touchpads
Business
Tsera Sues Apple, Microsoft… Everyone Else For Touchpad Tech
1:15PM Jack Loftus | An obscure company has filed suit in a copyright infringement-friendly Texas district against Apple and several other companies it for what it contends is—wait for it—copyright infringement related to touchpad technology. More »
Science
Fingernail-Watching Cam Makes Everything A Touchpad
10:55PM Gizmodo US Edition | Scientists in the UK have thought differently about touchpad designs: their system peeks at your fingertips to see what you’re touching. It can sense when you’re pushing on something and how hard, so everything —even a 3D uneven surface— could be made into a touchpad. Quite why they chose to demo this with a purring rock we’re not sure. But we like it. More »
Gadgets
Kodak Quick Touch Digital Photo Frames Are Ticklish on the Side
5:50AM Matt Buchanan | Kodak’s Quick Touch photo frames don’t quite go all the way on being touchscreen, though they’re spinning that as a plus, since you don’t leave grimy fingerprints on your screen. Instead, the border itself is a touchpad, so you can scroll through pics with swipes of your finger. More »
Computers
Why No MacBook Multitouch: The Official Apple Non-Answer
1:55AM Brian Lam | I’m stoked that even though the new MacBook Pro touchpad looks the same and is the same size, it’s loaded with multitouch! And LED backlights available across the range! But I was curious why the new MacBook (standards) don’t have either. So I asked them. Here’s the official Apple answer: The multitouch technology is a feature of the MacBook Pro and Air, but not the MacBook. Apple has already committed to transitioning all machines to LED backlights, and will do so when economically and technically feasible. UPDATE: Sources at iFixit have told us that the Broadcom BCM5974 Multitouch controller chip, the hardware component for multitouch in the iPhone and Macbook Air, costs only US$2.95, so cost isn’t the prohibiting factor when it comes to multitouch in the standard Macbook. More »
Software
Touchpad For iPhone Turns Your Phone Into a Wireless Mouse
12:40PM Jason Chen | This Touchpad app for the iPhone/iPod Touch is similar to a regular VNC app, but instead of mapping screen taps like a touchscreen, it maps screen taps like the touchpad on your laptop. You’ll get what we mean if you watch the video. Connect your iPhone to your computer via Wi-Fi and start gesturing around the screen—it’ll be just like you were fiddling with a touchpad. People who hook up their Mac or PC to their TVs to act as a HTPC should definitely pick this up. [Touchpad iPhone] More »
Gadgets
Apple Patents Show the Advanced Future of Multitouch
5:59PM Brian Lam | These Apple patents show standard trackpad, basic multitouch and gonzo “Advanced Multitouch” never seen before on shipping products. The advanced UI includes thumb/forefinger/middlefinger combos for saving, closing and opening files, as well as cut, copy and paste. (The patents assume the system can detect the differences between different fingers. [Macrumors] More »
Phones
LG KF510 Mobile Phone Is as Thin as the Ninjas Holding It
10:32PM Gizmodo US Edition | LG’s new KF510 slider mobile is a skinny 11mm deep, with a touchpad control, slide-out conventional keys, and an animation-loaded user interface. The “Touch Lighting Phone” also packs a 3-megapixel autofocus camera, and is metal-framed, with graduated metal paintwork. Available in March, around US$330, not much else is known about the phone yet. [GSM Arena] More »
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Apple Illuminating Touchpads and Clickwheels
10:15AM Seamus Byrne | According to a patent filed by Apple, the company’s MacBook touchpads and signature iPod clickwheel might be in for a very visual overhaul. The proposed technology will allow for both lighting and color responses to user interaction. If Apple follows through with its plans, when you get to use touchpads and clickwheels on next generation products, you might get a bit of a show. While most of it sounds fairly cosmetic, the idea of a touchpad that glows brighter with more pressure, follows around tactile input by the user, and changes color sounds pretty damn cool to us, and helps make things more intuitive on the user’s end. The 34 page patent outlines the plans which sound like anything from an LCD touchscreen to a traditional touchpad backlit with LEDs. From the patent: By way of example, it may be desirable to provide visual stimuli at the touch pad so that a user can better operate the touch pad. For example, the visual stimuli may be used (among others) to alert a user when the touch pad is registering a touch, alert a user where the touch is occurring on the touch pad, provide feedback related to the touch event, indicate the state of the touch pad, and/or the like. Hopefully we’ll actually see these ideas put to good use, rather than just a patent blocking others from using it. [US Patent Office via AppleInsider] More »
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