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Handhelds Hardware

Peephole Displays 292

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-isn't-that-clever dept.
benh57 writes "A student at Berkeley has come up with a novel approach for navigating small handheld displays. In effect the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area. You see different parts of the display by moving the handheld around - no more tiny scrollbars. Check out the DiVX movies to see it in action. It even works in 3D!"
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Peephole Displays More

Peephole Displays

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  • Hey, I know him (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CaseyB ( 1105 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:41AM (#5127032)
    Ka-Ping Yee

    Heh, I went to high school in Winnipeg with that guy. (Well, he was in grade 9 when I was in grade 12.) He was a math prodigy back then. Placed highly in all the Canadian math competitions while he was underaged by a few years.

    • I knew him years ago too. I made it to the city science fair in grade 6 and ended up in the same display room as him. While the rest of us had projects on battery life and growing mold, his was on linear equations and matrices. In grade 6. Always knew he'd go far...

  • Name.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:42AM (#5127040) Homepage Journal

    Being that it's similar to looking through a small hole to see a large interior I think they should call it The Speculum
  • I always wanted a way to view pr0n in a 3-d user space on my palm.. aside from hustler..

  • And the lawsuits are already being filed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Motherfucking Shit ( 636021 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:43AM (#5127050) Journal
    A student at Berkeley has come up with a novel approach for navigating small handheld displays. In effect the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area.
    In other news, the X10 corporation, makers of stealthy spy cameras and ubiquitous web adverts, announced today that they are filing a patent infringement lawsuit against an unnamed Berkeley student. Said the CEO, "peepholes are our market and this is a clear case of infringement!"

  • Nice concept (Score:5, Interesting)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:43AM (#5127053) Homepage Journal

    Nice concept, but I wouldn't want to use it in a bus or such. It real life it would crave some sort of gyro to detect movement. Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling. At least it would serve as amusement to the fellow busriders.

    Of course there are other solutions, and there is defenently a need for a solution to this problem. I would suggest having touch sensitive sides of the actual PDA. To scroll, simply stroke the side of the PDA (not a wheel, but the side). But there are probably even better solutions to this. I enjoy the peephole approach, but must regrettably say that the problem is to control it (without clicking tiny sliders).

    • Re:Nice concept (Score:4, Insightful)

      by All Names Have Been ( 629775 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:51AM (#5127107)
      Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling.

      Of course the answer to this is to have the gyros - but the scrolling is toggled on/off via a button on the side. Press it, you can scroll by moving your device. Release the button, and the display is locked in place. Now you can read on the bus, in bed, etc.

    • Re:Nice concept (Score:5, Funny)

      by The Fun Guy ( 21791 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:51AM (#5127110) Homepage Journal
      "...touch sensitive sides...stroke the side...I enjoy the peephole"

      They say that porn drives technological innovation in information distribution technologies. This gives a whole new meaning to the term "peep show".

      I can't imagine I'm going to get first post on this.
    • Nice concept, but I wouldn't want to use it in a bus or such. It real life it would crave some sort of gyro to detect movement. Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling. How about an easier solution than the one you describe? Perhaps there could be a button on the device that "unlocks" the screen only while it is being pressed. With this you could just press the button, briefly scroll and release the button, locking the screen. This would prevent a lot of the problems of a bouncing bus while still allowing the basic concept to be used.

    • Re:Nice concept (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:00PM (#5127164)
      Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling.

      That could be a beneficial effect! Many people have difficulty reading small text on a moving vehicle, because the page constantly bounces around.

      Possibly, this system could act as an "image stabilizer" for the text- causing the text to follow a smoother path than your actual bouncing hand.

      Of course, whether or not this can be helpful depends on many factors- Does the screen have 10 millisecond updates? Does your head bounce more or less than your hand? (If they're in sync already, then you're fine.)

      And how well does the inertial tracking system distinguish the gross movements of the bus from your localized jittering? (You wouldn't want to leave the POV behind you at the station where you boarded!)

      • Re:Nice concept (Score:5, Funny)

        by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:58PM (#5127596) Journal
        They could require the use of an earbud headphone. And the POV could be relative to the headphone. Then you could put a button on the PDA that recenters the display if things get out of whack. Seems like that would perfectly deal with the jitter issue. Like you say, you'd need fast updates on the screen.

        Of course, I don't want a PDA until they can draw on my iris with lasers. I want a 50" display that fits in the palm of my hand, and can be used to permanently blind my enemy in tactical combat.
        • "...I don't want a PDA until they can draw on my iris with lasers..."

          I'd rather have one which draws onto my retina.
          • Heh...pedantic not-so-smart-guy, more like it: the retina is the back of the eye which has the rods and cones on it, while the iris is that black circle which lets light through in the front of the eye. Drawing directly to the retina requires a higher power laser and could damage the retina. Targeting the iris however is much easier in terms of motion tracking and is less power intensive, thus safer. And the light would hit the retina anyway if the iris were tageted.

            Try being correct when you have another pedantic urge.
            • According to this link [nasaexplores.com], Anarchofascist is right and we're wrong. And if it's on the web, then it must be true! The iris is the colored part of the eye, around the black pupil. Your point is probably correct, that it'd be best to target the pupil...

              But I'm still wrong. The iris wouldn't do at all.

              So... try being correct when you correct someone's pedantic pupil correction urge. Nur.
        • How about a 62" display, seen as from 6 1/2' distance (Olympus EyeTrek) [olympusamerica.com]

          The FMD-700 works with PC, Mac, DVD, Tv, and VCR, also has surround sound. Because it is face mounted (FMD = Face Mounted Display), it moves with the head. No VR, as I don't see that it feeds back movement to the device, but I am willing to wait for that...
      • They could require the use of an earbud headphone. And the POV could be relative to the headphone. Do it with radio triangulation or something. Then you could put a button on the PDA that recenters the display if things go out of whack. Seems like that would perfectly deal with the jitter issue. It would definitely deal with the bus turning a corner. Like you say, you'd need fast updates on the screen.

        Of course, I don't want a PDA until they can draw on my iris with lasers. I require a 50" display that fits in the palm of my hand, and can be used to permanently blind my enemy in tactical combat.

    • Re:Nice concept (Score:3, Insightful)

      by GothChip ( 123005 )
      Just add a thumb button on the side which just turns the scrolling on when you want to use.
    • A gyro? Who ever heard of putting lamb meat and a pita inside of a PDA?

    • Re:Nice concept (Score:4, Funny)

      by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @02:20PM (#5128089) Homepage
      Nice concept, but I wouldn't want to use it in a bus or such. It real life it would crave some sort of gyro to detect movement. Imagine a bus rounding a corner and the text compensating by scrolling. At least it would serve as amusement to the fellow busriders.

      With a gyroscope/accelerometer arrangement to detect movement, you could set it up so that you clear the screen by turning it over and shaking it [etch-a-sketch.com].
  • Anyways, I think it would be neat to have a PDA where the little box part was just the computer (well, the screen part could also be used), and the visual interface used those 3-D glasses. Dragging the pointer around would show a mouse on the glasses. Make the interface bluetooth or 802.11 and that would be extra cool!

    • Re:*sigh* Already slashdotted (Score:5, Interesting)

      by WinterSolstice ( 223271 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:04PM (#5127195)
      Why not just have a pair of glasses that contain the computer? A nice pair of wraparounds should certainly have room to accomodate a small enough system by the time we have good enough displays.

      Then, all you need is roll-up keyboard, or a laser projection keyboard.

      Of course, in all seriousness, I find that the ideal form factor would be something the size of a Zippo lighter, that projected both text and keyboard onto other surfaces. Perhaps the display onto your eyes, and the keyboard onto a desk?

      -WS

      • Been there done that...

        www.wearcam.org, http://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/wearables/ and many many others.

        I had that back in 1997 a nice eyeglass mounted display (a hacked eyeglasses TV that was discontinued... looked like a pair of sporty sunglasses) a twiddler from handykey and a computer that was the size of 5 packs of ciggaretts in a belt fashon... the computer can be even smaller now and the Head mounted display is even more invisible... Thad Starner has a color display integrated in his daily eyewear, While the father of wearable computers, Steve Mann has had neater stuff even longer.

        Old idea. that someday will become reality.
  • I seem to remember seeing something like this in a gadget-oriented genre, like a Bond film, for maps. It's a pretty cool idea, since it's not much different than using a magnifying lens.

    In fact, when you think about it, this is a real-world application of a virtual device that implements a real-world tool. Check out The Movable Filter as a User Interface Tool [acm.org] : essentially a magnifying lens with "logical filters". Now that's been moved back into the real world again.

    Who needs new ideas when there are so many good ones that haven't been used already?

  • X windows virtual screens (Score:3, Insightful)

    by etymxris ( 121288 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:43AM (#5127057)
    Hasn't this been done before? In X, if the virtual resolution is larger than the screen resolution, you use the mouse to move around. How is this much different?

    • Re:X windows virtual screens (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hasn't this been done before? In X, if the virtual resolution is larger than the screen resolution, you use the mouse to move around. How is this much different?

      It isn't much different. Isn't it funny how innovative and useful ideas stem so naturally from free ideas in the public domain? Now if Microsoft or Palm had the patent on scrolling virtual windows we may never have seen this new implementation at all (not to mention how difficult it would be to play some RTS games).
      • Isn't it funny how innovative and useful ideas stem so naturally from free ideas in the public domain?

        Or maybe it's funny how innovative ideas stem from products that are heavily patented and protected. Hence how capitalism works.

        Now if Microsoft or Palm had the patent on scrolling virtual windows we may never have seen this new implementation at all (not to mention how difficult it would be to play some RTS games).

        Wonderful FUD, I applaud your troll. Even got modded up, very nice. The problem with this is that Xerox would have had the first patent on it. If Apple would have patented it, Xerox would have stepped in. It was the non-innovative approach. Anybody would do it, as scrolling was around since there were text terminals.. so what if it's on a "virtual window" -- your scroll lock key was there long before hand. Oh wait, this actually dates back to the BCs with scrolls that you wound or unwound manually.

        It's a good thing that everybody irrationally hates patents, otherwise you people would pull your heads out of your ass and come up with a legitimate reason why they're bad.
        • Or maybe it's funny how innovative ideas stem from products that are heavily patented and protected. Hence how capitalism works.

          That's not capitalism. Capitalism involves payment for goods and/or services. Patents (and other forms of intellectual "property") require state enforcement to create artificial scarcity.

          You can argue about whether or not intellectual property is good for society, but you can't call it "pure" capitalism.

    • that's the idea, rather than fiddle with two hands and a set of scroll buttons, move the device.

      I quite like the idea

    • Re:X windows virtual screens (Score:4, Informative)

      by Samus ( 1382 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:05PM (#5127205) Journal
      I was wondering the same thing but I was lucky enough to be able to download the low res video before the site was smashed. Think of the old nintendo power glove or one of those joy sticks that you just hold in mid air and tilt around. Then think about that crossed with a virtual desktop. You are pretty close now. The interesting thing is this guy as attached the motion sensor to the pda and the screen scrolls around when he moves the pda. He took it one step further though. It not only works on a X,Y axis but also the Z axis. You can use your one hand holding the pda and the other a stylus to pick up an object and drag and drop it somewhere else. The demo video was pretty cool. I do recomend checking it out after the /. effect has worn off.

  • Game Controllers (Score:5, Funny)

    by Devil Ducky ( 48672 ) <slashdot@devilducky.org> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:44AM (#5127063) Homepage
    I''ve been using a similar style for years. I can't even play a game without moving the controller wildly about while playing a game.

    There's no convincing me that moving the controller to the right doesn't help the car turn faster in GT3. Or that shaking it up and down while holding the X button so hard my fingers change colors doesn't help it with acceleration on the straight away.

    • Re:Game Controllers (Score:4, Funny)

      by Dan B. ( 20610 ) <`slashdot' `at' `bryar.com.au'> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:08PM (#5127224)
      I have a mate who tries to 'see' around the corner of his display when playing any RTS.

      It used to crack us all up watching his head bob up/down/left/right when playing Warcraft II. He used to always wonder why we were laughing, as though some mage would be about to cast a blizzard on his unsuspecting horde of Ogres.

    • Re:Game Controllers (Score:2, Informative)

      by Palshife ( 60519 )
      The best part is, mashing the X button harder than normal DOES make you go faster on PS2!
      • The best part is, mashing the X button harder than normal DOES make you go faster on PS2!

        There is some truth to this, as all of the buttons on the PS2 controller are pressure sensitive. But it is really easy to press hard enough to get the highest level of button press. It is much harder to press it halfway down than fully down, even for kids and weak old people.

    • Of course the complementary technology to that is the head tracking incorporated into modern FPS games that lets you look around corners by leaning waaay over in your seat.

  • Place your bets now.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:44AM (#5127064) Homepage
    VIDEOS To play DivX video, get a free decoder from divx.com. You can play DivX videos on Linux, MacOS, or Windows.

    * video demonstration for CHI 2003, 16 Dec 2002 (5m 52s)
    o high quality: AVI (72 Mb, DivX)
    o medium quality: AVI (33 Mb, DivX)
    o low quality: AVI (16 Mb, DivX)
    * video figure for CHI 2003, 23 Sep 2002 (2m 35s)
    o AVI (13.8 Mb)
    o QuickTime (27.6 Mb)
    * submitted to UIST 2002, Apr 2002 (3m 31 s)
    o AVI (46 Mb, MPEG4.2)
    o QuickTime (50 Mb, MJPEG)
    o DivX (45 Mb)



    How long will their server last? ;o)
  • I thought I was supposed to use the peephole to watch the DiVX movies?

  • This is all great and everything, but.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:45AM (#5127076) Homepage Journal
    After I get all excited doing this, where can I ... ahem ... insert myself?

  • What we really need is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ewanrg ( 446949 ) <ewan.grantham@gmail.STRAWcom minus berry> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:45AM (#5127078) Homepage
    I think this is a very innovative way to make the UI help get around the physical limitations of the device.

    But what we REALLY need are answers to those physical limitations. I have a lot more hope for a foldable display in the long term than in ways to try to make a big picture/UI fit on a small screen.

    Not knocking what is an excellant piece of work, but sometimes a great solution to a problem blocks better solutions.

    Just my .02 worth...
    • Retinal projection or some kind of VR goggle system?

      The only kind of foldable display likely to be seen in real life anytime soon would be something with multiple conventional LCD screens, which would be thick, power-hungry, expensive and of limited value compared to a single, large display due to the lack of physical continuity.
  • ... will you see what you're typing on your projected keyboard?

  • Hasn't this been done before? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by glh ( 14273 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:47AM (#5127088) Homepage Journal
    I remember hearing about something with a hand held device that was gyroscope enabled that allowed you to do something similar (and this was about 2 years ago I think). If you tilt the device to the left, it scrolled to the left and so on. I don't have the URL handy, but it doesn't seem to me like this is that new of a concept.. unless I'm missing something (unfortunately the site is too slashdotted to read right now)
    • Yeah, it was called "Rock 'n' Scroll" (someone who grew up with Sit 'n' Spin?) and was actually well over two years ago, according to a colleague.

      You can see it at HP/Compaq's Western Research Lab [compaq.com]. The photo shows the device was called "Itsy", but I'm not sure if that was the model or the name of the implementation of Rock 'n' Scroll. Both names are pretty lame, though.

      There was even Doom running on the thing -- check out the AVI or QuickTime files linked towards the end of the article.
    • That's related, but different. This new device (hopefully) won't have to tilt.

      In fact, the system is exactly the same as a VR viewer headset, but hand-carried instead of glued to your face.

      Just like wearing eyephones and position-trackers to let you view CG people, this will use an LCD screen and position-trackers to view CG documents.

  • Text of Proposal document (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alranor ( 472986 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:48AM (#5127097)
    As it's been slashdotted already

    OVERVIEW

    Recent years have shown an explosion of interest in handheld computing devices (such as personal digital assistants, cellphones, and mini-notebook computers). These devices have a form factor that enhances convenience, portability, and durability, and they tend to provide desirable operational features such as instant-on, fast non-volatile storage, and simpler, more direct modes of interaction (touch screens, application-specific buttons, no need to "save" work and "quit" programs).

    However, current display technology constrains the size of the display to be no larger than the physical size of the device. This sets up a tension between the desire to make the device small, light, and non-intrusive, and the desire to display a reasonable amount of information and provide efficient interaction.

    Accessing a large amount of information on a small display generally requires some kind of selection or scrolling mechanism. Cellphones and PDAs, for example, have "up" and "down" buttons that are pressed repeatedly to scroll through lists of records, but using them is slow and cumbersome.

    I propose a new scrolling mechanism based on the metaphor of a virtual window: the information is laid out on a virtual space much larger than the device itself. The device itself is moved around the virtual space to view a small part (a window) of the space. I hypothesize that this will have several advantages:

    Scrolling becomes direct and intuitive; one can move to a new region of the space just as fast as one can move the device.
    It eliminates the feedback loop of normal scrolling (press "Down", read, press "Down", read, etc.) and replaces it with a single movement.
    It replaces discrete control with continuous control, massively increasing the bandwidth of information communicated between user and device.
    It frees the hand used to operate the device, permitting scrolling and interaction at the same time. Scrolling moves into the background, occupying little or no cognitive load, producing the illusion that the entire
    workspace is available at once.
    It yields some of the advantages of two-handed interfaces for free: the non-dominant hand gives coarse positioning information, while the dominant hand does specific pointing and manipulation.

    SPECIFIC GOALS

    During this semester, i hope to achieve the following specific goals:

    Choose a platform that is sufficiently open and fast to support this development (a Palm-based PDA will be a likely first choice if early attempts to interface to it are successful).
    Explore and develop at least one method for sensing the position of the device. (Some possibilities to examine include: the use of accelerometers to obtain differential information; the use of a tether with a mechanical encoder to measure absolute position; the use of computer vision to locate a marker that's stuck to the device.)
    Devise a task to be performed that requires scrolling functionality. (Possibilities include making a selection from a scrolling list, or locating an object on a large map.)
    Develop a sample application that allows a user to perform this task (a) using directional scrolling buttons; (b) using conventional scrollbars; (c) using the virtual window technique (or techniques) developed in this project.
    Perform user tests and compare performance and preference among these scrolling techniques.
    Submit a short paper to UIST.

    RELATED WORK

    I've heard of other work on tilting input, but not direct-positioning input. Tilting, in my opinion, completely misses the point: tilt input is still differential rather than direct, and is therefore no better than holding down a scroll button and waiting until you've arrived. Positional input should be much better, because it just lets you put yourself where you want to be.

    Joel F. Bartlett. Rock'n'Scroll Is Here to Stay. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, May/June 2000, pp. 40-45.

    Jun Rekimoto. Tilting Operations for Small Screen Interfaces. User Interface Software and Technologies 1996.

    • Re:Text of Proposal document (Score:5, Informative)

      by kah13 ( 318205 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @01:17PM (#5127717) Homepage
      He missed a big reference: this idea was already proposed by Jef Raskin. It's called ZoomWorld, some references can be found in his "The Humane Interface" book. The example he shows is the same idea used to provide information about patients in an ICU at Catholic Healthcare West. There is also a company doing something with this idea in webspace, Cincro [cincro.com]. Their product is called Zanvas.

  • I wouldn't know (Score:4, Funny)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:48AM (#5127098) Homepage Journal
    I can't get a peep out of their server...

  • Once again (Score:3, Funny)

    by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:49AM (#5127099)
    ... the porn industry leads the way in video display technologies!

  • Ok. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by FreeLinux ( 555387 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:53AM (#5127128)
    I'll admit that it is terribly cool looking, though the concept is not entirely new. However, the practicality of it seems rather unlikely.

    If you have to lug around a huge backpack of support gear, why not just carry a larger display, such as Apple's 17" laptop or a future roll-up screen. Now, I know everyone will jump on me and say that they will reduce the size of the support gear but, it is still going to be impractical.

    In order to use this thing you must move around a fair bit. Imagine a subway train full of people gyrating with their PDAs. It will look like a bunch of DDR freaks on mescalin.

    I think a much better solution would be to simple use a little track ball on the the bottom of the PDA to scroll around screen. but, that's not new technology at all.
    • Imagine a subway train full of people gyrating with their PDAs. It will look like a bunch of DDR freaks on mescalin.

      ...nothing I didn't see on the E train this morning...

    • Re:Ok. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by tgibbs ( 83782 )
      If you have to lug around a huge backpack of support gear, why not just carry a larger display, such as Apple's 17" laptop or a future roll-up screen. Now, I know everyone will jump on me and say that they will reduce the size of the support gear but, it is still going to be impractical.
      Why would you need a backpack? There are tiny chip-based accelerometers available. Everything else is software.

    • Re:Ok. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:13PM (#5127260)
      If you have to lug around a huge backpack of support gear

      Give him a break! He's a lone student, trying to produce a useful prototype of the HCI loop. The proposal isn't for a consumer level product.

      If the demonstration is successful, then a PDA manufacturer could look into engineering the hardware down into a single handheld device, but first they've got to see the concept in action.

  • Not so novel (Score:2, Informative)

    by tmark ( 230091 )
    If I understand the concept correctly (can't follow the links...slashdotted), similar approaches have been done many times before.

    For instance, in the days of the Apple II, when the standard text display was 40 characters wide, there was a word-processor called "Magic Window", designed for people who didn't have the money for the 80-column cards. Basically it, too, gave you a "peephole" into a 40x24-character window which moved around your document as you typed. You never saw all your document, but usually you saw enough.

    I loved that little program and used it as my main word-processor for writing and printing out my high-school essays (on a shitty Apple thermal printer lacking descenders!).

  • Mirror of the videos (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kalewa ( 561267 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @11:59AM (#5127157)
    Well my web server admin just said today "it can handle a slashdot, easily" - so I guess I'm going to see if he was just talking out his arse ;) These are just the low-res ones. peepdemo-200.avi [eliforpresident.com] (15.3mb) peepfig.avi [eliforpresident.com] (13.4mb) peep.avi [eliforpresident.com] (44.2mb) First two should be done in about five minutes, third may take a little longer.
  • I imagine that this will have lots of uses in the real world at some point.

    I was able to download and watch one of the movies and he's done a really impressive implementation. Sure, right now he has a backpack full of equipment, but I imagine that technology for personal space location of equipment will come down in size, price, and battery power pretty quickly.

    Long live innovation!

  • Hacker and the Ants. (Score:4, Informative)

    by PrimeNumber ( 136578 ) <PrimeNumber AT excite DOT com> on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:01PM (#5127173) Homepage
    Rudy Rucker described a solution similiar to this in his book the Hacker and the Ants. [amazon.com]

    Users of workstations in his book would sit on a chair, using their feet the turn the chairs circular footrest, with the screen display keeping sync, giving the screen a 'viewport' type of functionality.

    A fun book to read, with some cool sounding tech and funny characters IMHO.
    • The -ware books (Software, Wetware, Hardware) were some of the biggest steaming piles I ever read, outside of Star Trek novels. Is this one any better, or does it have the same assortment of cardboard characters, idiotic chattiness in the most dire situations, and deus-ex-machina super technologies?

  • Old news really... (Score:2, Informative)

    by eaddict ( 148006 )
    All he did was take what was available for a person of limited sight and make for one with normal sight. A co-worker of mine has a son who has limited vision and uses a tool called Zoom Text to do exactly this. [aisquared.com]

  • Would make for a good game (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:05PM (#5127207) Journal
    Gaffer/duct tape a nice colour ipaq on your face an
    et violá : virtual reality

  • Deckchairs on the Titanic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I really am supportive of this kind of innovation, but when it comes to any device with a tiny screen, I just think it's a case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. There's only so much information you can present, and with only so much usability, on such a small device. Until we have something really advanced, like holographic screens that are much larger than their physical device, we won't be able to escape this problem.
  • For those who couldn't face downloading the oodles of movies, this is the best scene:
    Toward the end of the movie, he's demo-ing the prototype, standing in front of a bulletin board, and copying a *big* map onto the *small* screen of his Sony Clio. Quite impressive. But I did feel like going "Psssst. Use the built-in cam."

  • Okay... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:21PM (#5127320)
    So we're going to be viewing everything on roll-up monitors that we have to shake around to find things on, all while tapping incessantly on a projection keyboard. Sounds like we're all going to be jerking around like idiots.

    I think I'll wait.

  • Yawn (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:22PM (#5127328) Homepage

    Extra hardware, extra cost, extra annoyance value.

    There's a practical retail solution already, see Picsel [picsel.com], now shipping on Sony Clie's. Every document is displayed the same way, as a draggable, freely zoomable image, done with intuitive (touch-drag, tap-touch-drag) stylus commands.

    Other nice stuff: it's cross platform (PalmOS, Symbian, WinCE, Linux, easy to port to just about anything else), and ~1.5Mb in size, which includes a web browser, file viewer, and viewers for .doc, excel, pdf, rich text and text. The only annoyance value is having to toggle between free view and input modes, but a tilting device would need a toggle or press lock anyway.

    • I think that you've missed the point somewhat. This isn't a hardware or software innovation. It is an experiment in a new type of HCI, allowing the user to freely move the display around is more intuitive than having to flick modes in order to scroll or to use the display.

      The solution that you're talking about may be less physically bulky and built into the system but it isn't as usable as the type of device that this is a prototype for. The device doesn't tilt, it moves freely in space and as you move the physical device it updates the view that you see. The whole point of this is that is makes for a more usable interface than what we have already.

      Other posters have complained that this is just X windows multiple desktops - well it is just a windowing system but the point is how you move the viewable window, it's through a physical interface that you can easily use in *combination* with the stylus. Placing both modes of interaction on the stylus just reinvents what we already have.

      The last time somebody tried out an innovative new way of communicating with a machine he was also scoffed at to begin with - who needs a pointer moving device when we have a keyboard?

      But how many people use mice today?

        • The last time somebody tried out an innovative new way of communicating with a machine

        No, one of the times that somebody tried an innovative new way of communicating with a machine, we got the mouse. Most times, we got gloves, or vertical keyboards, or silver dots glued to our heads.

        The first problem that I can see with this system is that my iPAQ and P800 spend about half their time docked in cradles. A UI that relies on being able to swing them around can't be the only solution.

        • Yup, good point. Got a bit carried away with my own rhetoric there. People have invented a lot of crap since then ... what where the silver dots? Don't think that I heard of that one.

          The question that springs to mind is why do you have them docked most of the time? The whole point of a PDA is that its a mobile device ... I think it is reasonable to have a moving interface on a mobile device.

          If its purely to sync up then wireless networking is the way forward. If its because you like a largely static solution with a pen interface then the tablet PC seems like a good idea - but then the solution is a larger screen area. The problem that the guy was trying to solve is keeping the small form factor for mobility but giving the user more screen estate to work with.
  • How can I come to work drunk anymore? I just perfected driving here, now I have to retrain on my PDA? Jeeze, sometimes technology is a bad thing.

  • Novel approach??? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sTeF ( 8952 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:29PM (#5127367) Homepage Journal
    Why is this different from the "rock 'n scroll" [compaq.com] approach used in the itsy [compaq.com]?

  • There was a product out on the Mac waaaay back in the 128K/512K days that did the same thing. Since the screen was limited to a 9" viewing area, it made working with a page-sized document (in SuperPaint for example) very tedious. Unfortunately, I've forgotten its name.
  • ...this is a PDA concept where what you can see on the PDA screen depends on the physical orientation, position, and movement of the PDA?

    This reminds me somewhat of the ACME(tm) Portable Hole favoured by Wile E. Coyote; the kind where you stick it to a wall and where the hole leads you to depends where on the wall the hole is stuck to.

    Now if I stick my PDA to the wall, does it mean that passing Roadrunners will be able to Meep Meep their way through the screen, and I'll just splat comically against it on my way through?

    Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting concept, but execution would be difficult to use in the real world. Someone already suggested the difficulties of using it on a bus - this would certainly cause real problems. Plus the fact that it would need gyros would increase the cost.

    Projecting keyboards would be the ideal solution for palmtoppers on the move, IMHO.

  • Karate(TM) (Score:5, Funny)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @12:52PM (#5127557)
    You could use the gyros (or whatever they use) in this device to detect orientation.

    And you could use GPS to detect precision.

    Then you could use a very fast wireless link to connect to a collection of high resolution earth images.

    So, if you held the device in front of you and looked at it, you could see exactly what you'd see if your hand was empty.

    PHBs should be able to buy this "empty-hand" device for $2500.00 in two years; the rest of will get it for $99.99 at Wal-Mart in five.

    • Cr@p!

      I meant position, not precision.

      I'm doing propogation of errors in analog I/O modules and have "precision" on my mind right now.

    • Re:Karate(TM) (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You aren't that far off. I remember a location based services talk given a couple years back. One possibility that was proposed with the availability of 3G+ wireless networks consisted of a wireless handheld with GPS displaying underground pipes/service lines in just the method you describe (kind of a wireless "First Call" service). A lot more useful than your example, but the same idea.
    • I don't think GPS has enough resolution for this application. It can only go down to a meter or so I think. So you would have to run around the block to scroll around your document.
  • When I saw "peephole" I was thinking like a camera obscura -- like you look into a hole with a little projector and see a screen.

    Pictured all these people holding a PDA up to one eye like pirates.

    Then I got over it.

  • One drawback... (Score:3, Funny)

    by clickety6 ( 141178 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @01:17PM (#5127713)
    ..I wanted to add some data into my PDA's spreadsheet, but my arms weren't long enough to reach ZZ-999 :-(

    ~

  • You kids today don't know what you're missing. I've got an Osborne Portable CP/M box with an after-market enhancement: a big fresnel lens and two long metal rods to position it in front of the 5" screen for maximum magnification. The screen acted as a 52 character-wide porthole on a 128 column virtual screen - as you typed, the display slid sideways to display the end of the line.

    "But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor."

  • the display is a "peephole" into a much larger information area.

    Hey, that sounds just like my old Osborne 1.

  • "Advantages" don't seem that great (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2003 @02:52PM (#5128344)

    The only problem with scroll bars mentioned is:

    current display technology constrains the size of the display to be no larger than the physical size of the device.

    Are we that worried about the screen real estate? Enough to break the user interface continuity from, say, your computer to your PDA for something as basic as scrolling? The "several advantages" of doing so seem pretty insubstantial:

    Scrolling becomes direct and intuitive; one can move to a new region of the space just as fast as one can move the device.
    Arrows and a scroll bar are going to be more "intuitive" than any "move the PDA and it scrolls" approach, I'm betting. Remember seeing your grandma getting to the edge of her mousepad, and not knowing how to pick up the mouse to "hop" it and scroll a little farther? How intuitive will this be by comparison?

    It eliminates the feedback loop of normal scrolling (press "Down", read, press "Down", read, etc.) and replaces it with a single movement.
    People don't read text as it scrolls. Watch that DVD you have of Star Wars, Episode I -- at 4x speed -- and read the yellow text at the start. Does that work?

    It replaces discrete control with continuous control, massively increasing the bandwidth of information communicated between user and device.
    Is this one just filler? Describe the "massive" increase.

    It frees the hand used to operate the device, permitting scrolling and interaction at the same time.
    People don't read and scroll at one time, and here's guessing they won't poke at a moving target of a button. What would they be doing, dragging a mask over the edge of an image in photoshop -- on their PDA? While moving the "peephole" window?

    It yields some of the advantages of two-handed interfaces for free: the non-dominant hand gives coarse positioning information, while the dominant hand does specific pointing and manipulation.
    You can actually see this one -- except the converse statement would be that it requires two hands to do what one could do before.

    If it's really just screen real estate, a trackball or little direction pad like a gameboy has makes more sense, with some sort of tiny but clear visual clue -- a border or something -- that you could scroll in one direction or another. But we're all used to scroll bars by now, we really are, and even something as simple as that would be jarring for lots of people.

    Maybe there are some new ways to program for this model, to take advantage of those, uh, advantages, but for the stuff we do now it'd be clumsier.

  • This has existed for a while as "Panning" on mobile platforms. Sometimes a small LCD cannot see all of a big picture / game / resolution and the graphics driver will let you pan around the larger image by dragging the mouse to the edge of the screen, like this "peephole".
  • Well, they say that pr0n drives most new innovations....

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