OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere

Researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University created a prototype called OmiTouch that enables graphical, interactive, multitouch input on arbitrary, everyday surfaces.

According to the paper, The shoulder-worn implementation allows users to manipulate interfaces projected onto the environment (e.g., walls, tables), held objects (e.g.,notepads, books), and their own bodies (e.g., hands, lap). A key contribution is our depth-driven template matching and clustering approach to multitouch finger tracking. This enables on-the-go interactive capabilities, with no calibration, training or instrumentation of the environment or the user,

According to the paper, it is entirely possible that a future incarnation of OmniTouch could be the size of a box of matches, worn as pendent or watch. Thus, the benefit of extreme portability.

See the full paper http://chrisharrison.net/projects/omnitouch/omnitouch.pdf

An ECG for the iPhone

The future of medicine is changing rapidly with the emergence of mobile computing. A system developed by AliveCor that converts the iPhone or iPad into a clinical quality electrocardiograph (ECG) device. The system involves an application that can work with any iPhone or iPad and a card with electrodes (iCard) that is smaller than a business card which sticks to the back of the iPhone or iPad. 

 The company claims that the iphone ECG system gives an accurate clean clinical quality electrocardiograph. According to the company, the iphone ECG records and uploads the reading onto a server and converts into a pdf file for analysis by a medical professional within five seconds.   

  

  

  

From Your Heart to Your iPhone

Smartphones are becoming the center of our lives and changing our behaviors.  Smart phones applications became more sophisticated incorporating external sensors and intelligence to monitor and give recommendations to users.  A new smartphone application that is under development will allow heart-failure patient to keep track of the pressure inside their heart as measured by an implanted sensor.

According to the article, the researchers hope it will help patients better manage their health and reduce hospitalizations, which are responsible for much of the $40 million in health-care costs linked to heart failure. See the full article at http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/38673/?p1=MstRcnt

Better Hearing Is Being Made More Convenient

Smartphone’s technology is advancing constantly and become the center of our life.  It evolved from simple organizer to including camera, GPS, email, Internet browsing and thousands of applications that allows us to manage our business and life with more ease and fun. One of the newest smartphone applications and a finalist in the 2011 Asian Innovation Awards,  is an application that can enhance your hearing.

 According to the article, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903520204576485174026037728.html#articleTabs%3Darticle, a group of hearing health professionals and sound engineers has created a Smartphone application that can assess your hearing profile and then calibrate the phone to enhance its sound output to match your needs. Users will be able to assess their own hearing in a quiet room by performing a hearing test that takes about five minutes. The device will capture and assess the individuals hearing profile, and then calibrate the Smartphone to adjust and enhance its sound output by filling in gaps in the part of the sound spectrum where hearing is less than ideal. It doesn't just make everything louder. 

 The team hopes to move beyond Smartphone’s in the near future, and implant the ACEHearing firmware in headsets, earphones, MP3 players and even telephone servers and switchboards.