When I was at school, whiteboards were as boring as trying to explain calculus to the dumb kids. But whiteboards today are interactive, and the latest model from Panasonic has introduced the most exciting technology of them all*, multitouch. More »
Sharp’s 60-inch PN-L601B Blackboard, announced today in Japan, ditches the SMART Board’s projector in lieu of a 1920×1080 LED-backlit LCD display. It’s almost awesome enough to make me want to draw sentence diagrams for Catcher In the Rye. More »
Chalkboard paint has been out for years but, let’s face it, chalkboards are inferior to dry erase any way you look at it. That’s why IdeaPaint kicks all kinds of ass.
Pong exerts a vicious grip on the minds of designers—it pops up in hundreds of reincarnations. But this one is sweet: a live “drawing on whiteboard” version, mixing electronics with the joy of drawing on, wiping off and repositioning your playing bat. Check it out, thrill to the high-speed action and grin at the ultimate use of a whiteboard: so much better than the usual business drivel that gets drawn on them. There’s no more info apart from it’s a live demo of a “physics based engine responding to it’s real life surroundings,” so we’re imagining it’s powered by frantic behind-the scenes action by Dilbert and Dogbert. [Electronicmiracles]
Precisely how the Flowlight would work is a little unclear, but the design page notes that a base station would focus a laser beam 100 times a second into a point in the space, creating small plasma points that glow in mid air. Users could then use the pen to draw and write, making doodles look like some sort of fantastic light show. It’s kind of like a cross between and blackboard and a laser pointer—which would be extremely cool if the product actually existed.
A shameless celebration of all things mechanical and most things lazy, the automated whiteboard is powered by two belted motors from an old scanner/printer while an electromagnet is employed to stick the marker to the board at only the correct times. We’ve always wondered how the local coffee shop writes their menu so neatly. Now we know…though we retain our suspicions of gnome activity (who, incidentally, plan to take over the world after they obliterate man through 1,200 calorie coffee drinks). [Sprites Mods via Newlaunches]
Remember Johnny Lee’s how-to last year, on how to make a whiteboard out of a Wiimote? Kofi Merritt, a computer resource specialist, challenged the members of the LEGO Club at the Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School to follow the Carnegie-Mellon Ph.D student’s video instructions and make themselves an interactive whiteboard, saving their school around US$800 in the process.
