Using Mobile Phones To Write Messages In Air 65
Anonymous writes "Engineering
students at Duke University have taken advantage of the accelerometers
in emerging cell phones to create an application that permits users to
write short notes in the air with their phone, and have that note
automatically sent to an e-mail address. The 'PhonePoint Pen' can be held just
like a pen, and words can be written on an imaginary whiteboard.
With this application a user could take a picture with a phone camera, and annotating it immediately with
a short caption. Duke Computer Engineering Professor Romit Roy
Choudhury said that his research group is envisioning mobile phones as
just not a communication device, but a much broader platform for social sensing and human-computer interaction. Such interactivity has also emerged in the work of other research groups, such as MIT's Sixth Sense project, Dartmouth's MetroSense project, and Microsoft Research's NeriCell project, to name a few."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
...until I read how this works. Actually, the idea could be quite udeful for once. Seems to me it should be quite a small step to introduce some sort of OCR into the works to clean it up a bit...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
...introduce some sort of OCR into the works to clean it up a bit
Until then, expect your "sent" folder to be full of unexpected messages. Like the following. :)
jvjw~~wwwy
You are a typical person.
)(~!!
You are a teeny bopper.
-x-x-x
You were moonwalk dancing.
%!%!%!
You are no longer horny.
Reading back? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said that, it looks like a Wiimote for everyone, and the possibilities are mind boggling. Think of Smart houses, in which by moving your mobile you can raise or lower the air conditioning and such.
Re:Reading back? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having said that, it looks like a Wiimote for everyone, and the possibilities are mind boggling. Think of Smart houses, in which by moving your mobile you can raise or lower the air conditioning and such.
No! No! No! No! and No!
This is a fantastic geeky little project. Please do not try to make it into something truely practical. It's a gimmick. A new technology needs to improve on the old. I could imagine using this to draw for example, but how does this slow method of entry beat the keypads we currently have on phones? Have you ever seen the speed with which a phone addicted teenage girl texts??? A new technology is only practical and should only be pushed if it actually makes things easier! Compared to a simple keyboard this method is ass.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
News flash: Writing on an imaginary whiteboard is not as efficient as typing in text.
Did you not even read the part where I said it might be good for drawing?
That's not dismissive. I swear slashdot has gone to the fucking dogs lately. Anything remotely unpopular is shouted down as trolling. Makes Digg look like intelligentsia.
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Have you ever seen the speed with which a phone addicted teenage girl texts???
No, but I seem to recall hearing about a texter being beaten by good old fashioned morse code (and the texter was allowed to use shorthand while the morse code person either wasn't or chose not to).
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah sure. Now let's see how quick imaginary whiteboard is?
By the way are you talking about this?
http://www.engadget.com/2005/05/06/morse-code-trumps-sms-in-head-to-head-speed-texting-combat/ [engadget.com]
If so a 13 year old girl with maybe 5 years maximum experience vs someone with around 8 decades of experience is no fair match.
YOu are so right! (Score:2)
What we need, after this, is mobile phones with screens as well!
That would be so useful....
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Till you get annoyed at the thing and peg it at a wall.(It kept turning off:( )
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It would be nice to have this available to sign for packages, I hate those tiny screens they have you try put some resemblance of your signature on.
Re:Reading back? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but I would not want something as expensive as airconditioning controlled by a few flicks of the wrist on some phone. Most anything I have seen from smart houses I would not want in my home. Old-fashioned mechanical switches were 1000x more reliable than any digital switch I ever had, and any convenience or imagined savings went out the door when the digital switches, easily 10x more expensive, inevitably broke down 10x sooner. I still shudder to think about the ceiling fans that had impossible to find propietary wall switches.
Programmable thermostats, photoelectric sensors, and timers is where I draw line. They're also about the only items that need regular replacement, can't imagine what an entire smart house would cost, probably much more just in idle electrical cost like the rest of the always-on gadgets of today let alone maintenance.
Until houses are built truly smart [wikipedia.org] that promise real savings I'm not sure what so smart about these gadget homes.
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Most anything I have seen from smart houses I would not want in my home. Old-fashioned mechanical switches were 1000x more reliable than any digital switch I ever had
Old-fashioned mechanical switches went mercury a long time ago because switch points were a potential source of fire.
The ideal situation to me is like that with typical automotive power door locks. There's a manual control which can be shifted by an automatic one. For instance you could have some of those large, "decorative"-type switches with two smallish solenoids behind it, to replace a switch. The thermostat can be a metallic strip type (I've seen about as many of those fail as electronic types, but I'l
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Instead of using the g-sensor in the phone, put a g-sensor and a small RF unit in a small stylus.
Then you can write on a piece of paper or the table/wall while seeing the text appear on the screen of your mobile phone in the other hand.
Or you could use, I don't know, a special kind of paper that would display the writing of the stylus in real time and store it. Made compact enough this would be awesome for note taking on the go.
I can't believe nobody thought of it before.
You wouldn't even need a cell phone to use it ! Think of the possibilities !
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As if it isn't bad enough with idiots wandering from side to side as they walk down the street. Now they have to frail their arms about too.
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
"an application that permits users to write short notes in the air with their phone, and have that note automatically sent to an e-mail address."
My god! They've invented text messaging from a phone, but... worse.
Re: (Score:2)
There was an app for this posted to the app store several months ago. You hold the phone in your hand and just wave it around wildly and spell words out with the persistence of vision effect. While I imagine it might be a neat trick, I've got to wonder how many phones have met their untimely demise after being accidentally thrown this way. I like my phone too much to download this app.
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Every phone on the market, with the exception of the iPhone, has an attachment hook that's mainly used these days by teenage girls to attach decorations. You should be able to attach a stock Wiimote strap to your phone without too much trouble... although I wouldn't recommend stress-testing it.
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The G1 also does not have a strap hole.
Since those are the 2 main phones that have accelerometers right now... Meh.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Rubbish, there are loads of phones with accelerometers. The Nokia N95 for instance.
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and what sort of sad person wants to email themselves?
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Reminds me of the beer commercial (Score:2)
Not to criticize (Score:2)
Not really that original, there as an iphone app for this on the App store about a week after the app store opened. That was, what, almost a year ago?
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brilliant (Score:2)
I can't wait to try it out. Sure seems obvious in restrospect (another sign of a brilliant idea).
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oh no! he's already posting with this new accelero-board!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is an app which uses the accelerometer in the iPhone and handwriting recognition to create notes on the phone itself. Nothing to do with writing letters in the air which are visible to other people.
I know this is slashdot, but you are expected to RTF'ing stub at least.
Re: (Score:2)
The story title doesn't help. I was expecting exactly that kind of functionality - some mobile phone with a large screen (like the iPhone and other touch-screen devices where the screen is most of the front of the phone) that could write in mid-air as you waved it side-to-side by using the accelerometer to determine where it was and what part it needed to display.
It'd have been a more interesting use if it was that, rather than making you wave your hand around like an idiot to show "we can get input from ac
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Having read the story on The Register yesterday [theregister.co.uk] I can tell you that they are working on improving accuracy, and also improving recognition of full words (instead of one letter at a time, brief pauses in between) and possibly cursive tex
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And if you don't make the movements that big then you're relying on people's perception of where they've moved the thing without them having instant feedback as to what they did, and most people's perception of their movement of a pen (with feedback) is a hell of a lot more accurate of their perception of the relative position they moved a lump of plastic in the air. Even if you alter it and do it on a surface (so doing it horizontally and making it effectively like a mouse) you're just going to end up scra
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Why is this modded down?
Oh.... I see... Apple fanbois!!!!
Seriously where the fuck do these iPhone pricks come from?
The Truth of the matter (Score:2)
I keep hearing that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
And, we keep getting closer and closer to having "magic wands".
In a few years we'll all be wandering around waving our hands wildly and murmuring gibberish, and yes, we will all be wizards.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Merlin (shaking and waving his wand with no obvious result): What do you mean my account has been suspended?
A magic hand appears out of thin air and points to something on the huge stone nearby.
Merlin: Damned fine print, damned greedy telcos. I should have bought an unlocked one.
Bring it on (Score:2)
Boy, I bet that would go over well in a movie theater.
It will go down well in Italy (Score:5, Funny)
H2G2 (Score:1, Insightful)
For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive--you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
-- Douglas Adams
persistence of vision (Score:2)
From the headline I expected this to be about some persistence of vision [ladyada.net] application. Now that would be cool. Just imagine people waving their cellphones at each other.
Touch-screen (Score:2)
permits users to write short notes in the air with their phone
Sort of like a touch-screen, but far more effort?
a user could take a picture with a phone camera, and annote it immediately with a short caption
Sort of like a touch-screen, but far more effort?
If only someone would invent a phone that had both an accelerometer and a touch-screen. They could make a fortune!
Checklist (Score:5, Insightful)
Novel: Check
Excellent thesis topic: Check
Accolades from fellow CS geeks: Check
Impressive on resume: Check
Realistically useful: Uncheck
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I could see this having huge problems. Even on the Nintendo DS, where the stylus actually touches the screen, it doesn't recognise the way I write a few letters and numbers. I would think the margin for error is even worse in the air, when yo
Oops! (Score:3, Funny)
The best part is you can flip the device over when you make a mistake and pretend to pour Wite-Out®.
Sixth Sense (Score:1)
Security issues (Score:2)
By all means use this to record sensitive information, I'll just make sure I'll be near you when you're doing it to read whatever it is you're writing.
An interesting toy, but I see absolutely no realistic widespread uses of this what so ever.
Imaginary whiteboard? How about imaginary gun? (Score:2)
Celphone "real world" fps, except you point your phone at people.
Making the world an annoying place (Score:2)
I can just see it now: people standing in public, making ridiculous and distracting swooping motions, so they can post pointless and misspelled updates to twitter. "This lne at coffe shop is 2 long"
Thank God (Score:2)
In today's world, instead of using my phone to make a phone call, I can wave my phone in the air while holding my bottle of non-water-flavored water as I stand in line to buy non-coffee-flavored coffee. And I can watch pigs glow under UV light. How did I ever survive be
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I bought a Windows Mobile phone (HTC Fuze) which is one of those platforms which definitely makes phone calls seem like an afterthought. You know what? I love it. Maybe not everyone needs to carry a keyboard with them everywhere they go, but I adore the opportunity. Maybe everyone doesn't want their phone to be a navigation system, mp3 player, still and video camera, flash light, instant messenger, web browser, blah blah blah... That's fine. But they're fucking insane.
Once upon a time, I had a camera in my
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If we haven't blown ourselves up or reverted to feudalism complete with castles and dysentery, in a few generations our descendants (maybe not yours or mine, but anyway) will be consulting the internet via their direct-neural interface and snickering at protestations about one portable device that people are carrying anyway doing too much.
Well, it better be a few generations from now, because I don't take guff from wired-up brains floating in jars full of fancy liquids.
This startling technological advance... (Score:2)
Just my two cents... (Score:1)
Here's how to make this REALLY functional:
1. Put the acelerometers inside a pen shaped wedge piece of the phone.
2. Make it detachable.
3. Make it wireless (Bluetooth)
Voila... Pen annotation for phones.
Hell, you could make this an accessory for existing smartphones...
Umm, I think I shlould head to a patent lawyer office RIGHT NOW!!!
2 ways to seem crazy (Score:1)