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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."

4 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Wii Remote anyone? by LBt1st · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  2. cool but impractical by blhack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
  3. Tired of these cellphone as credit card "dreams" by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  4. Re:Minority Report by delvsional · · Score: 5, Informative
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    Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....