Some of the Weirder Ideas From CHI 2009

An anonymous reader writes "Technology Review has a roundup of some of the weirder ideas on show at last week's Computer-Human Interaction conference in Boston. They include a trackball that heats up as you roll over different parts of an image, a pair of goggles that track eye movements using electrooculography, and a miniature robot with a cellphone for its head."

Comments

Come again?

[hansamurai]

ball that heats up as you roll over different parts of an image

There's a joke in there somewhere.

my idea was rejected

[Em Emalb]

I tried to enter a device in this event, but they wouldn't let me.

My idea was (and the prototype worked pretty well) to create a metal leg from the knee down the bolted under the user's desk and USB cables to connect to the computer. When the user did something stupid, fell for a phishing scam, responded in earnest to a 419 scam, downloaded a virus off a website, etc, the foot's lever action kicked in and kicked the user square in the giblets.

My test run of 16 users in Topeka had "smashing" (and painful) results.

Sadly, they decided not to let me enter. There is a silver lining though, as there is a small-ish "kick me in the jimmy while I'm watching donkey porn" fetish market out there that is in love with my product.