Quantum Phantom program turns your smartphone into a wireless mouse (video)

The last time we saw Ben Wu, he was busy hammering away at Quantum Phantom -- a prototype program that allows users to manipulate their desktops with a simple webcam. Now, the engineer has expanded the concept to smartphones, as well, with a system that effectively turns any camera-equipped handset into a wireless mouse. To achieve this, Wu hooked up his Android phone to his PC via WiFi and used the IP Webcam app to create a video stream server. The results, by Wu's own admission, aren't exactly elegant (due to an unwieldy configuration process and low-res camera), though he still managed to use his creation to sketch an onscreen smiley face. Watch it for yourself in the demo video, after the break.

[Thanks, Ben]

Continue reading Quantum Phantom program turns your smartphone into a wireless mouse (video)

Quantum Phantom program turns your smartphone into a wireless mouse (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/SUxTWiXyWto/

Dieter Schreiter Monika Kley Heidemarie Frick Maike Beetz

Free Gmail Voice Calls for Armed Forces Personnel [Blip]

If anyone deserves free phone calls to their loved ones, it's the men and women that serve our country. Google has announced that U.S. service personnel with a valid US Military (.mil) email address can now place free Gmail voice calls to the United States from within Gmail. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/CiD6eKbHn8M/free-gmail-voice-calls-for-armed-forces-personnel

Janine Hillenbrand Vivien Strupp Elena Lasch Hans-Jürgen Haake

Wacom Inkling Brings Ctrl-Z to Paper Drawings

Inkling is Wacom’s latest digital drawing tool and, frankly, it looks amazing. Inkling consists of a special ink pen and a detector device which digitizes anything you draw on paper and lets you send it to your computer. This is nothing new — just yesterday I wrote about a the Apen for Android devices. But [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/wacom-inkling-brings-ctrl-z-to-paper-drawings/

Charlotte Kadelbach Hugo Ruß Edith Hupertz Heinrich Peller

id America Gasket Brushed Aluminum iPhone 4 Case Review

Vroom, Vroom….this case definitely makes me think of engines and gear-heads. The Gasket case from id America is unique in the iPhone case world. It is cut from a single piece of aircraft aluminum in the shape of a car engine’s head gasket. A cool idea in a flooded market. The Gasket case is compatible [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/08/27/id-america-gasket-brushed-aluminum-iphone-4-case-review/

Karla Reusch Wilhelm Klassen Nathalie Füllgraf Janine Harrer

Farragomate is a social fridge magnet game where you make up sentences

farragomate
You know those fridge magnet kits composed of a whole bunch of words? The ones you put all over your fridge door and then try to arrange into all sorts of juvenile and/or amusing sentences. Well, Farragomate is the social, webby version of that very same pastime.

You get to play with a bunch of random strangers in real-time, and make up sentences out of a pre-set collection of words, including some fairly naughty ones, and all players' nicknames. As you can imagine, some of the results are not child-friendly.

There are ten rounds to a game. Once a round is done, players get to vote for their favorite sentence from that round. You can't vote for your own creation, of course. There's in-game chat, too.

I think the vocabulary could be made a bit more eclectic, but even as it is, it's a nice way to spend a few minutes and meet random strangers on the Internet (always a thrilling experience).

Farragomate is a social fridge magnet game where you make up sentences originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/25/farragomate-is-a-social-game-where-you-make-up-sentences/

Janine Hillenbrand Vivien Strupp Elena Lasch Hans-Jürgen Haake

JawBone Icon HD And Its New Friend, The Nerd

You’re still going to look like a total dork if you wear it, but at least you won’t go crazy with frustration when you use the new JawBone Icon HD Bluetooth headset, and its accompanying dongle, the Nerd. The Icon HD is the same as the existing Icon, only with a bigger, better speaker inside — [...]

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/08/jawbone-icon-hd-and-its-new-friend-the-nerd/

Kristin Gehrmann Annette Lechner Margarethe Lachner Lutz Yalcin

SUFFER '11 farming robot plays a multitude of roles, takes commands via Wiimote (video)

So much for stereotypes, eh? The future of farming is being painted in a far different light here at NEXT Aarhus, where a team from the University of Southern Denmark brought in the largest Wiimote-controlled robot that we've ever seen. The heretofore unnamed beast (going by SUFFER '11 for the time being) is a farming-centric machine that's designed to take the load off of the landowners (while providing a bit of enjoyment all the while). Put simply, this modular bot can have various apparatuses swapped into its midsection -- one pop-in attachment could pick potatoes, while another could disperse pesticide, for example. There's even a module that'll enable it to detect rows and plow down the obvious routes, making it that much easier for farmers of the next millennium to take time off. Of course, the standout feature from our perspective was the inbuilt Bluetooth and WiFi, which allowed the demonstrator to operate the 'bot with a standard Wii remote. Per usual, the vid's after the break.

Continue reading SUFFER '11 farming robot plays a multitude of roles, takes commands via Wiimote (video)

SUFFER '11 farming robot plays a multitude of roles, takes commands via Wiimote (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/TzP49rJ8afc/

Hartmut Theobald Nicholas Graul Malin Hock Helmut Hölzer

Sprint Strategy Update coming on October 7th, significant 4G plans likely to be unveiled

Sprint's Dan Hesse told us point-blank back in July that he was penning a "great story around 4G" for this fall, and it looks as if October 7th will be the date that it "all becomes clear." We just received an invitation to quite the atypical event -- a "strategy update" for the press to cover in New York City. All we're told is that presentations by senior management will be on tap, with a sure-to-be-lively Q&A session to follow. 'Course, this may all be a ploy to waste our precious time on a precious Friday in autumn, but something tells us Sprint ain't exactly in a position to be blowing cash on a Hot Air session. So, what's on deck? Let's count the possibilities: more details on its side regarding the iPhone 5? A full-on acquisition of Clearwire (plus a shift to LTE-Advanced)? More details on that elusive LightSquared arrangement? A merger with AT&T&T to create the largest telecommunications provider this side of Pluto? We'll be there to find out, but for now, hypotheses are being accepted in comments below.

Sprint Strategy Update coming on October 7th, significant 4G plans likely to be unveiled originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Aug 2011 23:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/90wA3Fm_28k/

Oliver Büdenbender Christa Eymann Ingrid Schur Emily Trautmann

Sony MDR-DS7500 headphones promise 3D sound, will play nicely with your 3D glasses

Are you settling for non-3D sound to go with all of your 3D movies? You should be ashamed of yourself. Thankfully, Sony's looking out for you. The company's new MDR-DS7500 headphones promise 3D surround sound, thanks in part to the inclusion of Dolby Pro Logic IIz technology. The headphones have a number of different sound settings, serving different audio needs, including Cinema Mode, Game Mode, and Voice Mode. Also, that extra padding assures that they'll play nicely with your 3D glasses. The headphones will be hitting Japan on October 10th, running ¥49,350 ($643) for the full package and ¥24,675 ($321) for additional headphones. Extra dimensions don't come cheap, after all.

Sony MDR-DS7500 headphones promise 3D sound, will play nicely with your 3D glasses originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/RJpMkBcdVAQ/

Ingrid Schur Emily Trautmann Charlotte Kadelbach Hugo Ruß

Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension

Sure, Amazon's Cloud Player works -- as long as you're in the U.S. or willing to do some tinkering -- but it's fairly simplistic at the moment. There are plenty of features missing which we'd like to see added -- but since Cloud Player is a Web app we don't have to wait for Amazon!

Google Chrome users, for example, can add playback hotkeys with an extension called keyMazony. Once installed, you'll have keyboard control of your Amazon Cloud Player queue. keyMazony commands will work as long as you're in the same Chrome window as Cloud Player, even if its tab doesn't have focus. The key combinations are customizable as well -- just make sure you don't set up a combo that conflicts with another extension or Chrome's built-in keyboard shortcuts.

Add playback hotkeys to Amazon Cloud Player with a Chrome extension originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/add-playback-hotkeys-to-amazon-cloud-player-with-a-chrome-extens/

Wilhelm Klassen Nathalie Füllgraf Janine Harrer Emilia Münchow