Touchscreens are great, but for many of us nothing beats old fashioned tactile controls. That seems to be one of the reasons why Lyndsay Williams of Girton Labs is in the process of developing SenseSurface--a system that allows users to stick working knobs to on-screen virtual controls. Apparently, the magnetic knobs can be placed anywhere on an LCD because the movement is picked up by a "unique sensing surface" attached behind the screen. It seems fairly unnecessary, but I'm sure that there are practical applications for this for music and graphics fields--or anyone who is tired of smudging up a touchscreen. A video of SenseSurface in action is available after the break.

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I got rather excited when I saw this, thinking that J and I could take it in turns to be Death Row prisoners on a Sunday evening, but apparently it's not an electric chair. It is, my little bunnies, the Mind Chair, which uses sensory substitution techniques to allow the sitter to perceive moving images in their brain via nerves in the skin. Wowzers—more info below the gallery.

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When you're in a strange city it's easy to get lost, but you don't want to miss the sights because you're glued to a map or GPS device. German and Swedish researchers may have created a solution - cell phone that can give you GPS directions simply by heating up or cooling down the handset.

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