Use Your Cellphone as a 3D Mouse

Roland Piquepaille writes "In recent years, we've started to use our cellphones not only for placing calls or exchanging messages. Now, we take pictures, read our e-mails, listen to music or watch TV. But, according to New Scientist, UK researchers are going further with a prototype software that turns your cellphone into a 3-D mouse. The phone is connected to your computer via Bluetooth. And you control the image on the screen by rotating or moving your phone. As says one of the researchers, 'it feels like a much more natural way to interact and exchange data.' The technology might first be used in shopping malls to buy movie tickets or to interact with advertising displays."

Comments

Wii Remote anyone?

[LBt1st]

Great, so I get to wait longer in line while each person ahead of me tries to sync up and use their bluetooth phone. This is the kind of stuff touch-screen were made for.
What we have here is a solution looking for a problem.

-Bean

Re:Wii Remote anyone?

[mattmcm]

Mod parent up. Whilst I can see it being a hassle at public kiosks, it may be useful at home where you're the only user. Johnny Chung Lee has a project similar to this.

Almost four years ago

[tepples]

What has changed in the three years and eight months since this story?

cool but impractical

[blhack]

I have said it before, and i will say it again:

This type of interface is completely impractical, except for a few high specialized applications (like architecture).
The problem with things like this is that your arm gets tired after using it for a few minutes. The great thing about a mouse is that you can take your hand off of it and it stays in the same place. I know that personally, I use the arrow and tab keys for navigation WAY more than i use my mouse.

Mice work really really great because it is a 2D interface to a 2D environment.

I would rather see grant money pumped into multi-touch than stuff like this.....its cool, its just not going to replace your mouse anytime soon.

Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams"

[Lumpy]

WE hear almost monthly how this or that will make it so we can buy movie tickets with our cellphones. grand experiments have been done all over the world to do this and every single one fails.

I suggest they do something different, start with forcing all financial institutions to adopt a single standard for electronic payment and force them to accept it without fees or charges.

THEN let's do the utopian buy everything with our cellphones trick. Hell it's been in place in europe in some places for almost 5 years now (German bus line, you pay your bus fare by waving your cellphone near the pay terminal)

I'm tired of the wheel being reinvented monthly while nobody is inventing roads.

Start with how to force banks to quit being assholes and create a universal OPEN electronic payment system that has ZERO cost.

not just yet

[MacarooMac]

Interacting with ticket machines and other public terminals? Think i'll stick to the dedicated interfaces they will continue to provide: more efficiet and more secure.
Interacting with video advertising displays? Gee, I can't wait.

Using my handset to interact with public devices will only be cool when I can stop the 07:43 train from taking off without me at Clapham Junction and when I can disable that stereo system the five punks in the Camaro Convertible have blasting my head off at the traffic lights. (Perhaps you can do this one already?)

What you want is simply to interact with your handset which will replicate the public interface/display on its screen. I.e. Multiple users simultaneously accessing a terminal display and no more queues. Little need to control the external display except as a gimmick.

Re:Minority Report

[delvsional]

Too late. It's already here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0awjPUkBXOU&feature=related

Amazing cell phone applications

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of things that one can do with a cell phone is nothing short of amazing. And the end is nowhere near in sight yet: Manufacturers keep coming up with ever more creative, ingenious applications for the cell phone. Indeed, the only thing we can be positive about is that the cell phone service will remain overpriced, unreliable and limited in its coverage, while the sound quality will remain disappointingly awful. Well, at the very least we will be able to use it as a 3D mouse.

This works with the iPhone as well

[Malevolent Tester]

But you can't right click.

Buy, don't bring

[slapout]

Does anyone else find it ironic that they want you to buy your movie tickets with your cell phone and then don't want you to bring your cell phone into the theater?