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Wheelchairs Could Be Tongue-Controlled - Just Like My Favourite Button
Posted by Gizmodo US Edition at 11:48 PM on July 2, 2007
Tongue-controlled wheelchairs could be in the offing by the end of the year, thanks to a US company. Think-A-Move is using a device made by a couple of engineers from Southern Illinois University, which consists of a simple earpiece that determines how a person is moving their tongue, thanks to a person's Eustachian tube, which connects the middle ear to the back of the mouth.
The research team asked eight people to perform four basic tongue movements—up, down, left and right—one hundred times, while wearing an earplug that contained a microphone pointing into the ear. The device, which works because of the mic's ability detect subtle pressure changes inside the ear, had a 97 per cent success rate.
US wheelchair company Think-A-Move already has a wheelchair control system aimed at quadriplegics controlled by swallows and coughs, but is planning on releasing a wheelchair that uses this system at by the end of the year. Ravi Vaidyanathan, one of the engineers behind the idea, who is now at Southampton University, thinks that a tongue-controlled system will be more hygienic. "It also keeps the mouth free for talking," he claimed.
Earplug provides steer-by-tongue control [New Scientist]
Sharp is revamping their Aquos G Series first in Japan, then the world. 16 models going from a basic 26-incher to 52 inches of sick-inducing 120Hz Full HD glory. According to Sharp, they increase their colour range adding a fourth wavelength lamp to the backlighting. Despite having no multi-touch capabilities, screen keyboard or any Apple logo to be seen, they share the same sleek black and silver look as that other thing, as you will see in the gallery after the jump.
Besides rolling out seven new digital photo frames in sizes ranging from 6 inches to 15 inches, Pandigital cut the cord today with three accessories for its line of photo frames: a Bluetooth connector/adapter, a Wi-Fi connector/adapter, and also a battery pack.
Krups seems to have come up with the master-toaster's toaster. The TT6190 can do all kinds of everything to your buns, as well lighting up your kitchen and seducing your wife.
For $US60, what else can this baby do? There's a defrost option, which means no burnt corners and frozen centre when you put your bread straight in from the freezer, and eight different toasting options - even bagels are catered for.
The brushed steel exterior is cool to the touch (why does that sound like something from Danielle Steele?) and there's a cancel button if you think you're giving your bread the wrong treatment. Oh, and there's no dicing with death as you stick the knife down the slot in search for that dwarf piece of toast, as there's a special high-lift toasting lever. My only complaint is that the TT6190 doesn't have four slots, because I'm a greedy girl who can woof eight slices in one sitting.
Alpina and Smartech Italia SpA are behind the Onfalos, a teppan-style grill for your garden. Made of stainless steel, the Onfalos grill is so hardcore you can even grill in a blizzard - if you want to, that is - and all you need is a 5kg gas cylinder.
The combustion chamber and chimney are hidden beneath the circular plate (apparently it's easy to clean if you're a slob like me) inside a cone-shaped structure, and there is a drain tray to collect the cooking liquids. The petals come in six colors - lilac, hot, white, mandarin, pearl gray and sun - which I guess are for resting the plates on when you're serving up. Oh, and did you know that Ónfalos means "belly button" in Greek? No, me neither.
What do you do if you're sitting in line waiting to pick up your iPhone and suddenly feel the call of nature - eh, Brian? Do you:
German lighting wunderwizard Frank Buchwald has a series of lighting fixtures that will look as good in your desk as in Captain Nemo's quarters or some Area 51's specimen gallery. As illustrated by the Series 9 model here, they go beyond steampunk and get straight into alien life-form territory. I wish they could also walk.
Definitely more awesome than 
Just as Apple was riding high on the iPhone, Ferris Bueller style in a parade of fans and media alike, Universal Music plans to throw a knee into Jobs and Co.'s collective crotch. Universal Music Group will supposedly tell Apple that they will not be renewing a long term contract for iTunes music, instead going for a short-term sales agreement that will still let Apple keep their artists's music up for sale.
This shorter contract benefits Universal by letting it have more flexibility in dealings with other music services, presumably ones like Microsoft's Zune or Rhapsody, or even its own store if it feels up to it. How does this affect you? Our guess is that it won't. Apple will do a lot to keep Universal at the table, which probably means you won't be missing your Alizee or your Amy Grant anytime soon. But it may mean lower profits for Apple itself, and could slow down any efforts in motion to get DRM-free (like EMI's catalog) into iTunes.
Remember way back in 2004, when Verizon Wireless introduced Motorola's V710 with "crippled" Bluetooth? Headset pairing worked, but there were no file-transfer options and other extended features. People literally sued in protest. Well, as you probably know, the scales of justice never tipped. In the past three years, most Bluetooth phones sold by carriers in the US have been "crippled" in that sense, including the iPhone:
• It can't transfer files to a PC, or appear on a desktop for drag-and-drop file juggling.
• It can't send a photo to a Bluetooth printer.
• It can't stream audio via Bluetooth to a compatible speaker system or headset. (Video is out of the question.)
However, it can link with any Bluetooth headset on the market, including the Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset that will soon be at an Apple Store near you. Now that you're depressed about its lack of capability, want to hear what's cool?
It's official: your older video iPod can duplicate many of the features of Apple TV, but the iPhone specifically cannot. There is no capacity for outputting video, via Apple dock, cable or third-party accessory. This means that the iPhone will not be a direct competitor to the Apple TV (good news for Apple, perhaps). It also means that any videos you may have bought a second time or encoded again at higher resolution may have been in vain. And so are your chances of ever bringing movies to your vacation rental, weekend home or friend's house to watch via iPhone.
Let's start with the accidental... ;)
A reader dropped her iPhone (pictured above) shortly after buying it, from a distance of only two feet up, but managed to crack her screen on the thinly-carpeted floor. But with no replacement plan, insurance, or any sort of clumsy-protection, she found herself screwed out of $600. That was, until the Apple store from which she purchased the unit emailed her and replaced it free. Wow. Her quote: "I guess they felt sorry for me."
Even though most AT&T stores sold out of iPhones on the first day, many Apple stores still had them in yesterday (as well as today). So why are people putting up iPhones for $700-$900 on Craigslist? And why are auctions on eBay ending at higher than retail?
It's hard to say. Looking through completed auctions on eBay, you see lots of phones selling for around $650 with free shipping, which means you're getting a phone for just about retail. There are a few that went for crazier amounts ($700+), but those are pretty rare. So it looks like a buyer's market on eBay. If you live in a state without an Apple store, you can definitely score one here for close to retail.
When it comes to iPhone compatibility with old-school docks and accessories, the fear factor has been pretty high. Compounding that is the annoying message you get as soon as you dock an iPhone: "This accessory is not made to work with iPhone." Then, more mysteriously, "Would you like to turn on Airplane Mode to reduce audio interference (you will not be able to make or receive calls)?" I have tested it on a few music docks, daringly answering "No" each time, and I'm happy to report, it's no big deal. On the flipside, anyone who bought one of those newer video docks is bound to be frustrated, because in our testing, they didn't work.
You know that AIM mobile device forwarding that forwards your AIM messages to your phone via SMS? The one that just about all IM clients already have now? Apple's building a link to that feature in Leopard's iChat, under the accounts screen in preferences.
What does this do? Well, with this, you can forward your messages to your iPhone, which with the iChat-like SMS screen, gives you a kind of iChat-esque option for chat.
It's pretty ghetto, and it's pretty much the least Apple could do to get iChat onto the iPhone. How about we see a real iChat app, or better yet, a multi-client chat client like Adium?
Most people know by now that the iPhone is essentially a brick without a contract and activation. But a lot of the phone's features don't require phone service at all, like WiFi and music playback. And pending that you have two iPhones handy, we have unconfirmed instructions on how to activate those latent features without a contract, after the jump.
Holux makes some cool GPS units, and the GR-239 is no exception. Sure it's another SiRF Star III receiver, but it hosts some convenient features like plugging into your car's 
STITCH glasses by designer Seungyoub Oh take your favorite moments of eating cookies at Grandma's and combine them with the coolest moments from now-banned cigarette advertising. Yes, dear readers, glasses have fused with doilies.
Featuring customizable removable side panels, you can personalize your bling without fumbling around, dropping your expensive lenses. And while we'd never wear a pair of these conceptual monstrosities, the promise of easy-to-update, one-of-a-kind accessories are very appealing to us in a techworld dominated by stark monochrome.
By Japanese manufacturer TakaraTomy, these $27 floating lamps resemble our own two favorite members of the Solar System, the Earth and its moon. Simple in design, the lamps are simply mylar balloons (like you'd see at a birthday party) with an LED at the bottom to make it glow. We'd love to see buy more durable version without the helium. Because the two extra tanks of gas are just going to tempt us into trading more brain cells for fleeting moments of funny speech.
In a recent study by The Diffusion Group, analysts discovered some alarming facts about gamers and just how often they use—or know they can use—the multimedia capabilities of their consoles. Here are the numbers:
- 80% of console owners can playback DVD or Blu-ray discs.
- 30% even know about those features
- 13% use those features
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