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TouchKit Brings Surface-Like Multitouch to the Nerdy Masses
Posted by John Herrman at 11:20 AM on August 28, 2008
Touchkit, a open source (software and hardware) multitouch kit designed by NOR_/D, has been announced at a US$1580 price point, or roughly 1/8th the cost of Microsoft's Surface table. That's not to say that the TouchKit is equivalent or even necessarily a competitor to Microsoft's offering, but it is theoretically capable of many of the same flashy tricks. The system must be hooked up to a separate computer, and also requires an external projector. As you can see in the video, there's not exactly a whole lot it can do out of the box, but the open source platform can be tweaked by anyone with a little knowledge of C++. Check out the gallery of the hardware and potential installations are their site. [Gizmag]
Cowon's stealing a march on the imminent IFA show by teasing with some info on its new S9 PMP ahead of time: and you know, it's an attractive beastie. The S9 Curve looks to take its name quite literally, having sleek metallic-looking curved edges, and possibly even a curved rear-end if that photo's anything to go by. Inside the case we know there's a 3.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen, capable of 16 million colours, a powerful-seeming 500 MHz CPU, T-DMB, Bluetooth connectivity, media player functions and an electronic dictionary app. It'll also run for 40 hours from just one charge, and has an accelerometer. But there's no info on price or release dates or its storage capacity, as yet. It just looks fab. [
Brazilian blog 
If you're reading the back of the 
Archos just revealed what that 
This new photo-printer from Casio is one mixed-up gizmo: As well as standard photo-printing functions, it's got a 7-inch touchscreen and a full keyboard. So is it a mini computer with printer aspirations, or a printer with computing aspirations? Hard to say, but it's supposedly able to edit the photos you pop in from a memory card or mobile phone, and produce custom greetings cards, calendars and the like. And it comes with hundreds of built-in stamps and illustrations. You'd better be seriously into DIY greetings though: the PCP-1200 costs a whacking US$500 in Japan. [
Does one reach for a camera or a can of RAID when the Lexus Nuaero concept pulls into the driveway? Sure Jon Rådbrink's design looks incredibly cool, fast and futuristic; but then again I've also spent the last few minutes looking over my shoulder to see if Sigourney Weaver was about to burst from the wall in a load lifter to do battle with it in my office. As it turns out, there's a lot more to this design than just looks, and Rådbrink believes the car's "low weight and large presence" will be the way premium cars could be manufactured in the future. Oh, and it's loaded with tech, too.
The normally navigation-focused guys over at 
Touchscreens. They're everywhere, as if electronics makers aren't cool unless their phones or media players have them, and soon that will be true for laptops as well. Touchscreens aren't going to completely replace the mouse and keyboard in the next year or two, but we're hurtling toward a future where they're the dominant way we interact with devices. The catch is that "touchscreen" can describe a few very different technologies that all perform a similar function. Here's a breakdown of the most popular techniques for making touchscreen magic happen—and the crazy new techniques that will succumb to your caresses in years to come.
