PC Tech World: Interactive

Showing posts with label Interactive. Show all posts

Friday, April 12, 2013

Hands-on redux: Creative's Interactive Gesture Camera at IDF 2013 Beijing (video)

Handson with Creative's Interactive Gesture Camera at IDF Beijing 2013 video

At IDF 2013 in Beijing, Intel is again making a big push for perceptual computing by way of voice recognition, gesture control, face recognition and more, and to complement its free SDK for these functions, Intel's been offering developers a Creative Interactive Gesture Camera for $149 on its website since November. For those who missed it last time, this time-of-flight depth camera is very much just a smaller cousin of Microsoft's Kinect sensor, but with the main difference being this one is designed for a closer proximity and can therefore also pick up the movement of each finger.

We had a go on Creative's camera with some fun demos -- including a quick level of gesture-based Portal 2 made with Intel's SDK -- and found it to be surprisingly sensitive, but we have a feeling that it would've been more fun if the camera was paired up with a larger display. Intel said Creative will be commercially launching this kit at some point in the second half of this year, and eventually the same technology may even be embedded in monitors or laptops (remember Toshiba's laptops with Cell-based gesture control?). Until then, you can entertain yourselves with our new hands-on video after the break.

Hands-on with Creative's Interactive Gesture Camera at IDF Beijing 2013 (video)

Source: Intel

Beamz teams up with Virtual DJ on interactive music system, we go lasers-on (video)

Beamz has been firing lasers in the name of limb-flailing performance for a few years. Today, it's announced it's working with popular music-mixing software Virtual DJ to provide the aural filling in its laser sandwich. The controller is the same four-beamed multi-button affair we've seen before, but now with a custom version of the aforementioned DJ application to call its own, and make the set-up a cinch. On screen you'll see two representations of the Beamz controller (instead of decks) with instant visual feedback to let you know which beam is mapped to what. You can configure four different triggers at one time, controlling cue points, looping and so on. To add functionality, you can then use the large buttons at the base of the device to rotate through different mappings. The emphasis, of course, is on performance here with nary a rotary nor fader in sight (we imagine you'd be using your other controller for that, right?). The software and hardware combo are being bundled together as a deal, and if you want in, you can do so right away for $200. Not sure if it'll fit in your workflow? Perhaps head past the break, and see if that video doesn't change your mind.

Source

By: Unknown On 10:13 AM

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Bing Pulse launching with help from Fox News, aims to make State of the Union speech more interactive

Just in time for next week's State of the Union address, Bing announced it's teamed up with Fox News to launch Bing Pulse, a one-stop hub where folks can easily interact and share their thoughts with one another while President Barack Obama's speech is taking place. The Microsoft-owned search engine says that Pulse will allow participants to vote on reactions to the event every five seconds, with the impending results being shown on the Bing Politics site. What's more, Bing believes "this will be the largest live online poll in history," which will be enhanced by the outfit's new Beat "social sentiment tracker" -- a service that's set to collect and analyze data from Twitter in order to figure out what are the trendiest political topics during the speech. Folks interested in joining the Bing Pulse conversation should hit that more coverage link to get acquainted -- and, of course, don't forget to bookmark it so you're all set come February 12th.

Source: Bing

More Coverage: Bing Politics

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Princip Interactive LED Futuro Cube hands-on

Playing around with ThinkGeek's table full of toys was unquestionably a highlight of 2013 CES experience, which is (thankfully) nearly at an end. In amongst the always awesome licensed Star Trek and Star Wars toys was the Princip Interactive LED Futuro Cube, a strange game device created with ThinkGeek. The device brings to mind the Rubik's Cube, if only because its a geometrical puzzle game. In place of colored squares are a series of different colored LED lights.

Like Rubik's famous three-dimensional toy, the Futuro isn't particularly easy to master. It has a menu system and offers up a series of audible commands to access its different games. Getting started takes a quick shake and it can be put to sleep with couple of taps. There's also a USB port on one side for downloading software updates, including new games.

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