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Kinect Puffersphere: DIY Creepy Eyeball That Tracks You Around The Room

Posted: 21 Mar 2011 08:53 PM PDT

Kinect hacks are aplenty out there, and there are many strange and wonderful things that people have come up with to make the virtual and real world a much more interactive place.

This little do it yourself is sure to be a favourite amongst Lord of the Rings fans. The ‘hack’ allows for one to create a giant eyeball that can track you as you move in front of it.

The Technology Studio in the UK are the minds behind this little idea. Not only have they done just an ordinary eyeball, they have responded to the fans’ request and did a rather creepy rendition of the Eye of Sauron, that spews quotes from the movie one after another at you.

All you need is a PC, a Microsoft Kinect and a Puffersphere (that’s a spherical projection display by Pufferfish). The latter of which is certainly not cheap. Nonetheless it does make for an interesting hack.

Unfortunately, because the Kinect does not support a full 360 degree coverage, the eyeball cannot track you all the way around the room.

While this particular usage of the Kinect isn’t groundbreaking, it’s certainly fun, and I love seeing all sorts of uses that people have put the Kinect to. Research in the name of fun, I like the sound of that.

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Kongtechnology.com

Panasonic Solar-Powered Wireless Charging Table

Posted: 13 Mar 2011 08:12 PM PDT

In this day and age of the technological era, we are still highly dependent on non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels. In the move to greener and more environmentally friendly sources of energy, we have turned to the power of the Sun. In this case, I think it’s an cool move that Panasonic has invented this table.

Solar power is certainly nothing new, but the twist of putting together the solar-cells with the ability to recharge our mobile devices is pretty interesting.

Panasonic unveiled this invention at the recent 2011 Security Show in Tokyo. The solar panels are embedded into the table-top and the energy it harvests goes to dedicated wireless charging pads that are placed around the sides of the table.

With the use of QI Wireless Power transmission technology, this table will allow any phones or mobile devices that support the QI standard to be charged.

At the showing, it was unclear as to how long you would be able to charge your device or if the table has a battery inside it to store the collected solar energy. It has been confirmed however, that the Solar Table with its wireless power transmission will be available to the public (at least in Japan) later this year or early 2012.

Personally, I think when this device hits the market, it would be out of the budget of most consumers. Also, I certainly wouldn’t be putting anything on top of the panels for that would render it useless. Sounds strange to have a table you can’t put anything on top of, but then again, that’s how this device works!

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Kongtechnology.com

Elfoid: The Human-Shaped Mobile Phone

Posted: 08 Mar 2011 09:02 PM PST

Pretty much everyone has a mobile phone today, in all shapes and sizes and different capabilities. There are smartphones with touchscreens and then there are some pretty cool concept phones out there.

The Elfoid certainly fits the category of strange, and I’ll admit it, rather creepy. This Japanese invention, developed in Osaka University with the help of NTT DoCoMo, is a human-shaped mobile phone that is supposed to make you to feel closer to the person on the other end.

It has a skin-like outer layer and wiggles when it ‘talks’ to you. It also tickles you to let you know that there is an incoming call. You talk into its belly and it speaks to you in response, complete with gestures. There is also a LED in its chest that turns blue when in use, and red when in standby mode.

This is actually the mini-version of a previous invention known as the Telenoid R1, a robotic answering machine developed by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR).

They are hoping that the Elfoid will be put into commercial production within five years, with the addition of image and voice recognition functions.

Personally I think this is a novel concept for a phone. I wonder why did the designers choose such a strange design though. It looks like a limbless torso with a head and I can’t help but wonder why not use something that resembles more a full-bodied doll instead? The featureless face also doesn’t help. This falls into the uncanny valley for me.

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Kongtechnology.com

Hand-held Medical Scanner Detect Health Level

Posted: 26 Feb 2011 08:14 PM PST

It certainly sounds something straight out of Star Trek, but believe it or not, this scanner is reality. The scanner is able to detect if a patient is healthy or not just by pointing it at the skin.

Development on the scanner was carried out over a period of five years by a group lead by one professor Jürgen Lademann of the Department of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergy of the Charité-University Medicine in Berlin.

The device is being tested right now on a group of 19-year-old students. Read their report here.

How does the device work?

The device works by reflecting a beam of light off your skin and analyzing the wavelengths reflected back into the device. The information that processed is able to work out the anti-oxidant levels in your skin.

So just point the device at your skin, wait three minutes and the device will tell you how healthy you are from a scale of one to ten (worst to best).

Before the invention of this device, the only way for doctors to get the same type of readings was to get tissue samples and process them. We’ve certainly come a long way from that.

According to the researchers, the anti-oxidant level in your skin is pretty telling. It can indicate your overall body health because it is affected by stress, smoking, alcohol drinking, unhealthy food, lack of sleep and UV radiation. During the trial, they were even able to detect changes in diet and smoking habits.

One thing the scanner is not designed for is to detect any specific disease. It is only for detecting your overall health level. It will be available soon for US$280 in Europe.

It’s definitely interesting to have a device that works like a video game. Point, shoot, improve accordingly. I would certainly use one, but at its current cost I think I’ll just keep an eye on my health the old fashioned way.

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Kongtechnology.com

Massive 3D Touchscreen

Posted: 20 Feb 2011 06:58 PM PST

Touchscreens are always fun to play with and they’re definitely a cool element to have with an interactive audience. There have been many forms that the touchscreen has taken on, even as ice, but I think this is one of the coolest (no pun intended) one yet.

The University of Groningen in the Netherlands has taken this concept much further, by converting a 3D theater into a gigantic touchscreen. This thing stands 10 meters by 2.8 meters and are able to detect up to 100 simultaneous touch inputs. It has a curvature of 135 degrees.

View the video here for a demonstration of the screen.

The screen is tracked by 6 Optitrack cameras and consists of 1000 infrared LEDs. The resolution is obviously as massive as the screen itself, boosting 4900 x 1700 pixels. The screen also has 120 Hertz stereo capability and 50 milliseconds of latency.

Imagine what you could do with one of these in your living room! Personally,  I love the concept of gesture interaction (such as the Microsoft Kinect) as well and you can see that this particular touchscreen looks like it is able to detect some form of it as well. Now if someone would size this down into an affordable living room-sized version I would definitely be interested in getting one.

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