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Motion-sensitive Handhelds?
An anonymous reader writes "Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it? This article on ZDNet describes a new smartphone that is motion sensitive, so users can zoom into a Web page, scroll round a document or switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset." The company website has a little more information.
The major problem is having to drop it every time you want to click on something.
t
Just when I get used to people walking down the street apparently talking to themselves. Now I'm going to be dodging fists when they dial.
Boromir, son of Faramir, King of Gondor and Minas Tirith
switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset
Would that happen to be a 90 degree tilt?
Great Linux Site
Great now I can dial numbers by drawing 3 foot numbers in the air. If I don't get arrested first for breaking people's noses or get thrown into the Funny Farm, again... (Just Kidding)
"Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it? This article on ZDNet describes a new smartphone that is motion sensitive, so users can zoom into a Web page, scroll round a document or switch from portrait view to landscape simply by tilting the handset."
This will work wonderfully while I'm walking!
http://use.perl.org
Doesn't matter really, Why can't we have technology continue to shrink and yet keep useful and functional interfaces. I don't want a thumb keyboard, I want a device with a full size keyboard that I can stuff in my pocket.
Although I do like the orientation thing, where it doesn't matter where I am, it discerns and rotates. I think more important than using a phone as a lens, is figuring out how to have 1024x768 at 17 inches fit in my pocket.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
At first I had visions of people not being able to hold a view they actually wanted; but since there's a button you have to press to access each of these features, I like the idea. Probably works based from an electronic gyroscope of some sort .. cool.
Oh, the joke potential with that term...
All the porn companies are adopting this technology for their web pages.
Move the phone up...
Move the phone down...
Move the phone up...
Suddenly your cell has hair growing from it.
Davak
Now I need to program a game for one of these in the style of one of those old 'ball bearing maze' puzzles you used to get in christmas crackers when I was a kid.
/.
Damn you
I wonder how accurate and sensitive the tile function is?
An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of
Time to patent using this thing with a porn site!
I picture a guy with one hand flailing a cell phone around trying to stare at it, and the other...
well, you understand. You're a geek. We've all been there.
http://use.perl.org
I wasn't hitting my sister in the head... I was trying to call mommy!
Works as a shutter release for the phone-cam too, but you always seem to get blurry pictures... hmmm...
I may not be funny, but at least I'm... well, not not funny...
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
Hmmm.. This is news? Didn't this feature first appear in the DEC Itsy? About 5 years ago?
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
And then, in the name of convenience, they'll make it so X shakes activates speed dial only to find out stories like this become more and more common.
Combine tilting web navigation, with smart phones that know your buying habits (and credit card info).
Drop it on the carpet. Pick it up and find out that you just ordered and paid for, a battleship anchor, express delivery to your house.
**That's** gonna make browsing pr0n a little more difficult...
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I discovered that by dropping my Z from a height of about 6 feet onto concrete, I was able to turn off the power. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to turn it back on again. :-(
I was trying to think of all the potential problems with *unintentional* motions with this device for a troll post, but I read this quote
Motion control can also be used to scroll around and zoom in and out of an application. With the mirror button pushed down, the user can see different parts of the document or Web page by tilting the handset. MyOrigo compares this technique to that of moving a mirror around to see different areas of your face. A zoom button also works on the same principle.
So they've already addressed my potential complaints. It looks like great technology, and I hope it spreads to PDAs, and not just staying with cellular devices.
Yes, I was going to troll. Why do you think I read the article. If I was just interested in posting, I wouldn't have bothered, like all the *funny* commenters around.
no soup for you!
This is an atomic sig. It can operate without surfacing much longer than conventional sigs.
Is the phone supposed to shut off (or display a BSOD) when shown the Finger?
MyDevice uses haptic feedback as a way of improving the experience of using the touchscreen. This means that the screen vibrates slightly every time the user presses it, which MyOrigo says makes it easier to type.
Has anyone else done that? That seems like a bigger improvement to me than the tilting interface. I remember when those fingerboard keyboards and some other flat panel device (don't recall the name) came out. The only thing that stopped me from adopting stuff like that was the no feedback when you pressed it.
Give me a programmable flat panel display with this technology and I'll be set.
This seems like the holy grail of buttonless touchscreen devices no?
here: http://research.compaq.com/wrl/projects/Itsy/itsy. html and here: http://www.geek.com/techupdate/jun99/itsy.htmd also here: http://www.handhelds.org/Compaq/#Itsy_Summaryn tains a "2-axis accelerometer for Rock 'n' Scroll user interface". and its from 1998 !!
an
co
"Fancy controlling your mobile phone just by moving it?"
I have this feature now, it's called "poor coverage" and the way I hold the phone affects whether I can make calls or not.
no, In Soviet Russia, phones control you with motion!
Whenever I sneeze or fart, and I can also go blind looking at webpages on a 1x2" screen /useless
Vote Quimby!
Kirby's Tilt and Tumble already does this, using a motion sensor in the cart to control Kirby's motion. It's compatible with Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance but not GBA SP or GameCube GB Player.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now when I drop my PDA it'll crash the system ):
Reminds me of the igesture thing here.
I think it's stupid. People don't want to look like morons walking down the street making strange hand motions. And don't even try using this thing at an auction.
796F75617265616E65726400
The BOSPDAUG (Boston PDA User's Group) has been putting accelermeters in palms for a while now. There was a brief project to put two of them in to get full motion... and then invent a new form of entering text with hand motions.
The best part was the name: "Physical Graffiti"
M@
Krispy Cream is people
...I had a dream that I was walking down the street and playing a new kind of interactive game. I had a game console that looked similar to the older Game Boy Advance (with the screen in the middle and my hands on either side.) As I moved the screen up and down and side to side, I was able to see different parts of the larger "view" (sort of like looking at a 60" TV 4 inches at a time.) Various gestures I made (flipping my wrist a specific way; tilting the console) corresponded to killing enemies on the screen. There were buttons under my thumbs, but they mostly corresponded to "zoom in" [pan arrows] and other features that were a bit harder to emulate with motion.
This seems like very similar technology. I've often wondered if that dream (which was one of those very realistic dreams) would come true. Now it seems like the backbone is being laid for it. Will the Game Boy of 2005-2006 use this technology? I, for one, wouldn't be surprised.
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Something much simpler than this. I just need a cellphone that has some kind of motion sensor and can detect I put it down in a table for a while. This would allow the phone to automatically change its mode from vibrator to audible alarm.
As it is right now, I almost never switch the phone to vibrator as I'm sure I'll forget to switch it back to audible when I get home...
This is really nice. I'm glad to see someone thinking out there. The zoom in animation on the company website gives really good idea of the potential to this thing.
I do agree though with a comment about looking silly while doing that but then again, we did get used to people apparently talking to themselves so why not this too?
I hate the fact that you people don't salute me
someone to ask about linux. :)
Ok, so what does it run?
FYI:
Myorigo isn't just 'some company'. It's part of the same concern (Microcell) that made Sony-Ericssons' latest multimedia mobilephones.
I don't understand why they passed up the opportunity to position their device on the formidable coattails of similar established products...
"Following in the time-honored tradition of the breakthrough Kirby's Tilt 'n' Tumble'..."
Motion sensitive computing input devices of any kind make for some awesome gaming potential.
In this case, you could have a wicked game of labyrinth running on your PDA!
In United States cell phones control your motion!
Word Axis
imagine what will it do when my hand get busy while surfing pr0nz
I saw something like this at PC Expo in New York a few years ago. It was a modular device that could be attached to a model of Palm handheld.
It was great: they demoed using a map and playing a game with it.
The company's website: http://www.motionsense.com/
"Brevity is the soul of wit." -Polonius, Hamlet.
like the Itsy Rock 'n' Scroll? There are many other instances of this idea. It's surprising that commercial systems aren't using it that much.
Maybe if someone produced a SD or CF tilt and motion sensor, this would catch on a bit more.
(Just Kidding)
To the original project. I have some samples of the latest model 2G and 10G accelerators from Analog Devices, the ADXL202JE and ADXL210JE respectively. They are in a smaller package now, which means they should fit in there even better, but I haven't yet got the surface mount caps that I need to implement the hack inside my Palm Pro with 2MB upgrade. Still, it's on my list.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I've never seen such contempt for readers by an editor as I see here with CmdrTaco (take the recent moderated IRC session as an example). He needs to become part of this community and stop his private little war on trolls and he'll take away their drive to screw with his product.
Please Rob, if you won't listen, if you won't participate... climb down from your throne and let someone who reads his own site and participates in unmoderated chats with readers to run the show.
Please.
Indeed, nothing new here. I've been moving my phone around at all sorts of different angles, trying to control the reception, for years. It seems only natural that they would expand this "feature" to also manipulate the screen.
As if there aren't enough problems with driver-assholes talking on the phone while crusing about. Now we have to worry about them tilting/paying attention to the phone, and veering off the road and into a ditch, or the rest of us. Preferably a ditch. I've been hit by enough cellular drivers. :-\
Informatus Technologicus
I know, call me a luddite, but what does this do that regular old buttons can't accomplish equally well or better? Is it cheaper? Is data entry more accurate or efficient with this? Or is it just new and clever for the sake of being new and clever?
You must be a moron. Try printing something some day and learn what portrait and landscape mean.
What a lame ass gimmick.
Sorry, but it's a lame ass gimmick. It's halfway cute in a gameboy game. A lame gimmick for anything else.
So to scroll up, I tilt the handheld so that I'm outside of the screens viewing angle. Uh huh. And all because cursor keys / direction pads / styluses are hard hard hard to use.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
A new smartphone from Finland lets users scroll and zoom simply by using their hands
Seems that I can do that with my *old* phone... just use my hands to push the scroll button!!
Seriously though, you have to push a button corresponding to the motion you're about to do if you want it to recognize the motion (assuming I understood the article). Now if you have to push the button anyway, why bother moving the phone? Just to look cool? I mean, you're already pushing a button, why not just make it the scroll of zoom button?
This space for rent, inquire within.
the difference between landscape and portrai is a 90 turn of the paper... so the joke is if you trn the screen 90 degrees.... you have done it automatically. Obviously this is not true, as the content of the screen does not. So now you should understand the joke, if not, pick up tack hammer, and bash yourself in the head, for you are a retard.
I'm looking at who I want to call, then suddenly I'm connected to some operator in Thailand. I try to hang up, but now I've ordered a pizza. I attempt to cancel the order, and great! I've just booked a flight to Squarenuts, Missouri.
Combine this with pre-emptive ordering, and I am a bankrupt movie star. I might even lose my house on Golden Pond.
I think not.
The motion control and the vibration will probably eat up your batteries like crazy.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Does anyone else see a potential problem with getting x-rayed multiple times everytime they fly?
They already have the 'x-ray vision' type scanners for luggage. I thought the reason they weren't using thaton people was for health purposes. Is there any reason why this way is safer then conventional methods?
_
This should be GREAT for train/car rides!!
Then, holding your phone at arms length, wave your arm from left to right. When you hit the 640th virtual cell, quickly move the phone back to the left and down one cell. Repeat until you get to the end of the bottom row, when you return to the top row. Oh, and do all that in about 1/60 second for a flicker-free experience.
I won't even patent this, so it's in the public domain.
That's so amazing. I so amazed. Look at me. This is me being amazed. This is so useful. You can do... stuff... with it. Finally the killer feature we've all been waiting for. I'm so glad this feature is available now. Cell phones need more features like this. This will revolutionize the communications paradigm.
(not!)
a research project by compaq, even had a fancy video of it playing doom... I wonder why it didn't catch on then.
So I lend my phone to my female co-worker and as she tosses her hair back to use the phone, all my porn comes on the screen ....great, just great.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I drop it, and it shuts off. For a long, long time.
...as one of those games where you try and get the ball through the maze and in the hole.
"Honestly occifer, I'm not drunk, I was just dialing the FOP to make a donation"
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Does it come with free Dramamine?
I can see it now. You trip on the subway and your PDA clicks on the nameless popup and the entire screen is taken over by Asian Porn.
Honey--really, I didn't MEAN to click on that!
Maybe we need more INTENTIONAL forms of input...
---- Please be nice in case my Slashdot karma ~= my real life karma.
...bendable interfaces
Otherwise we will all be standing around shaking our phones like cans of spray paint to scroll through selection menus. That will look silly, although in Japan they will probably make popular dance games for cell phones(mobile maraca madness?). Accelerometer controls are cool, unless you're like most Americans who go offroading every day in their giant SUVs on the way to the office.
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If they sense they're moving in a car, they won't work. 9 out of 10 idiot drivers I see are on their frickin' phone not paying attention.
Yeah, but you have to hold it VERY STILL, or every time it gets interesting, the web browser misinterprets all the twitching and you end up at http://www.disney.com
Echascetch did this fourty years ago . . .
To switch from a portrait view to a landscape view, the user just rotates the handset by 90 degrees.
I tried the exact opposite with my computer monitor. It works! Granted thats a little less complicated with a handheld. So I did a test: I took a regular photo, rotated it 90 degrees, and shazaaam! Instant landscape view!
TallGreen CMS hosting
I tried to use mine when I had a case of the hiccups, and wound up on this great pr0n website. Now I can't figure out how to get back there. :(
Won't it be a problem when you're having to tilt the screen around to get a decent reading angle on a bright sunny day?
/. -- there's no such thing as a bright sunny day here.
Oh wait, this is
User1: Hey, I can't quite make out that text, can you zoom in?
User 2: Sure! *tilts phone*
User 1: I can't read the LCD at that angle - can you point it towards me again?
User 2: Sure! *tilts phone back*
User1: Hey, I can't quite make out that text, can you zoom in?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It senses when I cause motion in the buttons, when my voice causes motion of air molecules, and when RF energy causes motion of electrons.
What?
I guess I'll throw away the new phone I just got. It works fine, but I can't live with out this thing. It'll be my fourth phone in three months but they just keep coming up with so many essential innovations that I must have. I am a robot.
i don't like my old sig.
"mood sensitive"?? When I hold my wife's hand, I want to know what her mood is... before I experience the "sound of one hand clapping".
Why can you only control the pda with your right hand?
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Now, in addition to seemingly talking to themselves in public (tiny headsets), cell phone users will also wildly gesticulate in the air, finally making them indistinguishable from the homeless residents of Seattle's streets.
Please smash the pad with your fist now.
Hyperom.com
This has been done with the PalmIII series, some time ago. There's even a MULG version that uses the mod :-)
Here's a link to the project page: http://www.harbaum.org/till/palm/adxl202/
The tilt feature would make the PDAs completely useless while driving on Michigan's moon-crater-surface roadways.
It might work better in states without such extreme freeze/thaw cycles though.
I just know (in the way that you know these things just have to happen) that I'm going to have to make a phone call while hanging upside-down, and the damn thing will just explode, because the QA guys are thinking "who could possible need to make a call hanging upside-down?". Damn corner-cases.
I tried a gyro mouse in a car and that lasted nearly 10 seconds... damn thing thought I was constantly moving it forward.
If this uses gyros for stabilization I'd hate to see it on an airplane, subway, bus, car, etc.
if it's using mercury swiches then cool, but bumpy roads will suck something fierce... not to mention the tree-huggers complaining about mercury use.
sadly something cool like this is probably going to go the way of the 3d-joystick (which I stopped using on my Commodore 64 nearly 15 years ago.)
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
was done on the Itsy about five years ago ... and they probably got a patent, too.
This should be interesting to watch.
I think this was one of the features they had built for the project at DEC (or Compaq or HP or whatever) WRL a number of years back.
(Typo in last posting -- how do I replace one posting with another?) I think this was one of the features they had built for the Itsy project at DEC (or Compaq or HP or whatever) WRL a number of years back.
now, combine motion sensitivity with the pointing technology mentioned a few days back (why can I never find these things again?) and a camera, and you get augmented reality.
nice combination.
I had one years ago, it was called an etch-a-sketch. Simple flick of the wrist, and voila!, you've just formatted the disk...
Every time you call tech support, a little kitten dies.
Rotating the device to go to portrait or landscape also works very cleanly, and it does landscape and portrait in two directions so you can pick it up without turning it to a favoured direction.
I didn't experiment much with the on-screen buttons, but as mentioned in the article, there's a slight vibration every time a button is pressed which does help. I'd like to compare this to a single "click" type movement for ease of use.
Overall, a very tasty device.
This advance is particularly effective for those who chat on their cellphones while driving. Be careful not to look around while the phone is at your ear, and try not to turn.
Or is it just me?
Most excellent. Now a whole new portion of our anatomy can get repetitive stress injury.
(thanks to Doug Adams)
The Ph.D student at UC Berkeley has already done this. There was a story on him on Slashdot a coulple months ago. "handhelds with virtual windows". http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ResearchSummary/03a bstracts/pingster.1.html
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/022603/Handheld s_gain_space_022603.html
There was even several movies of him demonstrating his invention. His name is Ka ping Yee. I remembered he used optical tracking for 3-D precision. This isn't news to me. It has been around for a year.
Anthony
http://www.palmzone.net
The Ph.D student at UC Berkeley has already done this. There was a story on him on Slashdot a coulple months ago. "handhelds with virtual windows".
0 3a bstracts/pingster.1.html
e ld s_gain_space_022603.html
http://buffy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ResearchSummary/
http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/022603/Handh
There was even several movies of him demonstrating his invention. His name is Ka ping Yee. I remembered he used optical tracking for 3-D precision. This isn't news to me. It has been around for a year.
Anthony
http://www.palmzone.net