Using hand gestures to control the TV set eliminates the need of remote control. This of course provides more handiness to the users which waving of hands only allows you to operate the TV. No more fighting for remote control among couple and family members. And also no more misplace of TV remote control.

The two mentioned companies that work with Hitachi, have their own roles in bringing the gesture-controlled TV sets to reality. GestureTek is basically focused on software that is able to recognize hand gestures and defines which gestures control which TV functions.

Canesta is responsible for the hardware that captures 3D image of the hand of the audience, so the system can differentiate between your hand and a picture of your hand.

The Hitachi gesture-controlled TV would allow each user to have their own setting of hand commands stored in it. It’s always wise for a user to set some simple enough gestures for switching channels or jumping to your favorite channels. So you can always be ahead of your partner for doing so. Watch the demo in the video below.

via trendsupdates via singularityhub

To listen to the incomplete or scrambled tunes on the neckties, what you need to is to sacrifice an old walkman. Take the front cover off, stick the magnetic playhead out with helps of some glue and clothespin, plug in headphones into the walkman, rub the playhead along the surface of your necktie. Watch the clip below how it’s done.

These audible neckties will run you $90, but they may be useful when you’ve got too bored with your days, which you can then ready your screw drivers, sabotage an old walkman and listen to some tunes on the neckties.

Buy online, $90, Supermarket

via coolest-gadgets

Here comes the Vioguard keyboard, the first of its kind that features a UV sanitizer that can kill germs and viruses. The sanitizer is a 25-watt UV light that claims to be able to kill 99.99% of bacteria and viruses in about 90 seconds. Leaving the 0.1%, which should be defendable by your own body immune system.

Some more, this keyboard is motorized, equipped with IR sensor, which hides itself when it’s not in use so it will not get contaminated by dust and dirt around. Wave your hand in front of the IR sensor, it’ll come out to serve you.

The Vioguard self-clean keyboard was introduced at the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) 91st annual meeting, October 12-17 in Toronto. It aims at medical market uses and consumers in Canada. The keyboard should appeal to health-conscious geeks, especially during the time when H1N1 flu is still pretty active over the globe. Equip one of these for your family who possibly share only one computer at home. But it’ll run you with an expensive price of $899. Video below shows the self-clean keyboard in action.

via dvice via techfresh

Besides communications, ROPID is also able to walk, run and jump more rapidly than any other similarly constructed robots. The actual size of the ROPID is apparently shown in the picture below.

It’s certainly a robot for those lonely city dwellers, which they can have someone to talk to after a hard day of work. It could be like your new born but with better communication and mobility to keep the rest of your day with more fun. Video below shows the mobility of the ROPID robot.

via dvice

via lowyat via geek

Now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have made it possible for drivers to see through road obstacles by having built an augmented reality system that brings the see-through capabilities to car drivers. How does the AR system do that? Basically, the system consists of two cameras, one captures the driver’s view and a second captures the scene behind a view-blocking wall. The feeds from the second camera is then picked up a computer which layers it on top of the images captured by the first camera, to make walls and other obstacles appear transparent.

The system can be extended to combine any roadside cameras, which will be made capable of transmitting feeds wirelessly and displayed on the car’s windshield instead of a monitor to make the drivers’ life much easier. The system also makes use of advanced software to minimize distortion of moving objects in the captured images.

via gizmowatch

The Bold 9700 has got a 3.2 megapixel camera, the screen resolution is 480×360 instead of 480×320, and it’s to run the latest BlackBerry OS version 5.0. The 9700 has also taken out the usual trackball found on most previous models of BlackBerrys and replaced it with an optical trackpad that was first started by Curve 8520.

The BlackBerry Bold will support tri-band 900 / 1700 / 2100 and quad-band 800 / 850 / 1900 / 2100MHz 3G, which is a perfect fit for AT&T, T-mobile and a multitude networks in Canada and Europe.

No specific carrier has been announced by RIM for the 9700, but leaving us with teaser claiming that it’ll come to all carriers worldwide in November.

via engadget

Meet the the world’s fastest amphibious vehicle, WaterCar Python, which can run at a top speed of 60 mph on water. It is powered by a modified Corvette engine, plus the Dominator Jet for propulsion, which are able to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in only 4.5 seconds.

The WaterCar now simply looks like a pickup truck excepts the rear end carrying the Corvette look. The interior features two captain’s chairs up front and a wrap-around bench in back, so you can get couple of your friends for a joyride on both the water and land.

This amphibious vehicle is definitely meant for the real enthusiasts who are into water sports. One of these will set you back a whopping $200,000.

via dvice

Hobbyists can develop or alter the application software for this robot. You can code the software on a computer, make some changes and then download to the robot for testing. This Vstone Robovie-PC comes with almost everything found in a computer ioncluding the 1.6GHz Z530 Atom processor, 1.3 magepixel webcam, dual USB ports, a VGA connector and it supports WiFi some more. The WiFi connectivity should come in handy for you to download any new code onto it via the wireless network.

Since this mini robot is like a complete computer, it also runs Windows or Linux as the operating system. And it offers easiness to achieve advanced functionality. The Vstone Robovie Robot can also be directed by the user to go around and take pictures using its webcam and upload the pictures automatically to photo sharing sites via the WiFi connectivity.

The robot is powered by a 7.2V NiMH battery. The exterior body is made of a polyurethane foam that provides electronic protections with soft and squishy material properties. The 15-inch tall Vstone Robovie won’t come cheap, it costs around $4,500, could be the most expensive in the market but it offers lots of flexibilities for hobbyists to customize or develop it to have more functionalities.

via engadget via plasticpals

In order not to spend additional bucks to buy bigger recycle container or to save some space for your tiny apartment, it’ll be a good idea to crush all those used cans, so they will just need a smaller container to hold them.

Here comes the Automatic Aluminum can crusher, which shall automatically start crushing those used cans into smaller pieces once they’re in its mouth. This Can crusher is the first of its kind meant for households instead of industry. And the interesting part is it works on battery and requires less power than those industrial units. Watch the prototype of the can crusher in action below.

Buy online, $49, Amazon

via Walyou

Basically the Wacom Bamboo range consists of a number of input devices including the Bamboo Pen & Touch, Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch, Bamboo Pen* and Bamboo Touch, which each can be hooked up to your computer’s USB port to be used as an inpout device to manipulate graphics and text on your computer.

Depending on the device, each of them you’ll normally have a touch tablet or a pen, or both. The touch tablets respond to multi-touch inputs from your fingers, which you can use to manipulate graphics, scroll web pages, read documents, flip through photo album. And the pen tablet can be used to write documents, emails, letters, and make various sketches or scribbles.

All these Bamboo tablets are backed by useful software applications such as ArtRage painting software, Bamboo Dock and Bamboo Minis. The video below shows the Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch in action.

Buy online, £170, Bamboo Fun Pen & Touch

Buy online, £170, Bamboo Pen

But unfortunately, the Bionic Eye Augmented reality app is pulling information from the POI (Point Of Interest) database instead of one for the spaceship environment. The POI database provides local information including the nearest restaurant, WiFi hotspots, trainstations, hotels and many other categories. This application should be best used for a tourist who is completely new to a city.

The current database has over 100,000 entries which covers various cities in the United States and also in the UK, Tokyo and France, making it quite a cool app for those who live in one of those cities. The data is pulled from POI database which is less than 1KM away from the user. The app also makes use of the iPhone 3GS’ built-in compass which lets it put the data on the camera feed correctly.

For iPhone models without built-in compass are still able to use this app. But only you don’t get the camera view. Instead, you’ll get Google Maps to wander around. The app is now available on iTunes for $1 only.

Buy online, Bionic Eye Augmented Reality App, $1

via gadgetvenue

The dual-screens are 7-inch touchscreen displays which can be manipulated with fingers or using stylus for writing, drawing and flicking. The dual-screens definitely help those who’re overly busy, always need to perform multiple tasks on their devices.

The MS Courier dual-screen booklet allows you to have one screen launching a web browser for accessing some websites and the other screen can be used to write some reports, making you more productive. It definitely speeds up you work if you always need to have one screen opening to an original document and the other screen is for you to another document that resembles the original.

via coated

The C64 emulator app costs you only $4.99 and comes included with 5 games, which are Dragons den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck, and Jack attack. More games will be coming and sold separately for the price of $0.99 to $1.99 each. Video below shows the C64 emulator for iPhone in action.

Buy online, iTunes, $4.99

via geeky-gadgets touch arcade

Not sure how good the EyeWriter device can lead the users to draw or write using their eyes. It shouldn’t be as good as using their hands for drawing and writing. But this at least gives them hopes which they can pick up their main interest, continue their drawing and writing careers.

via crunchgear

The new SurePress screen on the BlackBerry Storm 2 actually uses peizo-electric which might make it the next big thing in touchscreen technology – the peizo-electric-powered touchscreen combines the benefits of multi-touch with good feedback. The video below shows that how the new Storm 2’s peizo-touchscreen works, how the technology allows the display to become stiff when it’s powered off and become spongy when powered on. The BlackBerry Storm 2 will pack with WiFi and come to Verizon in October.

via intomobile

Anyway, QLOCKTWO wall clock carries a huge price tag of $1,600, a price that is sufficient for you to pay an HDTV. But it’s certainly a unique one that may blend well with your artistic kind of living. The QLOCKTWO wall clock is now available in two versions which are the German and English. Watch the QLOCKTWO in action in the clip below.

via walyou

With the Star6 app installed on your iPhone, you can easily play and manipulate one of the six included audio samples; such as mixing it with different effects, changing the pitch, cutting up the beats, making different crazy sounds by simply moving the iPhone.

The Star6 app also allows you to record the samples that you’ve played and mixed, which you can then play back to listen to a great session again or use it for production. The Star6 app lets you to open a web browser on a PC or Mac to download audio samples to the iPhone. It also comes included with sample management function for the ease of organizing samples on the iPhone. Attached below is the video clip that shows Star6 app and its creator Jason Forrest in action.

Find out more Star 6 App

When a gamer plays racing game using the iPhone, the user needs to hold the iPhone up in the air for the entire session of the racing game. Of course, this will give lots of stress to the arms of the users. One of the two steering wheels produced by CTA Digital is to address the stress problem faced by user while playing the racing game on iPhone.

One version of the CTA steering wheels comes with a base that has a suction cup mount which allows you to attach it on a tabletop or other flat surface. This will eliminate the tiredness of your arms of having to lift the iPhone up for playing the game.

But the other version of the steering wheels might give more pressure to your two hands. As it has no suction base which you’ll have to hold the wheel in the air, plus the weight of the iPhone, you’d run into risk of breaking your arms. No word on pricing yet for these two wheels. But some guess that it could be priced around $20-$30. Video of the wheel in action is attached below:

via gizmowatch

The iPhone 3GS is connected to the robot’s body via the dock connector. The bot’s facial expressions are also shown on the iPhone’s screen. With the iPhone interface, the bot is also made to function as an alarm clock and a dancer. The video below shows the bot in action.

via gizmowatch