Engineers are building inexpensive, tabletop, touch-screen displays and sharing the instructions online.

Hands-on hardware: Cubit is an open-source, multitouch, tabletop display, similar to Microsoft’s Surface but less expensive and requiring assembly. The top picture shows a user whose fingers are leaving traces on the table’s surface. The bottom picture shows the Cubit unit, fully assembled. Credit: Nortd

The iPhone popularized the idea of multitouch displays, and just last month, Microsoft brought the concept to a larger screen by releasing Surface, a multitouch table with a hefty $10,000 price tag. But now engineers at Eyebeam, an art and technology center based in New York, have created a scaled-down open-source version of Surface, called Cubit. By sharing the Cubit’s hardware schematics and software source code, the engineers are significantly reducing the cost of owning a multitouch table. But they’re also fostering innovation by giving engineers an open platform on which to develop novel multitouch applications–something that they’ve previously lacked.

Addie Wagenknecht, a fellow at Eyebeam, designed Cubit in an attempt to “demystify multitouch.” She and her collaborator Stefan Hechenberger “wanted to prove that anyone could build [a multitouch table] if they had a few simple things,” she says. In addition to making Cubit software available online, Wagenknecht is selling various do-it-yourself kits that include parts and instructions, aimed at people with a range of engineering skills. Putting together a personal multitouch table could cost anywhere from $500 to $1,000, depending on the type of hardware used, Wagenknecht says.

Multitouch displays are not new technology; in fact, they’ve been built in research labs for decades. Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs created an iconic multitouch table called DiamondTouch; more recently, Jeff Han, founder of Perceptive Pixel, based in New York, developed wall-sized multitouch screens that he sells to corporations and major government agencies. But because of the falling costs of many touch-screen components, such as infrared light sources and small cameras and projectors, it’s now becoming feasible for people without access to a lab or venture-capital money to make their own multitouch displays.

Microsoft’s Surface has an image projector, infrared-light emitters, and five cameras nestled in its base. According to Kyle Warnick, a Microsoft marketing manager, both the projector and the infrared emitter shine onto the tabletop from underneath. When an object such as a finger or a cell phone is in contact with the surface, it reflects the infrared light in a characteristic way, and the reflection is picked up by the cameras below. Currently, Microsoft has no plans to open the hardware or software of the system to developers.

Wagenknecht says that her system works in a similar way. Cubit is a boxy table with a clear surface. The single camera inside the table can be a simple webcam with an added infrared filter, and a small image projector can be purchased for about $300. Wagenknecht says that a user simply needs to plug the webcam into a computer, install software available on the Cubit project’s site, plug in the projector, and project images onto the screen. In her kit, she includes a tabletop screen that has a coating that makes it easier for the camera to track objects, she says. Also included in the kit are strips of infrared LEDs that shine light onto the back of the screen, much like the infrared light sources that Microsoft uses.

Do it yourself: Researchers at Eyebeam, an engineering and design firm, sell kits that let people build their own multitouch tables. In this picture, the Cubit frame is completely disassembled. To make the display functional, users must add an inexpensive video camera and a projector, among other pieces of hardware. Credit: Nortd

Cubit will be on display in San Mateo, CA, this weekend at the Maker Faire, a showcase for do-it-yourself technology, arts, and crafts. Other open-source multitouch projects will also be represented. A team of independent engineers will demonstrate a multitouch table whose design is similar to that of Jeff Han’s displays. In this system, the infrared light that’s detected by the cameras is injected into the screen from the edges, bouncing inside the screen, trapped until an object touches the screen to scatter it. In addition, Johnny Lee, a graduate student from Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, is presenting another multitouch project in which he uses the infrared camera of a Wii controller to make an interactive whiteboard for less than $50.

Projects like these illustrate two important trends in technology, says Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, the publishing company whose Make and Craft magazines put on the Maker Faire. First, the falling cost of hardware enables people to play with high technology without taking a large financial risk. Second, people are forming online communities, such as Instructables.com and wikiHow.com, to share their ideas, solve problems, and start collaborative projects.

Traditionally, O’Reilly says, the open-source community has focused on software, but in recent years, there’s been a push to share more information about hardware. “What we’re seeing is, hackers are engaging in the world of things in the way that they used to in the world of software,” he says. And the more people are able to contribute to building and improving technology, the more chance there is for innovation.

TAKEN FROM www.technologyreview.com

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Taken from www.smashingapps.com

Hot on the heels of last week’s report from ABI Research noting that many consumers may not see the picture quality difference between Blu-ray and standard DVDs comes the latest Blu-ray sales figures from NPD Group. And they’re not pretty.

According to NPD, sales of Blu-ray standalone players plummeted 40 percent from January to February, then rose a scant 2 percent from February to March. The general consensus was that once Toshiba dropped its support for the HD DVD format early this year, sales would increase.

In fact, sales of Blu-ray standalone players remain so low that NPD has not yet released actual numbers, for fear that it would be easy to identify individual retailers. The research group will start to give actual figures later this year, said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at NPD.

The end of the format wars clearly did little to boost Blu-ray’s prospects. Like others, Mr. Rubin said the much cheaper upconverting standard DVD players are winning consumers’ hearts and wallets.

The price of upconverting players is hovering around $70. And this week, Amazon is giving them away for free when consumers purchase certain Samsung TVs. The result: a 5 percent uptick in upconverting DVD player sales in the first quarter of 2008, compared to same quarter a year ago, and a 39 percent decline in players that don’t have that feature.

With Blu-ray players still costing more than $300 — and a number of players on the market still lacking some Blu-ray features like Internet connectivity — NPD now figures that Blu-ray’s future won’t be clear until this Christmas, when prices should drop to the $200 range.

ABI Research is even less optimistic. In a report released yesterday, the research firm figures it could take until October 2009 until Blu-ray gains a foothold in the market.

TAKEN FROM bits.blogs.nytimes.com

The big thing about the next iPhone was supposed to be high-speed Internet access and tools for business. Instead, it’s looking like iPhone 2.0 is all about price and that ever-awkward relationship between Apple and AT&T.

With less than two months to go before Steve Jobs takes the stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where he’s expected to unveil a new iPhone, it appears that AT&T may not be convinced that new bells and whistles will be enough to get droves of new customers to switch from other wireless carriers. So after a year of charting a new wireless business model by selling the vaunted iPhone at premium prices, the nation’s biggest phone company may resort to the oldest trick in the cellular book: big discounts.

Although it has sent millions of new customers AT&T’s way, this unique market advantage known as the iPhone will only last so long. With every passing month, rival device makers are introducing new handhelds that attempt to replicate the wide array of innovations—starting with sheer simplicity—that Apple (AAPL) used to rock the wireless world less than a year ago. None of these new phones has duplicated Apple’s formula for success yet, but it may be only a matter of time.

Stimulating Demand

Published reports that first appeared on the Web site of Fortune Magazine suggest that AT&T (T), which has an exclusive five-year deal to sell the iPhone in the U.S., is prepared to subsidize the device by as much as $200, slicing the purchase price as low as $199 for customers who sign a two-year service contract. Apple and AT&T declined to comment on the matter.

Such a discount could cause a surge in demand. At last count, Apple had sold some 5.4 million units, the vast majority of them for AT&T’s network, even with price tags of $400 to $600—essentially unheard of in the U.S. cellular market. Impressively, AT&T says 40% of its iPhone users are new customers. Yet with rival smartphones like Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and a new Palm (PALM) Treo selling for as little at $99 at some carriers, competitive pressures are building.

But a price cut might be about more than nabbing new customers. AT&T’s goal may also be to boost monthly revenues from existing subscribers who switch to the iPhone, as the big colorful screen and robust Web browser on the Apple device tends to make iPhone owners heavier users of AT&T’s wireless data services. AT&T brings in about $90 a month from each iPhone user, reckons John Hodulik, analyst with UBS Investment Research (UBS). “When Apple cut the price on the iPhone by 33% earlier this year, it stimulated demand,” he says. “If this new price turns out to be true, it would do it again. It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

For AT&T, eager to generate returns on its multibillion-dollar investments in a next-generation data network, a $200 subsidy on a device with a proven success record may be a no-brainer, says Richard Doherty of the Envisioneering Group. “This is not unexpected at all,” he says. “The $200 is a small fraction of the revenue that AT&T makes over a two-year contract.

Open Marriage?

There’s also been speculation, considered unlikely, that AT&T might be floating the idea of an iPhone subsidy to reinforce its marriage with a partner as notoriously slippery and heavy-handed as Apple.

Some have suggested, for example, that Apple might try to argue that the new iPhone isn’t covered by the exclusive rights given AT&T for the first edition, and thus walk away from AT&T. In theory, this would open the door to a version for the technology used by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel (S). The speculation has been fueled in part by comments from Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, in February, when he said that Apple “isn’t married” to any particular business model.

Likewise, rumors have emerged in recent weeks that Apple is considering selling an iPhone in Australia that would work with multiple carriers. But most analysts dismiss that possibility as unlikely, at least in the U.S. “As far as anyone knows Apple is married to AT&T for another four years,” Hodulik says.  ” TAKEN FROM” www.businessweek.com

While the public’s attention seems to be swinging toward Windows 7 (the next iteration of the OS)—a topic I’ll address in the weeks ahead—the fact of the matter is that Vista remains. And it seems that the OS now has two distinct groups of users. One group happily uses Vista, with few concerns or complaints. In fact, many of them are baffled by all the grumbling. The other group is the fist-shaking Vista bashers who condemn each and every flaw the OS exhibits.

The latter group is by far the most vocal and easily drowns out the former group. Its complaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company’s history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft.

I mention the bogus announcements above because, at some point, you do get a little tired of Microsoft making exaggerated promises and then never coming close to delivering the goods. In the case of Vista, it has to do with the three “pillars” that were announced early on. The OS really delivered on only one of the pillars, and that pillar was nothing but Windows dressing: Aero, the resource hog and performance sapper.

With the “pillars” in mind, I decided to take a look at the 11 reasons why Vista remains on shaky ground:

1) Market confusion. From the beginning, everyone moaned about the fact that there were simply too many versions of the OS for sale. Who needs all the variations? It’s stupid—plain and simple. What you want is the one best version, not a slew of namby-pamby ones. This happened because the folks at Microsoft know only how to merchandise and, seemingly, not how to market.

2) Code size. I’ve got two words for you: TOO BIG. Enough said.

3) Missing components. Yes, WinFS, the promised file system and a core pillar of Vista, isn’t there. The promises regarding the development of this file system go back to 1991. And Microsoft cannot make it a reality? Why?

4) Laptop battery-life drain. This was supposed to be fixed with special code and hybrid hard disks (HHD). Still, users have to resort to expensive silicon drives.

5) HHD fiasco. I’m still irked about being told by the HD industry that the benefits of the new generation of hard drives will “make people flock to Vista.” That was over two years ago, and suddenly there’s silence about the whole thing. One of these days, someone will tell me what really happened. My guess: It never worked correctly, and no one could make it work.
TAKEN FROM www.pcmag.com

Energy conservation and gadgetphilia are tough to combine, but this Power Cost Controller power strip might be just the ticket for those looking to monitor — and potentially cut back on — their power usage. The strip’s display counts kilowatt-hour power usage and tracks by hour, week, month, and year. It also monitors line quality with voltage, line frequency, and power factor readings. We’re just not sure if we really want to know how much power we’re using, but if you’re ready for the bad news, the strip is $99 and available now.

TAKEN FROM www.engadget.com

The Data Sharing Summit in San Francisco was a gas. It was a real pleasure to work with like-minded people from organizations, large and small, all supporting DataPortability.

At the Summit I had the chance to show off Digg’s latest DataPortability enhancements. Although the enhancements are not visible on Digg.com, if you use Digg together with other social networks, these enhancements can make the Web more fun and useful.

Among the recent enhancements:

- We’ve added XFN to your user profile. XFN is an open standard that makes it easier for other social Web sites to recognize your Digg friends.

- We’ve improved support for hCard, another open data format for communicating Digg user names, nicknames, and photos, so that your favorite friend-following tools can more easily display your friends’ activity.

- We’ve added RDFa, making Digg part of the “semantic web” where Web pages become more sophisticated, beyond simply words and pictures.

These efforts support our philosophy that you own your data.

Thanks,

TAKEN FROM /blog.digg.com

SALT LAKE CITY—Last August, the nail was poised over SCO’s coffin when Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell never relinquished the copyrights to UNIX, but nobody really knew when it would be driven home. The decision meant that SCO could be on the hook for as much as $20 million in unpaid royalties. Not long afterwards, SCO filed for bankruptcy, but that Chapter 11 filing was only able to delay the inevitable trial to determine how much Novell was owed. That long-awaited trial began this week, and Ars was on hand to report.

Related Stories

• Bankruptcy trustee skeptical as SCO punts on reorg plan

Last year, the court ruled that Novell owned the copyrights to original AT&T UNIX source code and derivatives, including SVRX (System V, Release X), and threw out the case. Now, the countersuit brought by Novell is being heard, and should be finished up this week. Novell has repeatedly said it has no interest in suing Linux users over UNIX copyrights, which would be against its interests now that Novell has ties to the open-source community through openSUSE and SUSE Enterprise Linux Server and Desktop distributions. I entered the courtroom yesterday at 8:30 AM, a few minutes after the proceedings were scheduled to begin. SCO senior vice president Chris Sontag was already on the stand, being questioned by Novell. When asked, “Is there any UnixWare code in Linux?” the answer was, “There very well could be, [...] I’ve never done that analysis, never seen that analysis.” Sontag also testified that there was no difference between the Microsoft and Sun licenses for UnixWare, saying, “They were equal.” After Sontag was dismissed, Novell called SCO CEO Darl McBride to the stand. He was briefly questioned on his experience working for Caldera, which later became SCO. When he joined the company (then Caldera) in 2002, it was in bad financial shape, losing $24 million in the previous quarter. To combat the downward spiral the company was in, McBride testified that he had gone around to various executives in the company and asked them what they thought could improve the situation. One of the execs told him that Caldera owned code in Linux from UNIX SVRX, UnixWare, and SCO OpenServer.

SCO CEO Darl McBride takes the stand 

McBride said that SCO holds the rights to UNIX and that “many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.” Specifically, he said, “We have evidence System V is in Linux,”—directly contradicting what Sontag had previously testified. Due to the witness exclusion rule invoked by both parties, McBride was not present during Sontag’s testimony and wasn’t aware of what had been said. McBride’s claims also directly contradict internal SCO memos from 2002, which reveal that the company’s own extensive source code audits had uncovered no UNIX code in Linux. McBride attempted to reinforce his argument with analogy. “When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there’s books on ‘How to Program UNIX’ but when you go to the Linux section and look for ‘How to Program Linux’ you’re not gonna find it, because it doesn’t exist.” Then came the real humdinger, and my jaw dropped when I heard the following come out of his mouth: “Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].” Novell grilled McBride for the better part of 10 minutes about “filling a form 10-K or 10-Q with the SEC that contained a false statement.” Novell’s counsel reiterated that two separate 10-Q forms filed by SCO did not include Sun or Microsoft revenue generated by UnixWare licenses. McBride adamantly denied any wrong doing, saying that the licenses were for the trunk of SCO intellectual property consisting of multiple brands, not the UnixWare product branch. This was the most hostile point of the day, with the council asking him the same question in several different ways.  After two hours on the stand, McBride stepped down. Greg Jones, VP of Technology at Novell, was called as a witness. Jones was asked if SCO ever told Novell that it would sue Linux users. He said, “No, never that specific.” When asked if SCO notified Novell under the Asset Purchase Agreement Amendment 2 that it would enter into a license with Microsoft, he said, “No.” Jones testified that SVRX code is in Solaris and that he had discovered several cases of this. At that point, Novell entered into evidence at least 21 examples of OpenSolaris code that had been taken from the SVRX code base (one such example can be found on the OpenSolaris web site) and re-licensed under Sun’s open-source CDDL license. He further testified that the agreement between SCO and Sun was “extraordinary” in allowing a move from a proprietary license to an open-source license, and if Novell had been asked, it would have prevented SCO from entering into that agreement. He said the same thing regarding the Microsoft agreement with SCO, as well as the agreement between SCO and Computer Associates. After Greg Jones stepped down from the stand, Novell rested, and SCO called John Maciaszek, who worked for AT&T starting in 1966 and moved on to be product manager for Unix System Laboratories (USL). He worked for Novell in a similar role when Novell acquired USL and now works for SCO part-time and is semi-retired. He was asked to detail some of the differences between SVRX v4.2MP (the first multi-processor version), and Unixware 2. He went on to say that UnixWare 1 is based solely on System 5 4.2 uni-processor code. Maciaszek said that when he worked for AT&T, the company always granted a right to use all prior versions of UNIX at no cost when licensing the current version. UnixWare included source code for OEMs to provide customized identical branded versions or to port to another architecture. “We use the one line of code rule. If you took one line of code from UnixWare and used it in a derivative work, that work would become subject to a UnixWare license,” Maciaszek said. After that beautiful quotation which highlights everything wrong with the way copyright law works in today’s world, Maciaszek stepped down. The court recessed for a short while, then reconvened for the summary judgement hearing.

SCO played with fire and got burned. During the hearing, it became clear what SCO is trying to accomplish by attempting to degrade the value of prior versions of SVRX. Novell is suing it for unjust enrichment, and SCO is trying to limit the damages Novell can collect as much as humanly possible. SCO argues that it was not authorized to execute license agreements and that interested third parties such as Sun and Microsoft should get their money back, but it says that Novell is not entitled to hold the money in the interim. If you purchased a license from SCO that was unauthorized, the argument is that you’ll need sue them to get it back. Since SCO is currently in bankruptcy proceedings, that could be difficult. When SCO sent threatening letters out to Fortune 1000 companies in May of 2003, it probably didn’t expect this to be the result. TAKEN FROM arstechnica.com

We knew that there was a motorized, fully-articulated R2-D2 projector with built-in DVD, iPod dock, all kinds of digital media inputs, and Millennium Falcon remote control, but we never—EVER—imagined it would be so amazingly drooltastic as this video shows. Time to put on your LEGO-made Han Solo jacket or Leia bikini, and buy this thing—because after watching it in action, I don’t care about the lack of Full HD support: this thing is absolutely I must have, caress, fondle, and lick all over material. Reaching nerdgasm, however, still costs $2,995. [Star Wars Shop via Star Wars Blog]

TAKEN  FROM gizmodo.com

Not only is the Apple iPhone the most popular phone for browsing the Internet, it is also the most popular phone for uploading pictures. Flickr, the world’s largest gallery of online pictures (by some accounts) rates the number of pictures uploaded by each type of camera phone. Guess who just passed the 5 megapixel Nokia N95 in terms of percentage of users? Yep, the 2 megapixel iPhone…

The results tabulated below show that the iPhone has steadily pulled ahead of the top Nokia and Sony Ericsson Phones over the course of the past year.  One would expect this lead to dramatically increase once a 3G iPhone is released (faster native uploads).

The results are pretty impressive given that the iPhone isn’t even a year old and the specs on the camera are considered by many to be underpowered.  

About this graph (from Flickr)

This graph shows the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo or video with a particular camera on a given day over the last year.

This graph is “normalized”, which is a fancy way of saying that they automatically correct for the fact that more people join Flickr each day: the graph moving up or down indicates a change in the camera’s popularity relative to all other cameras used by Flickr members.

The graph is only accurate to the extent that we can automatically detect the camera used to take the photo or shoot the video (about 2/3rds of the time). That is not usually possible with cameraphones, therefore they are under-represented.

TAKEN FROM blogs.computerworld.com