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XWave Lets You Control Your iPhone With Your Noodle

In the early, chaotic, primordial years of the mobile phone era, you had to press real, actual  "buttons" to get things done. Almost barbaric to think about now, isn't it?

As society advanced and we gradually became a more civilized species, buttons gave way to touchscreens and voice control, mercifully giving the atrophied sausages we call "arms" and "fingers" a bit of respite every time we needed to surf through cyberspace, place a phone call, or send a text message. Now, it seems the evolution of Homo sapiens is reaching its inevitable final stage with the release of the PLX XWave, headgear that plugs into your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and -- after a bit of training -- lets you control the device with your mind alone.

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The headset makes use of the NeuroSky technology that we've seen several times through the years and will be made available with a number of apps upon its release next month including a game, dedicated training app, a music controller (which will let you compare brainwaves with other XWave users, interestingly), and an "Om Meditation Timer." If none of those titles have captured your imagination, you'll be able to write your own apps with the device's SDK; needless to say, we'll be patiently waiting for the levitation app depicted here. Orders are online now for $100 with delivery in October.

Via Engadget

Ultimate Steampunk Cell Phone - $275,000

Forget digital. The future of cell phones may just be mechanical. As flat, touch screen slabs like the iPhone make our lives more virtual, a half-dozen guys from the luxury watch world are trying to drag mobile phones back onto the physical plane, in which every function would operate mechanically through human energy.

Celsius is a French company founded in 2006 by four young entrepreneurs. In March 2010, after three years of research and development, and help from watch-industry icons like Richard Mille and controversial movement maker Confrerie Horlogere Hublot, Celsius X VI II are launching a range of high-end micromechanical phones featuring some exceptional patented mechanical complications.

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Celsius X VI II's first product, LeDIX, is an impressive merging of a mobile phone with a tourbillion watch that integrates a patented rewinding mechanism hidden within its hinge.

Inspired by tourbillion watches—invented in the late 18th century to offset the supposed effects of gravity on accuracy by rotating a full 360º within a cage—Celsius' love for mechanical triumphs of centuries past permeates the many components of the the LeDIX.

Made using close to 600 mechanical components (most of them hand-finished), LeDIX is indeed a watch/phone with some unusual new aspects.  Ultimately, Celsius's goal is to physicalize the digital. They imagine that Caller ID could be a flipping board of shifting letters, quietly clattering, like the destination sign in a railway station. A phone could indicate waiting messages by shifting small, silvery balls, or ticking a tiny watch hand. You could dial with a dial. Pretty much only the radio needs to remain digital.

That dream is a ways away, but if anyone could get there, it's these guys. They're building art objects, not weapons of mass production. When they needed a big, complex piece of titanium, they invented a new way of forging it.

Obviously, a mechanical phone's functions are going to stay pretty simple. That said, they're not looking to get into a war with Apple; in fact, many of their potential customers will also be carrying iPhones or BlackBerrys.

LeDIX's main menu offers phone calls, text messaging, a camera, contacts, and a calendar. It has e-mail and Web browsing, too. But it's designed for ease of use and elegance, not for a deep feature set.  Future, more mechanical phones may have even fewer features.

The LeDIX was unveiled this past March at Baselworld 2010.  The company plans on initially making 50 phones in two limited-edition models, with a starting price of $275,000.

 

Via Watchismo and PC Magazine

Sneak-Peak: Dummy-Proof Photography in Next iPhone Update

By Jonathan Snyder and Brian X. Chen

  

A software update for Apple’s mobile operating system is due for release next week, and Wired.com has had hands-on time with a major new feature of the OS: high-dynamic range photography.

 HDR, an automated processing feature aiming to deliver a “dummy-proof” photography method, will be included with the camera app on all iPhones running iOS 4.1 when it ships next week. When you take a picture, HDR processes three versions of the image: an underexposed version, a normally exposed version, and an overexposed version. Then it combines these three images into one to increase the dynamic range (the intensity of the light) to give you a more accurate representation of the scene you’re shooting.

 

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Standard version on top, HDR version on bottom.

 

In iOS 4.1, when you launch your camera there will be an option to toggle HDR on or off. When toggled on, the iPhone will take a few seconds to process a photo in HDR after snapping it. By default, your iPhone will save both a normal, unedited version of your photograph along with an HDR-processed version. (You can tweak the save mode in your settings.)

I ventured outside with Wired.com photo editor Jon Snyder to put an iPhone 4to the test with HDR photos, and the results were quite pleasing. At times some photos looked better without HDR-processing, but for the most part HDR improved images that were oversaturated with light or too dark with shadows.

This feature should come in handy for people who don’t want to spend too much aiming their camera in just the right place to get good lighting. Click through the gallery above to see some side-by-side comparisons of photos we snapped Thursday afternoon in San Francisco.

Via Wired Gadget Lab

So This is What the Future Will Look Like

 

 

Augmented reality (AR) is definitely where media and technology is heading towards; just look at the number of smartphone apps and media projects that boast AR features.

And now, National Geographic is getting in on the AR craze. The publication has come up with a simple and detailed image set showing just how the future will look like.

Restaurant reviews, directions, nearest amenities—all these can be pulled up in the HUD-style ‘view’ on smartphones these days, but National Geographic is speculating these displays to be commonly available on eyewear within the next five years.

And there’s even talk about AR being made available through contact lenses. The article interviewed a bio-nanotechnology professor who has made a contact lens etched with a transparent electronic circuit.

 
It’s far from completion, but Prof Babak Parviz is hoping to add LEDs to the lenses, allowing text and images to “hover in space at a readable distance in front of the eye”.

Reality is a bit of a bore with AR technology, but melding ourselves with bionic ones is probably a little too sci-fi for everyone’s liking.

 

Thanks Design Taxi!

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