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Cellphone as Virtual Mouse, Keyboard
stab writes "Check this out! High Energy Magic have announced a public beta of software to let you use your camera-phone as a physical mouse by just pointing and clicking and rotating it in the air. Some very cool videos available: check out the volume control and flight booking ones in particular! The tags used are really robust - they did a wastebasket torture test for a bit of fun as well :-)"
Some very cool videos available
Heh. Not anymore, they aren't.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
If the spot codes can hold a few bytes of info - wave your cell over a tattoo or a shirt someone's wearing to get their name/cellphone number ... um, never mind, that'd be a bad thing.
OMG! Wau!
Since the main site is predictably a bit bogged down, there is also a page at the University of Cambridge Systems Research Group detailing the research side of things. It also has some cool videos :-)
how the hell are we supposed to have a discussion about something we can't even read about?
Since when has reading the article been a requirement to post authoritatively on Slashdot about it?
What wasn't reported though is that the company Gyration already has patent pending on gyroscopic mouse technology. Gyration had already released an open letter last week addressing this when the cell phone mouse was first announced.
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
Didn't Motorola CEO get kicked out because that's precisely what he was saying ("concentrate on quality that's obviously suffering right now, and not race for features")?
I think in the current market there is always race for features. More, more more and more. Until some complaint gets too loud and bites the company in the ass. Then fixing it becomes a future as well ("Our dialer is now better than ever").
I found it interesting how Microsoft acted back in the day. They bloated their software with features, many many features, to beat the feature list of the competitor. Well, so what that it crashed constantly, so what that it didn't do the job that well. (sarcasm). For some reason, it's still around...
Eliminate beer Goggles! Picture the scene: you're at a bar, gettin' close to closing time. The chick you've been talking to is lookin' pretty good, but all your friend's have abandoned you.
Whip out the phone, take a pic of the broad. Phone flashes green if she's good, Red if she's not.
That would have saved me uh...i mean...yeah...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Sorry but first off, I don't want a camera phone
... the decoding happens in real-time (you see the camera viewfinder, and it highlights tags). Once the main slashdotting dies down, the videos hopefully explain it a bit better.
... I was demonstrating this stuff at a research demo day recently, and we ran a normal Nokia 3650 for a good 8 hours without seriously killing the batteries - that the camera and bluetooth active at the same time.
You're probably posting from the US. In Europe, it's almost impossible to buy a cellphone without a camera these days. You're correct in that I dont particularly want to take pictures with the crappy camera - so why not use it for something useful?
Will this all run within my 2 second attention span?
Pretty much
Not to mention what this would do to the phone's battery life.
Actually, it's not too bad
Why fly when you can drive and sail? Because it's faster and more efficient. Why carry around a cameraphone when you can easily carry a brick phone and your Nikon 35mm? Because it's smaller and more efficient.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
a multimeter...
lots of times I needed a damn multimeter and I looket to the cell phone and imagined it could have a pair of probes...
at least a AC/DC voltmeter up to 300V...
That's the same line the Mormons use to justify polygamy.
You were 80% angel, 10% demon. The rest was hard to explain. - Over The Rhine
"Math in a song is good."-Linford
Give me a break ... where do the disclaimers stop? I mean, the software's being given away for free for non-commercial use, and I think it's of interest to other techies. Notice I didn't submit anonymously.
... I do my bit there as well. But noone cares about that stuff, so why bother talking about it instead of stuff I think is fun?
And don't start spouting "open-source this, open-source that" to me
I believe you could avoid any accusations of dishonesty by just writing your blurbs to say "Check this out! My company...etc. etc.". People do that often and it's not a problem if the tech is cool enough (and this tech is cool). People get annoyed when you write the blurb as though you're just a third party bystander who found this out there. Otherwise it smells like astroturfing. This tech is cool enough to stand on its own, why mess around with marketing stuff that will give geeks pause?
Like the Camera phone itself, this is a solution to a problem I never knew existed.
This kind of statement about the lack of a use for a camera phone tends to tell me something about the person that says it.
1. They're not very creative. I use a camera-phone all the time for stuff I'd never use a camera for. For example, I take pictures of sales displays to compare the product on the internet when I get home and I take pictures of the sign that reminds me where I parked my car at the airport. Instant notes with no effort. I also have a cool game that lets me move around by moving my phone around. If you were more creative, you would have thought of a few more uses too.
2. They're not very spontaneous. I take pictures of my friends, family and important events far more often than I ever would if I had to carry around a full-size camera all the time. If you were interested in this kind of spontaneity then I'm sure you would see the use of a camera phone.
3. They're self-centered. People who don't want a camera phone personally, and seem to be dumbfounded by those that do, tend to be some of the most self-centered people I know. Lots of people have camera phones and lots of people like them. You may not desire or need one, but are you able to learn from and empathize with those that do? If you were interested in the thoughts and feelings of the people around you, you might have asked one of them why they bought a camera phone and realize that not everyone has the same needs and desires that you do.
Believe it or not, I'm not trying to slam you here. I'm just reporting my personal observations of people who've talked like you have about these devices. Camera phones are interesting because they're very popular, but there's a significant backlash. That backlash crowd, in my opinion, is really more alike than most people realize.
TW
Carriers generally LOSE money on the phones. A phone with more whiz-bang features is a more expensive phone they have to subsidize. Carriers make money off of charges for using the network. The reason all the carriers are promoting picture phones is because they're hoping you decide to use your fancy new picture phone to send and recieve pictures over the cellular network, which they can charge extra for. That's the same reason they were heavily promoting downloadable ringtones and games last year. All carriers make money off of is your use of the network. The phones are just a nuisance from a carrier's point of view.