Touch Screen

Up until now, touchscreen laptops have been one of two things — either low-resolution and lacking the horsepower to perform heavy tasks, or just too expensive. With the upcoming Aspire 5738PG, a multi-touch screen notebook sporting Windows 7 and some respectable specs priced at less than US$800, Acer is looking to bring a quality touchscreen experience within the budget of a wider range of users. On the same day, the PC giant also announced an update to its Timeline series with the addition of a 11.6-inch notebook and the transition to Intel dual-core processors on all existing models.  Read More

There's already one smartphone running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon chipset, the Toshiba TG-01, but being Windows Mobile-based, it's a little harder to get excited about than the Acer Liquid - Acer's first Android-based phone running on Android 1.6 (aka Donut).  Read More

Anyone who has tried to use a multi-touch touchscreen with anything other than their bare skin will know that it’s just not possible, no matter how hard you press. That’s because the capacitance technology used for the bulk of multi-touch devices doesn’t detect pressure, but measures the changes in electrical resistance caused by contact with a conductor – in this case, the human body. That might be annoying in cold climates, but is an even bigger problem in situations that require the wearing of protective gloves. Getac’s line of rugged Tablet PCs will be the first commercially-available rugged computers to solve this problem by offering a multi-touch screen that works with or without gloves.  Read More

Up until now, touch screen keyboards have been problematic in that the user has had to look at the screen to navigate the location of the keys. That could all be set to change with news that Microsoft has filed a most interesting patent for a touch screen keyboard that uses multi touch capabilities to incorporate the user’s own hands as a physical point of reference.  Read More

Creative's latest personal media player - the ZEN X-Fi2 - is the company's first full touch screen offering and features a 3” screen with a simplified navigational menu in landscape format, X-Fi sound enhancement and a TV-out connection for viewing video and photos on the big screen in a package that weighs just 75g.  Read More

A group of European companies and universities have collaborated to produce a series of multifunctional robots for urban hygiene tasks. With abilities ranging from door-to-door garbage pickup and transportation, to automated street cleaning, the DUSTBOTs recently demonstrated their skills at a station in the town of Atxuri, Portugal.  Read More

Not long ago, radio manufacturers had only to worry about the basic look of their devices. Rarely were new stations added, reception methods hadn’t changed in a long time and, generally, smaller was better. Sure, they had to combine an alarm clock in some models, but that wasn’t too difficult. Now a radio has to be a veritable Swiss army knife of appliances, and this is where the new Sensia from Pure excels. Its list of features includes a large color touch screen display, DAB, FM stereo and digital radio with full Band III, wireless media streaming, input from iPods/iPhones and MP3 players, and Pure Apps that let you connect with Facebook, Twitter, Picasa and thousands of podcasts.  Read More

LG has announced the release of its first foray in to the Android powered world of smartphones, the LG-GW620, aimed at meeting the demands of both first time and existing smartphone users.  Read More

For the intrepid urban explorers out there, Navigon has unveiled a new 24 series of personal navigation systems featuring a “Last Mile” function that continues guiding the user on foot – as well as remembering where the car is parked.  Read More