Touchscreen

We keep hearing about how smartwatches may replace – or at least augment – the smartphone, but how would you type on that tiny display? In some cases, where the watch is linked to a smartphone in your bag or pocket, you could just use the phone’s screen. For stand-alone smartwatches or quick messages, however, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have created the ZoomBoard system.  Read More

For years now, scientists across the globe have strived to find a method that gives robots an accurate sense of touch, and with good reason. A robot with an improved ability to feel would be better equipped to identify objects, judge its movements with greater care, and perform more tasks overall. In the latest step towards that goal, researchers at Georgia Tech have crafted a new type of touch-reactive material that's sensitive enough to read fingerprints and could provide robots with a sense of touch that resembles our own.  Read More

Toshiba has unveiled a new high-end laptop that boasts a host of premium features including an impressive 13-inch, 2560 x 1440 resolution touchscreen display. The system, which runs on Windows 8 and features a pressed magnesium alloy body, is both thinner and lighter than Apple's 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro.  Read More

It there’s one thing that has stood the test of time while being continually confronted by challenger after challenger, it’s the QWERTY keyboard. A quick look at some of the many keyboards we've covered in the past reveals just how competitive this area is, and the number of options has exploded with the advent of the onscreen virtual keyboard. The latest challenger comes from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Informatics and is aimed at speeding up thumb-centric typing on mobile touchscreen devices.  Read More

Maps of the internet have been around in one form or another since the late 1990s, but most of these tend to be static, two-dimensional affairs. PEER 1 Hosting of Vancouver, British Columbia, is adding bit of depth to internet charting with its Map of the Internet app for iOS and Android devices that provides an interactive 3D representation of the online world. It’s purpose is to act as an educational tool showing the evolution of the internet from 1994 to the present, with projections going forward to 2020.  Read More

Indiegogo project Minuum wants to revolutionize the QWERTY keyboard on your mobile devices. The project's condensed version of a classic layout aims to provide users with a simple and quick typing solution that gives our apps a little more room to breath.  Read More

Despite their portability and popularity, the slab of glass form factor of tablets has its downsides. Most notably for the less coordinated among us is the propensity for the display to crack or shatter when dropped. A team at Canada’s Queen’s University working in collaboration with Intel Labs and Plastic Logic is looking not only to redefine the tablet's form, but the way people use them with the development of a flexible touchscreen computer called the PaperTab.  Read More

With the success of the iPad, it’s easy to forget that convertible units with a rotating hinge and physical keyboard were once the form factor of choice for tablet computers. While touchscreen-only devices now dominate the consumer space, convertible tablets continue to find a market, particularly amongst business and government users. It is these markets that HP is targeting with its latest touch-enabled convertible tablet, the EliteBook Revolve, which is due for a March, 2013 release.  Read More

Using a touchscreen in wintertime or on the ski slopes is annoying because screens are designed to work with bare fingers. True, there are numerous gloves available that work with screens, so you don’t freeze your fingers while surfing the internet, but they tend to look like cheap woolly things. Now Mujjo, the Dutch designer label for mobile accessories, has developed leather touchscreen gloves, so you don’t have to choose between style and frostbite.  Read More