Sony isn’t known for making interoperable or user-friendly devices, but their industrial design is almost as pretty as Apple’s. From laptops to readers to bracelets, check out their latest design concepts for flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays.
Wearable Minority Report Computer!
We’re getting closer and closer to the futuristic spatial computing seen in the movie Minority Report. Last year, somebody did it with clunky mittens and a roomful of huge monitors. This year, PhD student Pranav Mistry has miniaturized it all into a pendant. Yes, that’s right: it’s wearable spatial computing — or, as Mistry likes to call it, a wearable gestural interface.
Mistry’s technology, which he calls SixthSense, is built on an incredibly simple hardware combination: a projector and a camera. He even plans to open-source the software behind it. The best part: Mistry says the whole system costs only $300.
The Genius of Droid’s Geeky Marketing
For weeks, I’ve been hearing Apple fanboys pan Verizon’s Motorola Droid ads as too geeky and unappealing for the mass market. I’ve been hearing fanboys claim that nongeeks can’t understand “open development”, that they’d be scared off by images of stealth bombers. Then I read an essay by Paul Graham about the abuses of the iPhone app store, and I suddenly realize the genius of Verizon’s nongeek-alienating marketing strategy. [Read more…]