display

One heart, one function

Fire Heart Desktop Gadget claims to be an exciting icon that not only looks realistic, but also helps perform a function. However, users may be under-whelmed by this product and its limited capabilities.

This freeware leaps to life on your screen as a heart that simultaneously beats and looks like it is on fire. However, this novelty wears off fast, especially if you are using a slower computer, which may not let users see it beat in real time.

Right-clicking the heart lets users see their options with the heart. Here you can adjust the size, show its reflection, and … Read more

Amazon.com has the Lenovo ThinkVision L2440x LCD Display for $439.39, after $185.60 savings.

Save $185.60 on the Lenovo ThinkVision L2440x LCD Display from Amazon.com >> Regular price is $624.99 >> Sale price is $439.39 >> Savings $185.60 (29.70%) >> Click here for deal

Windows Mobile eye candy

Windows Mobile's interface is getting better all the time, but it could use some help. Swooping to the rescue are interface replacers like Spb Mobile Shell. With integration for Facebook photos, intuitive navigation, and widget customizations, Spb's mobile interface alternative go a long way toward making Windows Mobile engaging.

The professional view sports a clock and weather widget, your various voice mail and message in-boxes, alarms, and the calendar on a glossy background whose maroon default you can change. Below is a contact icon that opens your contact list. Newly added Facebook integration lets you pick among your … Read more

Moto Labs screens interactive display concept

A new touch-screen tabletop computer display brings together the unlikely combination of technologies popularized by Apple and Microsoft.

It's called the Scalable Multitouch display, and its touch technology is similar to the iPhone, but it would scale up from handheld device size to dimensions more like those of Microsoft's Surface. The prototype measures just 19 inches right now, but it aspires to cover an entire 50-inch tabletop one day.

The Scalable Multitouch has been in development at Moto Labs in San Francisco for the past two years, and on Tuesday the company released an updated video (below) as a peek of what it's working on.

Like Microsoft's Surface, the Scalable Multitouch display is intended to be used as a group workspace where information on the screen can be manipulated by hand. But Moto Labs CEO Daniell Hebert says what his company is doing is different than Microsoft and others because it does not use cameras or projectors underneath the surface of the display to project images. And by nixing the inner camera/projector, it allows the display to be thin--perhaps some day as thin as the LCD screen you're likely reading this on.

The display instead uses multitouch technology--which means you can use more than one finger as an input device. Moto Labs likes to say that you can use as many fingers to control the device as you want, and that you're only limited by the number of fingers you have on each hand.

The device also employs capacitive touch--same as the iPhone--in which a finger touching a sensor grid (just below the screen) causes a change in signal. That relays exactly where on the screen the finger is. But while the iPhone uses a solid solution known as ITO (indium tin oxide), Moto Labs employs a grid of super-thin wires that pick up on the signals from each finger.

The thin-wire grid is used right now in single-touch displays, but has yet to be used on multitouch, and that's where Moto Labs' work on the inner electronics and the software to take advantage of multitouch comes in. … Read more

Get more productive with USB display adapter

Having a second monitor doesn't just make your office space look more serious, it also helps you boost your productivity. Unfortunately, most computers don't come with a video card that can handle more than one display at a time. This is when you need to resort to one of the USB ports for the second display.

Other World Computing announced on Tuesday its USB 2.0 display adapter that helps you easily add additional monitors to your computer. The adapter is basically a bus-powered USB external video card. All you need to do is plug it into an … Read more

Putting our arms around the future of touch

SAN JOSE, Calif.--The success of Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPod have shown the consumer appeal of devices that respond to human touch and movement, but a quick glance around the San Jose Hilton showed just how young the industry is.

While this week's RSA 2009 show fills the Moscone Center a little ways up north in San Francisco, the Interactive Displays 2009 conference barely fills a mid-size ballroom here. Its show floor more closely resembles a science fair than the glitz of a big-time trade show.

But if you used one of the interactive displays here … Read more

SmartTouch puts some muscle into haptic technology

SAN JOSE, Calif.--Artificial Muscle believes that when you touch your computer or phone, it should touch back.

The Silicon Valley company is working on putting haptic feedback in a variety of devices, from laptops to touch-screen phones. Though forced feedback isn't a new concept, the way this company is going about it is different. It showed off some of its technologies at the Interactive Displays 2009 conference here.

Instead of using the vibration motor in a phone to give feedback from a screen, the company has developed and patented an electroactive polymer that expands when it receives an … Read more

PixelQi puts three displays in one

SAN JOSE, Calif--You have to be able to see a screen before you can use multitouch gestures on it.

Here at the Interactive Displays 2009 conference, while the rest of the budding touch-screen industry talks about the best way to incorporate multitouch into expensive handheld gadgets, Mary Lou Jepsen is working on how to make computer displays readable in the sunlight--on the cheap.

Jepsen--co-founder of One Laptop Per Child--is now heading up display start-up PixelQi, which makes low-cost, highly efficient displays for low-cost laptops like the XO from OLPC.

"The future of portables is all about the screen," … Read more

Lower-priced, non-Apple displays to woo your MacBooks

I reviewed Apple's LED Cinema Display late last year and found it a great performer. But it was only compatible with a small subsection of the market--thanks to Apple's use of Mini DisplayPort as its sole video connection. Due to this decision, the display was disappointingly only compatible with the new MacBooks.

This week, Collins announced that it will be the first company besides Apple to release LCD computer monitors with MDP connections.

Collins has dubbed the monitor line CinemaView, and the first three models are slated to be available by September 1.

The three CinemaView displays are … Read more