuitive if people were holding sheets of paper up to the screen trying to fax them.
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combine this story with this prior slashdot story(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/31/ 1453223&mode=thread&tid=196&tid=137) about turning the monitor into a speaker and you have one hell of a trim kick ass system.
Now spammers can see if you're really fat or not. I can also show them my schlong, so they won't 1) tell me how to make it longer and 2) tell me how I can increase my breast size.
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Video conferencing where you don't have to look anywhere but your monitor?
How about spying on your workplace? Security people would love to be able to "hide" a security camera in a monitor.
Of course, to get the kind of depth of field that you would need for those applications you would need to have lenses.
So lets look somewhere else...
How about a portable fax machine in your PDA?...
Or double your PDA as a scanner of text documents?
I'm sure something cool could be done here!
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Maybe then we can get a direct picture, instead of making the videoconfrencer look like he's always looking down. I want my virura-hookers looking right at me dammit!
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
Eventually, this might lead to a better, standalone implementation of that "invisibile raincoat" thing that's been hyped over the last couple of months.
-- Fratz, human
"Toshiba Matsushita Display expects the display with the image capturing function to open new consumer and business applications. The company expects the technology to be used in security applications such as fingerprint authentification." lol..."authentification"...
...technology for its own sake is a useless technology. Is it any wonder why the high-tech industry has been decimated lately?
In reality, this is just a way for computer monitors to get back at us for staring at them constantly for 16 hours a day...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
I would be over the moon if I could slide my Newton down a document and scan it. I got a c-pen, but it just isn't worth using. It might be a killer app for PDAs.
No more cracking the photocopier glass to get a butt shot ;)
My penguin ate my sig
"A monitor is an output device. A scanner (optical reader, whatever) is an input device. Why merge the two when they should be mutually exclusive? "
Does your keyboard have a caps-lock light?
The Patriot Act had good intentions but has the effect of erasing a lot our rights.
Think of how a technology like this could be pushed by the insurance and government law enforcement agencies in the future.
Insurance companies could require that all new car windsheilds and rear view mirrors, all TVs, all laptops have this "camera LCD" installed. Then if we also have cars, houses, etc ... that have networks required for software as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sees it, I suppose the "device" (wisndshield, TV, laptop) once reported stolen would email a picture of the theif to the police and the owner. What a boom to forensics! But what a total erasing of privacy.
Then I suppose this could be hacked and teens could REALLY get REAL live webcams of "certain activities" from TVs in bedrooms. Hotels would monitor sleeping activities. Insurance companies monitor driving habits. (already tried with GPS in Alamo rental cars) Are you using that cell phone without a hands free?
Are you smoking and not telling the insurance company?
Truely 1984 wasn't satire!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
One of those people who was made fun of on the first day @ the job for holding the paper to the monitor and hitting 'send', actually thought: 'hey I should make that work, just to spite those tech assholes that made fun of me.'
I guess Michael has never done tech support. They aren't just jokes.
.? .? .?
A buddy of mine took the following call (from memory):
T: Thank you for calling Dell, this is [name deleted], may I have your service tag number, please?
C: . .
T: The service tag is a six character, alphanumeric code printed on a white, bar-coded sticker on the back of your computer.
C: . .
T: It is on the back of the box that everything plugs into. Not the monitor.
C: [Service tag deleted.]
T: How can I help you?
C: What is my fax number? [Ah, now we're getting sort of on-topic.]
T: . .
C: Someone needs to send me a fax, but I don't know my fax number.
T: It's your phone number.
C: No, my computer has a fax modem. I need to receive a fax on it, not a phone call.
T: . . . !
[20 minutes of trying to explain the concept of "fax" and get a phone line plugged into both an active jack and the right jack on the modem.]
T: Thank you for calling Dell.
T: [to me] You wouldn't believe the call I just had.
[T relates call.]
Me: I would have just told her "That service tag number you found . . . that's your fax number. Thank you for calling Dell. *click*"
After that I always wanted to get that call, so I could say, with all the technical authority I could muster, "six."
We have maybe, maybe 15 copies for several hundred people right now, and a few flatbed scanners around the office here. There's no shortage. I can see some new applications, and all -- potentially conferencing, and people would scan to OCR stuff more (if affordable OCR would work for the things they want to use it on) -- but would these really cost out, if those are the selling points?
Easier to see this at public kiosk sort of things -- "hold up your coupon, please" and other cooler variations on touch-screen I/O applications. There the cost difference doesn't seem like a lot next to the convenience of the combined screen/reader. Seems like that'd be the first place to run into it...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This is not a device that can form an image from an object at a non-trivial distance from the display - this is a device that only images an object placed against it.
I would expect the primary intent of a device like this would be in a web-pad type device. Picture a clipboard, but thicker. Your customer hands you a printed item (work order, recept, whatever). You place the item face down against the display and push a button on the side. You remove the item from the display, and verify the scan took, then hand the item back to the customer.
This would no more allow your monitor to image what is going on in the room than putting your flat bed scanner up on edge and leaving the top open would.
www.eFax.com are spammers