It kills me how they synced the beats of the intro music to the "morphing" of the buttons...
Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
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Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#22Microsoft - a company that is making such a big push with touch in Windows 8 should be the most interested in this company.
Tactile touch has the ability to transform tablets from casual and convenience devices to the next generation of computers and MS is already betting on touch.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you might have to go 20 years to find that kind of difference. A decade ago, at least among the techie Americans that are the typical HN reference point, we had PalmPilot smartphones. Now we have some other brand of smartphones. Soon to have magical buttons, but otherwise not that huge of a revolution. The #1 thing to do with them a decade ago was to browse Google Maps and restaurant-review sites while away f…
We definitely were NOT browsing Google maps on our smartphones a decade ago.
Google Maps didn't even launch publicly until 2005.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#24Judging by the video, it looks like the layout of the buttons is fixed, only their presence is toggleable. If so, that's a bit of a bummer.
This always happens with technology videos. You can project a flat image onto a transparent screen? Call it a hologram! You can create fixed buttons? Suggest that it morphs into anything.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#25The video can be found here: http://vimeo.com/43431035 I really dislike the voice-over they have, but that might be personal preference. It just sounds like a regular person imitating a professional voice actor to me.
I think maybe he's actually deliberately going for a little humor.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#26This would be a killer feature for me if the buttons had some kind of depression, so I could feel the button before actually pressing it. Without that feature it's just a bumpy touch screen which isn't all that much better than a flat one in my opinion.
Exactly. My first reaction was "Okay, my mind is thoroughly blown." ...then my second thought was "wait, feeling around a bumpy touchscreen will just lead to more accidentally pressed keys unless they don't trigger until they're pressed down"
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#27Could you take little sections of this stuff, stack them together, and use them as a sort of programmable matter type thing?
Maybe if you fold them over or something they could just basically expand and contract. So you expand a bunch in one section to make a feature. Then wrap the whole thing in a very flexible skin. Press a button on a computer, and it morphs between (for example) an alligator shape and a person shape.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#28Very interesting and a bit scary. Think about it, a screen that can reach out and change its shape. That almost guarantees some (software) application misuse if they are given access to screen control. But on the other hand, gaming would be more interesting with something more to interact with than just what is displayed on screen. It will be interesting to see what becomes of this.
I'll bet one of the first apps to take advantage of this will be a back massager app.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#29Man, I knew this was coming. I just thought it would be like 5 years from now.
Re: Buttons that morph out of the surface of the device.
#30Here is very similar technology: http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/PneumaticDis...
Nokia has also done research into this but with little bit different technology: http://c2499022.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/wp-content...