touchscreen

Tactus touch screen sprouts keys and buttons

We've gotten used to touch screens always being flat. Get ready for that to change.

Silicon Valley start-up Tactus Technology has designed a touch screen that grows 3D buttons and knobs where and when you want them.

Smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and kiosks equipped with the technology would sprout physical controls like QWERTY keyboards and knobs on demand. The controls would recede into the touch screen surface after they've served their purpose.

3D controls are often easier to maneuver than today's flat touch-screen controls, as you can use them without looking. Getting the best of both worlds means marrying physical controls' higher accuracy and ease of use with touch screens' elegance, simplicity, and dynamic nature. The physical cues are especially important for people who can't see well or who have trouble with fine hand movements. They also make it easier to control your cell phone when it's in your pocket.

The trick to making a morphing touch screen useful is fitting it in a smartphone. The Tactus design calls for sandwiching a fluid between touch-screen layers and pushing the fluid around with a series of tiny valves. The top layer is flexible, so pushing the fluid to one part of the screen raises the surface there. … Read more

E3 2011: Nintendo Wii U First Take

LOS ANGELES--Though it won't be available in stores until at least 2012, Nintendo unveiled, and gave a name to, the hardware successor to the Wii, known at this point as Wii U.

True to many rumors and predictions, Nintendo unveiled at this year's E3 a new console with an attention-getting tabletlike controller, complete with its own 6.2-inch touch screen. This multifunctional tablet will form the centerpiece of what the Wii U will be about.

The tablet controller With a glossy … Read more

E3 2011: Q&A with Shigeru Miyamoto on the Wii U

LOS ANGELES--The Wii U, Nintendo's 2012 reinvention of the Wii hardware and of home console gaming, is still a device clouded in mystery. Its controls are intriguing, its capabilities seemingly vast. We had the opportunity to play with the Wii U after Nintendo's morning press conference. To gain more perspective, we had a one-on-one conversation with Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, game design legend and creative executive behind Nintendo's first-party games.

Time was limited, but I certainly had plenty of questions: about the Wii U, the future evolution of console and handheld gaming, and most importantly, how this all relates to Apple.

Q: What were the influences for the creation of Wii U? A: There was nothing external that influenced us. What really brought about the idea for it stemmed from our original concept for the Wii. We talked about it as the system that would never sleep, using something like Wii Connect 24--meaning, people would be able to access the system very quickly at any time. But, what we found was that as people started getting larger TVs, turning on the TV began to take more and more time than it used to. It was no longer instantaneous. So that became a barrier for people, and people who were watching TV would essentially make the system unavailable for somebody who wanted to play a game or see what was new with the system that day.

And so, with those challenges in mind, we started to look at what we wanted to do for the next system, and started to think that if we can't continue to always rely on the TV, we need to create a dedicated screen just for the system so people can quickly and instantly interact with it, regardless of what was happening on the TV. … Read more

Friday Poll: Is Windows 8 the right approach to a tablet OS?

Designing an operating system that will potentially make its way onto millions of next-generation tablets is a daunting task. To make things more difficult for any entrant to this space, the competition is fierce and maturing at a steady rate.

The mountain is steeper to climb for a company like Microsoft, which unveiled Windows 8 earlier this week (though it's unlikely to ship it to consumers until next year). Considering where rivals like Apple, Google, and even HP will be by then, the company has its work cut out for it.

Microsoft has one big advantage though: Windows has long been the most widely used operating system for desktop and laptop computers, and familiarity may be valuable for Microsoft when it unleashes its first operating system optimized for tablets.

Windows 7 failed to take off on tablets for two big reasons: The user interface wasn't tailored for touch screens, and x86 processors sucked up too much juice to work on the form factor. With Windows 8, Microsoft has responded by going with the same type of "Metro" tile-based interface that's been well-received on Windows Phone 7, as well as adding compatibility for ARM processors that stretch battery life.

The tile interface is attractive, and reminiscent of the Windows Phone 7 UI design, an interface not many consumers are familiar with. The company is encouraging software developers to create new interfaces for their programs that can interact with this special environment made for touch screens.

In some ways, Microsoft is betting its future in tablets on a beefy skin with extra functionality for Windows that reminds me of Windows Media Center. Sure, it's pretty, but is Microsoft taking the right approach to a tablet OS? Vote in our weekly poll, and be sure to elaborate in the comments section.… Read more

What Windows 8 means for laptops

Over the past few years we've seen laptops transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7. Inevitable, of course, is a move to Windows 8, the new operating system officially unveiled by Microsoft this week.

Much of the Windows 8 hype so far has been about its new features for touch-screen tablets, and from the small snippets we've seen, it looks like Microsoft is finally taking that challenge seriously, as opposed to the unfulfilled tablet promises of Vista and Win7. But, Windows tablets remain a niche market, held back by both hardware and software issues (see … Read more

New Nook Simple Touch Reader review

Is the new Nook better than the Kindle? That's what a lot of people are asking and the short answer--at least at this moment--is arguably yes.

No, it doesn't have an audio jack for MP3 music playback or a built-in basic Web browser, but it does have one thing the Kindle doesn't: a touch-screen interface--and it's a good one.

How does the new Nook perform compared with the Kindle?

Read the full review of the 2011 Nook to find out.

Kobo unveils Wi-Fi Touch Edition e-reader for $129.99

The day before Barnes & Noble is expected to announce a new e-ink e-reader, Kobo unveiled its own new e-ink model, the Kobo WiFi Touch Edition, for $129.99.

As its name implies, the new e-reader has a touch screen and uses the same Neonode infrared technology that's found in Sony's touch-screen e-readers. It also has E-Ink's latest generation Pearl e-ink screen.

Here's a look at the key specs:

Touch screen with Neonode "responsive" zForce infrared touch technology (Kobo is calling it "Real Touch") 6-inch Pearl e-ink screen (same screen as Kindle'… Read more

Hands-on with the Asus Eee Slate EP121 Windows 7 tablet

We've been testing and reviewing Windows tablets for many years, the latest being the new Acer Iconia Tab W500P, but have typically found them lacking--both in comparison with more powerful Windows laptops, and with other tablets, such as Apple's popular iPad.

One Windows tablet that we've been eager to check out after seeing it at CES 2011 is the Asus Eee Slate EP121, a high-end touch-screen tablet with a separate Bluetooth keyboard. Asus is, for the uninitiated, most responsible for the (now faded) popularity of low-cost Netbooks, and the company is now pushing the boundaries of what … Read more

Acer Iconia W500 Windows tablet (hands-on)

Tablets are big news, but that usually means Apple's iPad, Android tablets, or even the BlackBerry Playbook. Windows, by far the largest operating system on consumer PCs, has been largely left out in the cold.

It's ironic, as Windows tablets have been around for years, in the form of slates and convertible laptops with touch-screen lids that rotate and fold down over the keyboard. To date, none of these has been terribly successful, largely because they failed on both the software and hardware fronts. The Windows OS is simply not designed for fingertip (or even stylus) input, and the CPUs used to power most Windows tablets have been so underpowered as to make these devices mostly useless.

Stepping into the ring following the launch Apple's second-generation iPad is the Acer Iconia W500. Similar to Lenovo's (still MIA U1) Hybrid and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, the 10.1-inch W500 consists of a touch-screen slate and a separate keyboard dock. When combined, the two halves form something close to a traditional laptop. The W500 is $549 with Windows 7 Home Premium, or $619 with Windows 7 Professional. Both versions have 2GB of RAM and a 32GB SSD. Acer also has a dockless Android version, called the A500. … Read more

Apple adds touch-screen manufacturer to alleviate iPad 2 supply issues

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has signed on Chimei Innolux Corp. to assist with touch-screen production to help meet the overwhelming demand for the iPad 2.

Chimei Innolux will begin supplying the components next month, said the people, who declined to be identified because the details aren't public. Taiwan's TPK Holding Corp. and Wintek Corp. (2384) remain Apple's key suppliers of the sensors that help the iPad tablet computer recognize finger movements, the people said.

Current shipping times from Apple for all models of the iPad 2 are two to three weeks, though with the addition of … Read more