Gadgets Watch: Affordable Eye-Tracking, Glasses-free 3D, and iPhone 5 Case with Hand-Crank Battery Boost
Ever want to have an eye-tracking device for your PC? How about a hologram-like technology for your mobile phone? Or, if you're an iPhone 5 user, a no-sockets-required way to charge your battery?
Here are three possibly upcoming technologies to watch out for.
Affordable eye-tracking abilities offered for computers
If you were amazed by what the Samsung Galaxy S4 has to offer with its no-swipe Smart technology, you might enjoy this new eye-tracking project
According to Digital Trends, 4tiitoo is now in the works for the NUIA eyeCharm, a new technology that uses eye movements to control the computer screen. It's a clamp-on device that connects to a Microsoft Kinect controller, which can then control the computer. It's a project that's currently up for crowdfunding at Kickstarter.
The biggest news here is that you can get the eye-tracking system, usually priced at anywhere between $1,000 and $20,000, to a steal of as low as $60 for the beta prototype.
"Imagine reading through the latest posts at breakfast with your computer magically following your attention while you sip your morning coffee (All major browsers are supported," says their official Kickstarter page. "Or makgin yourself comfortable in front of your computer, flipping through your favorite photos just by looking at them while eating chips."
3D without the glasses: A Star Wars hologram in the making?
It seems that holograms that leap out from a source may not be as far as off in the future.
News.com reports that diffractive optics, a new technology for 3D images, has the potential to give glasses-free 3D effects for mobiles, tablets, and watches. What's more, the 3D image can be viewed from multiple angles, regardless if the device was tilted or moved.
"Unlike a f technology out there that only does so-called horizontal parallax, which means that you can only see 3D when you move your head left and right, we actually are talking about a technology that gives 3D for full parallax," said David Fattal, a team leader in Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, to News.com.
This means viewing something projected to 3D would be easy from all angles, and that you would be able to see through the object as well as the different angles of the object. It's like the hologram in Star Wars, or the 3D objects that Tony Stark could manipulate in Iron Man.
Currently, the prototype can have 14 distinct directions from which the object can be viewed and the 3D effect can hold up to a 90 degree angle, with a distance of a meter.
Whether it becomes a technology in the future is still a question, but given the rate of smartphones' development, it's probably just the question of when.
Crank up the juice: iPhone 5 case for battery boost
Crowdfunding has another potential product in the works, and it's targeted for iPhone 5 users who are not contented with the device's battery.
TechCrunch reports that Gridcase is gearing up for a Reactor case where you could manually charge your iPhone 5 by cranking up a dialer on the case.
The project is yet to be started as it just recently kicked off with Crowd Supply, a new crowdfunding site.
The Reactor project currently has $2,114 pledges, with still a long way to go to reach its $350,000 goal. There's still more than a month left for those who are interested in being part of this project.