Designed by Korean firm D’strict, the tech is a combination of infrared motion sensing and 3D imagery, pretty much like Microsoft’s Project Natal. It’s not quite as seamless as Natal, but given that it’s main purpose is just to add a little flash to a mobile phone announcement, we’re awfully impressed—and distracted. Check out the video below for a clip of one of the announcements, and you’ll see what we mean. [Fast Company]

Samsungmobile Jet making film from d'strict on Vimeo.

On Saturdays, Dr. Dena Coleman and her husband Gordon claim they are imprisoned in their condo because the landlord went and installed a motion-sensing security light to save energy and money. As Orthodox Jews, they say triggering the light violates a Sabbath rule, so they sued. Which rule? The Promethean one:

[The couple] claim they cannot leave their holiday flat on the Sabbath because when they do they automatically trigger the light in the communal hallway – contravening a religious ban on turning on electrical items from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday because it constitutes ‘creating fire’. They say their human rights are being breached and are now suing the flats’ management company – their neighbours – for failing to accommodate their religion.

Of the 35 other owners in the complex, not a single one of them supports the Colemans’ lawsuit or their suggested fix, which entails forcing the management company to install a custom override switch. Oh, and management and the other tenants must pay back all the legal costs too.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that this is just the couple’s holiday flat.

The case is scheduled for later this year. May the management install even more motion-sensing lights in that span. [Daily Mail - Thanks, Sctoland]

Says Sony Europe’s Head of Developer Services, Kish Hirani, the Eye will have the ability to “detect gender and even the age of the face, separate facial features such as the nose, eyes and ears, and even detect whether you’re smiling or not.”

And taking a page from Microsoft’s Natal platform, Hirani said the Eye will also support “skeleton tracking.”

Now, I’ll admit, these are cool features, but I do hope the update allows the PlayStation Eye to work in the dark. Facial recognition firmware update or not, for this to work Sony’s going to have to figure out a way for this thing to function from within the pitch black confines of people’s storage closets and attics. [Gamasutra Kotaku]

The rumour states that Microsoft will be debuting a totally new console that will include native Project Natal support, full backwards compatibility with Xbox 360 software, and with slightly updated muscle to handle newer games. Supposedly, it’ll be released in fall 2010.

Microsoft did mention that with the debut of Natal, the Xbox 360’s lifespan is “less than halfway done,” but we think it’d be a mistake to release a game-changing new control system as an entirely new console rather than a more affordable peripheral when we’ve seen that a peripheral is all that’s needed to handle Natal. Further, the way Microsoft has phrased talk about the Xbox 360’s lifespan implies to us that the humble white console is going to be around for awhile: “There’s still an awful lot left we can do with that piece of hardware, so we’re going to continue to do that,” said Microsoft’s VP of Interactive Entertainment John Schappert.

We don’t think the rumour really makes sense, but maybe it’s just wishful thinking; we don’t want to have to buy an entirely new console, but we just might have to if that’s the only way to get our hands (well, our entire bodies) on Project Natal. [1UP]

Gameplay:

Interaction With Milo:


[GameTrailers.com]

At All Things D, my friends at Fullpower did a demo of a accelerometer-equipped headset that can pick up a call by tapping it in a different way than you tap a regular headset.

That’s not so new in concept, but the trick is, they use math to filter out the background noise—in this case, motion from walking, jumping, etc—so it doesn’t hang up on you when you move around while doing it.

The headset also knows when you place it on a table and powers down. All by using math and a regular accelerometer.

You’ve seen games and GPS apps from Fullpower but those are just apps demoing the company’s tech. Fullpower’s motion detection engine tech is described as doing for motion what voice recognition does for voice. It interprets the raw data and figures out what a person is doing, eliminating confusing data, which I think is interesting because up to now, most developers have just had to deal with raw accelerometer XYZ information. Hard to parse in itself, but up to now, really hard to take that info and decipher what exactly the person holding the device is doing.

Next up is an AMAZING demo of a camera app that filters out motion using the accelerometer. Typically, software that have done this has done it by using gyroscopes, or mechanical parts, or by digitally scanning the image as you move it. The accelerometer here helped the camera, mounted on a wildly shaking platform. The images are taken on a crappy smartphone sensor (a slow sensor), came out very sharp when stabilisation is applied. I’m unsure if it’s timing it properly to snap when the motion is at its slowest, but that would make sense, since there’s no way to increase shutter speed. The tech can scale to all sorts of high end cameras, using just cheap accelerometer parts, not the typically high end stuff you see in DSLRs now. I look forward to getting this stuff in smartphones.


The demos were just concepts, but I’m sure we’ll see more of this tech in products, soon. [Fullpower]

[Disclosure: these guys are my friends.]

It’s not official yet, but it’s getting close: The Wall Street Journal is claiming that Microsoft is developing a new 3D video camera for the Xbox 360 that will allow you to control games, Wii-style.

According to the WSJ’s sources, the new technology will give players “more accurate control over games” than earlier z-depth cameras. Apparently, it may debut as early as next June at E3 but it won’t be released until 2010. [WSJ]

Microsoft showed off a “Write in the Air” system developed in China. You can write with a gyro controller or in thin air, using a camera. Is it next for the Xbox?

You can’t help but notice the giant Xbox logo there on the screen, and the researcher I talked to said that it would be a great system for the Xbox or for Microsoft interactive TV. Still, when I pressed him, he said he didn’t know of any immediate plans. Whatever, it makes sense, except maybe the part where he grabs an orange and uses it as a stylus.

If the rumours are true, the orange makes a lot more sense now, don’t it? Not that I’m any less skeptical of these kind of controls actually working for gamers in the real world. PSEye, anyone? [Giz@Microsoft TechFest]

The built-in motion sensor on the monitor will switch to standby mode when the presence of a human is not detected for 40 seconds. Outside of that, both are a pretty standard monitors with 1600 × 900 native resolution, 178-degree viewing angles, and a 3000:1 contrast ratio for the EV2023W and 1920 × 1080 native resolution, 160-degree viewing angles, and a 1000:1 contrast ratio for the EV2303W. Both versions will be available starting on May 21, 2009 for approximately $US385 and $US455 respectively. [TechOn via FarEastGizmos]