New Toshiba Screen Lets You Bend to Zoom in Google Earth [Flexible Display]

Toshiba is showing off a novel user input case for its flexible LCD screen: you can physically bend the screen to zoom in or out in Google Earth. Shown off at the Society for Information Display 2010 Conference, the bend sensor in the display changes resistance values as the screen is flexed.
The 8.4-inch LCD panel is only 0.1 mm thick and displays at an SVGA resolution of 800 x 600 pixels. Custom software from Toshiba handles the translation between changes in the bend sensor’s resistance values and the level of zoom in the aerial Google Earth display.
It’s a surprisingly simple gesture that looks awfully intuitive. Check out a video of the flexible display in action below and let us know what you think. Do you want to see consumer devices begin to incorporate flexible displays?




[Mashable via Engadget]

Full-page Braille screens on their way [Braille]

Researchers at North Carolina State Univeristy have created a method to allow for full screen electronic Braille displays. Current Braille displays show one line at a time, severely limiting the value of the display. This will create a matrix of Braille readouts on a larger scale.

The researchers have developed a concept called a “hydraulic and latching mechanism,” which would allow the development of such a display system. The mechanism would be made of an electroactive polymer that is very resilient and inexpensive, when compared to current Braille display technologies. “This material will allow us to raise dots to the correct height, so they can be read,” says Dr. Peichun Yang, a postdoctoral research associate at NC State and co-author of the paper. “Once the dots are raised, a latching mechanism would support the weight being applied by a person’s fingers as the dots are read. The material also responds quickly, allowing a reader to scroll through a document or Web site quickly.”

Thoe whole system sounds very steampunk with tiny Braille pixels (brixels?) popping up and down in rapid succession. However, it could allow for more interesting and richer text interfaces for the blind. One researcher, David Winick, wrote “The last 20 years of computer technology have been relatively inaccessible – and today’s common mobile computing devices, from smart-phones to digital navigators and iPads, have been completely nonexistent – to blind people, because the display technology for the blind has not kept pace.”

[CrunchGear via EurekaAlert]

ATI Radeon HD 5450 Has DX11 Graphics Support For Only $60 [ATI]

Well, this is nice: a Radeon HD 5000 series graphics card available on the cheap. It looks like you're not sacrificing much in performance, either: The $60 Radeon 5450 has full DX11 graphics and Eyefinity multi-display support.
The $60 version comes with a 512MB memory configuration, and you lose a little speed compared to the 5800 and 5600 lines. But the 5450 is also optimized for HTPCs, with HDMI 1.3a with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
DX11 graphics, for those who forgot, can be pretty brain-melting.
For sixty bucks? Yes, please.
[Gizmodo via BusinessWire]

Bayer's New Blood Glucose Meter With USB Connectivity

Bayer has recently released the CONTOUR USB blood glucose meter that plugs directly into a Windows or Mac computer for uploading of readings for later analysis and for sharing them with your doctor. The device shows readings on the screen and you can mark whether they were taken before or after a meal. Conveniently, there's also about 500 megabytes of empty storage space on the unit, so it can be used as a traditional USB thumbdrive as well.

A bright color display screen visible in any light that shows average, high and low readings with

Customizable features such as intuitive pre- and post-meal marking

500MB extra memory for storage of personal diabetes information

Rechargeable battery that can charge from any USB port or via the CONTOUR USB wall charger provided

Glucofacts™ DELUXE diabetes management software

Here's Grandfather Walter Mossberg's review of the CONTOUR USB at the Wall Street Journal:

More from Walt Mossberg...
[Medgadget via CONTOUR® USB...]

TMOS displays: the next step after AMOLED-backed LCDs?

I believe that headline contains what’s known as a gaggle of acronyms. TMOS (time-multiplexed optical shutter) is a new display technology that claims brighter, thinner, longer-lasting, higher-resolution displays. Hey! I hear you giggling out there. “Yeah, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.” Okay, so extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I’d say their pitch is somewhere short of extraordinary, but if there’s anything to the technology, it really may just be all that they say. The company and technology have been around for a while, but they’re actually approaching the market at this point and you might want to know something about it before you start seeing the name pop up all over.

The idea is that by taking out as many layers of the display as possible, you reduce light interference (increasing brightness), power draw (better battery life) and component number (allowing for more pixels per square unit). But what to strip out? Uni-Pixel, the people behind TMOS note that instead of having three dots per pixel (red, green, blue in varying intensity), you could just have one, but with the dot changing color so rapidly that your eye only perceives the aggregate color. I’m not going to get all neuroscience on you here, but allow me to just say that there are biological reasons both for and against this technology, which I’m sure Uni-Pixel is aware of.

Micro-mirrors would direct light from side-mounted LEDs, which sounds clumsy to me, but they say it’ll result in refresh rates far above current displays’. They would also be simpler to manufacture, more durable, and more flexible. Anyhow, the engineering challenges are serious, but they say they should be able to put one in a product in 2010. Guess we’ll just have to wait!
[CrunchGear]