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Dick Tracy's New Linux Box?
An anonymous reader writes "The Zypad is a new arm-wearable computer right out of Futurama. It can run Windows CE or Linux and has a 400 MHz CPU, 64MB Flash memory, 3.5 inch screen. The Zypad leaves the user's hands free — it has no keyboard, just a touchscreen and navigation keys. Voice recognition is 'being developed.' It turns on only when you look at it, so it saves power. It has GPS and Bluetooth/WLAN/GSM connectivity. Price: 1000 Euro." Too bad it's not yet available for sale — that screen looks more useful than the one on IBM's Linux watch from 2000.
For those of you in search of voice recognition ware that has already "been developed" you should check out Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I got it for my boss who's paralyzed from the neck down and it works beautifully, making his life easier. Training only took 15 minutes and the accuracy is impressive. It comes with a headset mic but I recommend splurging on the Plantronics CS50-USB wireless headset.
I want the laser upgrade when I get mine...
Just me
The Zypad is a new arm-wearable computer right out of Futurama.
So it's pointless, except on rare occasions when it can used for completely random tasks to fill plot holes?
Somebody mispronounced 'doesn't work yet'.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
For Euro 1000, this thing should have some sort of antipersonnel weapon built in. When the price comes down, this might be practical as a daily computer -- I know that with wireless Internet on one at a $500 price point I'd spend a lot more time out of the office.
-- Old Man Kensey
"Too bad it's not yet available for sale..."
Too bad it's not yet in existence. When I see a radically new gadget from some company I've never heard of whose press release touts multiple moves forward in different realms of technology, and all they have to show is a computer-generated graphic of the thing...well, I've never seen any such device ever show up to market. Not ever, in my memory.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
does it have an ARM processor? In that case, do you need a StrongARM to be able to use it?
If you were all sick and tired of having women hit on you before, I have this new device to show you!
If it's right out of Futurama, why does the headline mention Dick Tracy?
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Now all we need are wrist communicators, an evil witch thing on the moon, and a big floating head in a jar.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
It looks cool. And it sounds like it could be cool too. But will it ever be more than a nifty gadget? We've all seen the pictures of wearable computers from different cons and shows. They've been around for a while in different forms. Why is this one different? Does anyone think it will ever become mainstream until the price drops tremendously?
Publishing a price means that I can bid the asking price and get the product. If it is not available, then the price is "announced to be" and is currently non-existant.
Slashdot editors could learn a thing or two by spending a week in writing/journalist summer-camp. Day in and day out they write non-sensical blurbs, never mind they don't check-out the underlying articles, at least post a cohesive summary.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
How does it "only turn on when you look at it?" How would it know? That part just doesn't make sense to me
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.
One word: both hands-free PDA porn!!
Ok, that's five.. but seriously. especially I'm thinking, in zero G this may be really important for those of us that, uh, you know... have no zero G partner. Hypothetically.
I would love to have one, but wouldn't dare wear it outside anywhere. Every person I know already knows I am a huge nerd, but still. By wearing that, it gives all other nerds the right to kick my @$$ too.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
This is going to make viewing pr0n interesting......
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Man, I've read about people with a "hard and steely gaze", but this is the first time it'll be a requirement. Being able to turn things off/on with a glance, man, that'll do me...
It turns on only when you look at it, so it saves power.
I didn't see any reference to how it switches on in TFA or the PR PDF. I was wondering how it detected that you were looking at it. (Is it like the old Pulsar LED watch that you had to shake your wrist to see the time?)One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I just hope Dell didn't have any part in making it. Ow! My arm's on fire!
Sorry, but in 2006, anything with only 64MB of flash storage space will not, contrary to the website's hype, revolutionize the way we use computers. Unless you're talking about a rising desire for austere minimalism.
[
Seriously though, I'm curious about the technology that makes this possible (no I didn't download the PDF yet). It would be pretty slick to incorporate this into other devices.
It's a cool idea, but personally if I were to drop a thousand euros on one of these I don't think I'd be wearing it on my wrist. I'm kind of a klutz sometimes and am pretty hard on watch crystals so I don't think it would take me too long to crack the display.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
With a little duck tape my IPAQ could go on my wrist as well. Talk about reinventing the wheel. If this thing was Shatter resistant and waterproof with a 2megapixel camera it would be a good tool for divers, but as a "breakthrough" device this thing is going to be stuck filling a couple small specialty markets. On the other hand Usable Voice recognition software for the PDA market..... that has promise!!!
"I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions."
"It turns on only when you look at it,..."
Looks like they have a Quantum Physics guy hiding out in R&D.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Kind of makes you feel bad for her, not only did she think she was an orphan and the last of her species for circa 30 years, she's stuck using a piece of thousand year old technology... Well, at least she get's Tetris on it.
These armbands aren't right out of Futurama, they're right out of Ark II
THE WRIST-WORN PC THAT WILL REVOLUTIONISE THE WAY WE USE COMPUTERS Oh for goodness' sake it's just a PalmPilot/PocketPC molded to fit around the arm.
- we already have a ton of them in anything from pda and cell phones to watches . What we need is wearable display ,bigger than 20x20 pixels and usable for reading and surfing the web ( my blackberry display barely qualifies for reading simple emails ,forget the web!) .And after that we need normal input , and ,no, voice recognition won't cut it . I need something usable I said - imagine even if you had perfect voice recognition but had to say every action you need perform open window->open directory ->open file ->edit at 00048h all clear out and loud and see how productive you gonna editing a trivial config file.
This looks just like something I've seen before...
I thought this sounded familiar.
It could but it ain't going to happen. No one but the most extreme, purist form of nerd is going to be seen dead wearing one of these things. Might have applications in military or warehousing, but those kind of people would probably as happy to have something that sits in a holster until required.
seriously, you would get a VGA touchscreen, 620mhz cpu, a library of several thousand apps, you could hack it to run linux if you wanted, and would only cost you about $200-400.
Well, if it runs windows and linux, I would venture a 'maybe'. You know, assuming they could fit SSE3 into that little thing.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
If I saw someone wearing that, I would think they were a total goofball--beyond just geeky, into the realm of "do you realize how freaking silly that looks". Perhaps in 5 years, wearable computing won't be so odd... but right now it would look goofy.
One opening I do see for this, however, is in industry. Just as the Xybernaut (a commercialization of Steve Mann's work in wearable computers, IIRC) is selling to workers who need easy access to computer data without the heft and inconvenience of a separate machine, this will probably sell to people who need it. I could see it replacing the handheld scanners that UPS and FedEx people carry now, or allowing utility workers (telephone, internet, electricity) to run line tests or check things without climbing down from a telephone pole or running back to their van.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
...can I connect my Optimus keyboard to it?
-- Old Man Kensey
gawd, linux users will believe anything.
This thing is pretty ugly looking - even Toranga Leela would sneer at it! I predict a dismal sales record for this toy.
What I could use is a secretary. Of course, most of my communication with the secretary is by voice.
The closer a pda approaches the functionality of a secretary, the better the pda is. It's a pain to have to poke at a screen twenty times just so I can be reminded of an appointment. It would be much better to be able to say: "I have an appointment with Fred next Tuesday at 10 AM."
The joy of a voice interface is that the device could be very small because it wouldn't need a keyboard. Actually, there doesn't need to be a separate device at all. One could just phone one's desktop computer. If you did it right, you could make it sound like you actually had a secretary.
The more I think about it, the more I think I don't actually need one of those wrist thingies as long as I have my cell phone.
*puts on the computer, covers one eye, and shouts "Look at me! I'm Leela!"
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"It turns on only when you look at it, so it saves power."
What if I am wearing sunglasses, will it ever turn on? Will it turn on for people who look at it while I am on a plane? What about animals (cats, dogs)?
From the article press release, it seems as though someone is just thinking about making this and made a mock device for photos. I don't think we will see this in the next 10 years.
I'll look cool when I wear it while driving my Segway.
I'm wondering if it comes in right-handed, left-handed and ambidextrous models. Being a petite-sized person with small wrists and rather short arms, I would find this clunky device rather cumbersome. It would feel like having a can of soda strapped to your arm. A larger person with beefy arms might find it too tight, although the armband does appear to be adjustable (it reminds me of a blood-ressuren cuff.) Also, the person in the picture is wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In cold weather, would you wear it over your shirt and sweater, or would you have to roll up your sleeves. I don't even like wearing an ID badge.
If it turns on whenever we look at it, how can we be sure it ever actually turns off?
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
or whatever Leela calls it in one of the Futurama episodes. I guess they couldn't really use that name for the real product unless they wanted to advertise by showing some pasty nerd in his room watching porn on it
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Great, finally birth control for men that doesn't require surgery.
How long before the first emacs zealot creates the 3-button keybindings for this device?
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
It would be nice if it had a bar code scanner built in. Then they could target it to warehouses and such.
then how come it's not called a Wristlojackimator?
On either wrist, you would want the keypad on the inside (medial side). If you put this on either wrist, the text (as displayed in the photo) would be upside down.
Did marketing do their homework on the photo for press release?
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
They have a full working version.
The problem is they set a bit wrong and it only works when you don't look at it.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Is it a wearable computer or a NanoPC????(RTFA)
Why go fast when you can go anywhere? O|||||||O
So the screen knows that my eyes are focused on it? This technology is very bad for me. Soon there will be a device for women, and paranoid /. geeks that will let them know when people look at them. All the women I secretly admire from afar will soon know that my eyes are focused upon them.
Female Beach Checklist:
1) Bikini
2) Sunscreen
3) Towel
4) "Who's look at me?" device..
It looks like the wrist version of those luggable computers around in the early 80's.
I think I'll wait until wearable computers have sufficient power/memory/battery-life to be truly useful, and look like a slim writswatch.
...glue a PDA to a piece of velcro and wrap it around your wrist. Cost 300 bucks or 1/6th what this device costs and just as "beautiful."
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
What? People WORE those things? On their WRISTS? But they're massive! WHAT? HOW many gigahertz? Only four hundred? WHAT!? Megahertz? No way! No way, you're joking right? How could that even run voice recognition? WHAT? ...
I wonder when those bluetooth/wlan/gprs/gsm/pda/smartphones thingies have harddisks of 20 gig
if you want real wearable computing for simulation, then might as well get the real thing:
d itionDI.html
http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Expedition/Expe
Yeah, I get the feeling that it looks vaguely familiar. My parents bought me one fifteen years ago...
The pain was excruciating and the scarring is likely permanent, but that just means it's working.
Before any product like this will ever be successful, we need to get our distributed wireless net working. The specific protocol and specs chosen aren't all that important, but there needs to be something widely availble. The general population needs to grasp the convenience before people will bite on these. They don't want to work to get it working.
If I have to wait until I find a useful wireless hotspot, why wouldn't I just lug around a small laptop instead? I'll be waiting until I sit down at the nearest Starbucks or McDonalds to use it at this point.
You can't sell many trains until after you've laid a few miles of track.
What?
Its already been done, and for a fraction of the price ("free" in certain cases).
It features complete communications capability, phone, wireless, etc.
This one is affixed using gravity, but a circular elastic accessory (optional) can be purchased to allow a more flexible degree of positioning.
It currently uses a cut down version of windows, but can be adapted to run linux quite easily: http://www.mediaparty.com/wristcomputer.jpg
http://symblogogy.blogspot.com/2006/06/from-italy- with-little-love.html
I first wrote about this three days ago and submitted it to SlashDot. Curious that, in that I used the "Dick Tracy" reference in my posting as well.
Good Luck!, See you down the road.
"Eurotech" "Technology for a better world" "Zypad"
Why should we believe people who'd name a company after "Euro" and "tech"? "Euro" is so 90s, and "tech" is more a 60s through 80s thing. And the idea that "Zy" (or anything beginning with "Z" or "X") is sexy? Right out of the 50s (although currently enjoying a revival in pharmeceuticals). And that company slogan - belongs back in the 40s somewhere.
From these clues, a good guess would be "fraud whose real aim in attracting foolish investors." Folks who really have the imagination to invent a great gadget also, far more often than not, have the imagination to name their company and gadget something that either means something specific - to help market it - or that at least stands out from the cliches. The last thing someone who's invented something unique wants is to be confused with all the me-too corporations out there; but for someone committing the same old scam of luring in investors, being confused with a thousand other "Euro" or "tech" or "better world" companies can be just the ticket.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
What they need to do is use a flexible touch screen display that goes on your arm. Then put the bulk some where else, like on your belt. That way it doesn't take up so much room on your wrist. I don't know about everyone but my wrists are very skinny. Watches hardly fit, let alone some bulky computer. Just use blue tooth or IP over skin to connect the device with the display.
Thermal depolymerization - Lazy recycling.
As usual, this has been reported before. The only change is that Eurotech is now announcing a seemingly bogus "price". But it doesn't look like the product actually exists, or will ever -- this sounds like investor-trap vapourware. Not that I don't like it; if Eurotech actually intends to produce it, which I doubt it, then I wish them all the luck and will probably buy one.
I'm not sure how the MacBook's motion sensors work, but there have been totally solid-state accelerometers around for quite some time. The underlying technology is usually called "SMM" for Silicon Micro Machine (that may be a trademark of somebody's) or "MEMS" for Micro Electro Mechanical Systems. If you position three of them on orthogonal axes, you can make a fairly decent gyroscope without any moving parts.
I've played with them on model helicopters (they help to stabilize it by keeping the tail pointed in the same direction by regulating the speed of the tail rotor) and they're fairly slick. I suspect it's the same thing used in the Sudden Motion Sensor.
The story I was told about them is that they're an offshoot or descendant of the sensors used to trigger the airbags in cars. The way they work (as it was described to me) is that they have a very small "finger" or pendulum of known mass, positioned perpendicular to the direction you want to measure the acceleration in, and suspended above a substrate by a small gap. The sensor measures the changing capacitance between the 'finger' and the substrate, and determines the acceleration based on this. This would get linear acceleration; I'm not sure how they build them to determine angular/rotational accelleration, but it's probably the same principle.
At any rate, it sure beats the heck out of the old mercury-switch arrangements for figuring out position and acceleration.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/ 14/2056233&threshold=-1
how many more times will we see this before it's never released to the public?
No sig for you!!
Writing a "non crashing OS" I exclude Palm OS, by the way.
Does anyone know if that configuration exists?
There's a joke somewhere in there involving slashdotters and success with women, but I just can't seem to put my finger on it.
Let's face it. Most people will get this for keeping smut at arm's length at all times. The real challenge for most users will be maintaining eye contact with the screen when their arm is involved in a particularly repetitive lateral motion.Wow. Am I being dyslexic or have I heard this before?.
Is it somehow different? Please enlighten me. Or, is this idea universally interesting, and it's just a coincidence that they both can run CE/Linux? The other one did exactly that, as well.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
Oh. My. God. Get This thing OFF my ARM!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Holy crap, that's geeky. Does it have a laser too? I'd get one in a second if it did.
The purple ponytail is sold seperately.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
1. Fix their damn website so it does not become unuseable without Javascript activated and shows at least the datasheet of this thing if not some real pictures and screenshots of the device in use.
2. s/GSM/UMTS/ or at least GPRS, More memory and one or two CF slots
3. Implement a IR device so it can be the ultimate remote
4. Drop the price to a reasonable level of under 500,-