Stylus lets you 'touch' normal screens, except when it won't

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The APEN Touch8 Smart Pen brings touch to non-touch screens -- when it works.



(Credit:
Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)



LAS VEGAS--APEN's Touch8 Smart Pen is a soft-tip stylus that gives non-touch screen Windows 8 computers the power of touch. It's a great idea, but it can't quite leave its mark.


The idea is clever. Instead of missing out on touch functionality on an otherwise high-end system that lacks a touch screen, pick up an $80 USB dongle and its connected pen to bring that touchless monitor into the future. There's no word yet on when it will be available.


The Touch8 Smart Pen works on desktop monitors and laptops of up to 17 inches and doesn't require additional drivers, so setup is uncomplicated. The Smart Pen itself connects to a small box that clips onto the side of your monitor, which reads the pen's contact with the screen.




After connecting the box to your computer via USB, you must calibrate the pen by touching four crosshairs on your screen. From there, touching the soft-tip of the pen to your monitor will have the same effect as using your finger on an actual touch screen.


At least, that's how it works in theory. When I tested it this morning, even re-calibrating the pen didn't fix problems it had accessing the Charms bar on the right edge of
Windows 8, and it worked only about half the time on the apps bar on the left edge.


The pen has other problems, as well. The soft tip that I tested ensured that the monitor wouldn't get scratched, but it also made precision a challenge.


The pen could learn a trick or two from Wacom, too. The drawing
tablet-maker's stylii have had mouse buttons on them for years. The Touch8 Smart Pen doesn't, so every time you want to use the mouse you have to put down the pen. It's an annoying extra step that negates much of the pen's utility.


I like the idea of bringing touch screen functionality to older monitors that are otherwise in excellent condition, especially through a low-cost USB device, but the Touch8 Smart Pen lacks the right... well, touch.


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Pictures: Wildfires Scorch Australia Amid Record Heat

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Photograph by Jo Giuliani, European Pressphoto Agency

Smoke from a wildfire mushrooms over a beach in Forcett, Tasmania, on January 4. (See more wildfire pictures.)

Wildfires have engulfed southeastern Australia, including the island state of Tasmania, in recent days, fueled by dry conditions and temperatures as high as 113ºF (45ºC), the Associated Press reported. (Read "Australia's Dry Run" inNational Geographic magazine.)

No deaths have been reported, though a hundred people are unaccounted for in the town of Dunalley, where the blazes destroyed 90 homes.

"You don't get conditions worse than this," New South Wales Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons told the AP.

"We are at the catastrophic level, and clearly in those areas leaving early is your safest option."

Published January 8, 2013

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Holmes Played Childish Games After Aurora Carnage

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As police confronted the movie theater carnage and a massive booby trap left behind by accused Aurora gunman James Holmes, the suspect loopily played with hand puppets, tried to stick a metal staple in an electrical socket and clamly flipped a styrofoam cup, according to court testimony today.


Holmes, 25, displayed the bizarre behavior once he was in custody and taken to Aurora police headquarters after the shooting that left 12 people dead and dozens injured, the lead investigator in the case testified today.


While being cross examined by Colorado public defender Daniel King, Police Detective Craig Appel was asked about the observations of two Aurora officers assigned to watch over Holmes in an interrogation room.


Appel said that to preserve possible gunshot residue, police had placed paper bags over Holmes' hands. One officer, King said, noted in a report that Holmes began moving his hands "in a talking puppet motion."


Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.


King asked if Appel was also aware that the officer "observed Holmes take a staple out of the table and tried to stick it in an electrical socket?" Appel confirmed Holmes' actions.








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The officers also noted that they watched as Holmes began playing with an empty styrofoam cup, trying to "flip it" on the table.


While Holmes was carrying out his childish antics, police were puzzling over a complex booby trap Holmes had left behind in his apartment, according to testimony.


A gasoline-soaked carpet, loud music and a remote control car were part of Holmes' plan to trick someone into triggering a blast that would destroy his apartment and lure police to the explosion while he shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., according to court testimony.


FBI agent Garrett Gumbinner told the court that he interviewed Holmes on July 20, hours after he killed 12 and wounded 58 during the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."


"He said he rigged the apartment to explode to get law enforcement to send resources to his apartment instead of the theater," Gumbinner said.


His plan failed to prompt someone into triggering the bombs.


Gumbinner said Holmes had created two traps that would have set off the blast.


The apartment was rigged with a tripwire at the front door connected to a mixture of chemicals that would create heat, sparks and flame. Holmes had soaked the carpet with a gasoline mixture that was designed to be ignited by the tripwire, Gumbinner said.


"It would have caused fire and sparks," the agent said, and "would have made the entire apartment explode or catch fire."


Holmes had set his computer to play 25 minutes of silence followed by loud music that he hoped would cause a disturbance loud enough that someone would call police, who would then respond and set off the explosion by entering the apartment.


Gumbinner said Holmes also told him he rigged a fuse between three glass jars that would explode. He filled the jars with a deadly homemade chemical mixture that would burn so hot it could not be extinguished with water.






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World's oldest pills treated sore eyes

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In ancient Rome, physicians treated sore eyes with the same active ingredients as today. So suggests an analysis of pills found on the Relitto del Pozzino, a cargo ship wrecked off the Italian coast in around 140 BC.













"To our knowledge, these are the oldest medical tablets ever analysed," says Erika Ribechini of the University of Pisa in Italy, head of a team analysing the relics. She thinks the disc-shaped tablets, 4 centimetres across and a centimetre thick, were likely dipped in water and dabbed directly on the eyes.












The tablets were mainly made of the zinc carbonates hydrozincite and smithsonite, echoing the widespread use of zinc-based minerals in today's eye and skin medications. Ribechini says there is evidence that Pliny the Elder, the Roman physician, prescribed zinc compounds for these uses almost 250 years after the shipwreck in his seminal medical encyclopaedia, Naturalis Historia.












The tablets were also rich in plant and animal oils. Pollen grains from an olive tree suggest that olive oil was a key ingredient, just like it is today in many medical and beauty creams, says Ribechini.












The tablets were discovered in a sealed tin cylinder called a pyxis (see image above). The tin must have been airtight to protect its contents from oxygen corrosion.












"Findings of such ancient medicines are extremely rare, so preservation of the Pozzino tablets is a very lucky case," says Ribechini.












The cargo of the wreck, discovered in 1989, is rich in other medical equipment, including vials and special vessels for bloodletting. This suggests that one of the passengers may have been a physician.












Journal reference: PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216776110


















































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Obama to host Afghan president Friday at White House

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WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama will host Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the White House on Friday for talks centered on the long-term security compact between the two countries.

Obama looks forward to "discussing our continued transition in Afghanistan, and our shared vision of an enduring partnership between the United States and Afghanistan," a White House statement said.

The Afghan leader has expressed support for keeping US troops in Afghanistan, but sensitive details -- including immunity for American soldiers and the transfer of detainees into Afghan custody -- are still under negotiation.

Karzai's relationship with Washington has been troubled in recent years and fears remain that attention for Afghanistan, heavily dependent on international aid, could plummet after 2014, plunging it back into political turmoil.

The Afghan president's scheduled trip to the United States was formally confirmed on the same day as Obama revealed his nominations to head up the CIA and the Pentagon during his second White House term.

Obama, who last visited Kabul in May, named Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon and tapped John Brennan to replace scandal-tainted David Petraeus as CIA chief.

The US president last year signed a pact on future relations and declared that the "time of war" was ending in Afghanistan.

But the Defense Department reportedly has prepared plans to leave roughly 3,000, 6,000 or 9,000 America troops in the war-wracked state.

General John Allen, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, had earlier suggested leaving 6,000 to 20,000 American troops, US media reports have said.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the force would focus on preventing Al-Qaeda, which was sheltered by the 1996-2001 Taliban government, from regaining a firm foothold in Afghanistan.

The number of foreign troops battling the Taliban-led insurgency has already fallen to 100,000 from about 150,000. There are currently 66,000 US troops.

The conflict has become increasingly unpopular in the United States, but some lawmakers in Washington have accused Obama of pushing for a hasty exit.

Karzai, who left Kabul on Monday, is expected to kick off his US trip by visiting his wounded spy chief, Asadullah Khalid, at an American hospital on Tuesday.

-AFP/ac



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Circuit Playground plushies a perfect post-Xmas toy for hacker kids

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MHO the Resistor is one of the six Circuit Playground plushies, from Adafruit Industries.



(Credit:
Adafruit Industries)



It's a little late for Christmas presents, but if you throw a little time-machine action in the mix, this might be the perfect gift for the hacker kid in your life: Circuit Playground plushies.




The plushies are the newest product from Adafruit Industries -- one of the world's leaders in the open-source hardware world, and the makers of a wide range of products for hackers young and old. Led by Entrepreneur magazine's entrepreneur of the year Limor Fried, Adafruit has a long history of promoting the do-it-yourself movement, and giving those who play and work in it the tools they need. They are also big culture hackers, having offered a bounty for the first person to hack Microsoft's Kinect, produced a series of hacker scout badges, and come up with a concept for a Lego set for geek girls. The plushies are tied to Adafruit's Circuit Playground app.


As Adafruit wrote about the new plushies on its Web site, "We know it's hard to figure exactly what will spark a young mind on to the journey towards science, technology, engineering, art, math and more -- we wish we had these when were young."


There are six plushies -- Cappy the Capacitor, Hans the 555 Timer chip, MHO the Resistor, Connie the Transistor, Ruby the Red LED, and Gus the Green LED."


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Silent Skype calls can hide secret messages

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Got a secret message to send? Say it with silence. A new technique can embed secret data during a phone call on Skype. "There are concerns that Skype calls can be intercepted and analysed," says Wojciech Mazurczyk at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland. So his team's SkypeHide system lets users hide extra, non-chat messages during a call.












Mazurczyk and his colleagues Maciej Karaś and Krysztof Szczypiorski analysed Skype data traffic during calls and discovered an opportunity in the way Skype "transmits" silence. Rather than send no data between spoken words, Skype sends 70-bit-long data packets instead of the 130-bit ones that carry speech.












The team hijacks these silence packets, injecting encrypted message data into some of them. The Skype receiver simply ignores the secret-message data, but it can nevertheless be decoded at the other end, the team has found. "The secret data is indistinguishable from silence-period traffic, so detection of SkypeHide is very difficult," says Mazurczyk. They found they could transmit secret text, audio or video during Skype calls at a rate of almost 1 kilobit per second alongside phone calls.












The team aims to present SkypeHide at a steganography conference in Montpellier, France, in June.


















































If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.




































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Lenovo makes computer play a family affair

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SAN FRANCISCO: Lenovo on Sunday unveiled a home tabletop touch-screen computer aimed at turning typically solitary online activities into family affairs.

The Chinese computer colossus proclaimed the arrival of the "interpersonal PC" with the debut of the IdeaCentre Horizon Table in Las Vegas, where the Consumer Electronics Show gadget gala is set to start.

"It's definitely a new category; the world's first home table personal computer," Lenovo director of global marketing Dee Kumar said while giving AFP an early glimpse at the creation in San Francisco.

"This can be a full-power 27-inch PC, but at the same time we want families using this device," she said.

The "multi-user, multi-touch, multi-mode" table computer with a starting price of $1,699 can be used by several people simultaneously for communal activities such as games or for individual endeavours such as updating Facebook.

"We want to take social to the next level," Kumar added. "Smartphones and tablets provide one-to-one interaction, but it is great for a family to come back home and use this device to consume content."

Lenovo worked with videogame industry stalwarts including Ubisoft and Electronic Arts to tailor titles for group play on Horizon table computers.

"These games are simple mechanics-wise but really fun to play in a social space," Pixel, a member of an Ubisoft-backed group of girl gamers known as the Frag Dolls, said as she killed virtual zombies and raced cars on Horizon.

Lenovo promised to showcase a slew of Horizon games and applications at CES, which begins Tuesday.

Horizon is powered by Microsoft Windows 8 software designed with touch-screen controls in mind and recognizes commands from as many as 10 fingers at a time.

"Windows 8 definitely opened the doors to social with 10-finger touch," Kumar said. "You are seeing touch interfaces on bigger devices, and this is kind of the next extension."

Horizon weighs about 18 pounds and is built with a hinged stand in the back so it can be propped upright to serve as a television or desktop computer screen.

Wheeled stands and joysticks are among accessories sold separately. Lenovo said that Horizon table computers would hit the market by the middle of this year.

"Horizon makes personal computing interpersonal computing with shared, collaborative experiences among several people," said Lenovo product group president Peter Hortensius.

Lenovo has been striving to become the world's top computer maker and has made strides with a "protect and attack" strategy when it comes to market share.

Analysts have described Lenovo as a success story due to its tactic of fielding a diverse line-up of products in a global computer industry being roiled by the rise of tablets and smartphones.

Gartner Research in October released preliminary figures indicating Lenovo may have taken Hewlett-Packard's crown as top computer maker in the third quarter of last year.

IDC figures, however, showed that HP retained a tenuous hold on the throne.

Still, "our protect-and-attack strategy is clearly working," Kumar said, "We go after high growth areas and protect core business."

-AFP/fl



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Bolting your food? Put on the brakes with HapiFork

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Inventor Jacques Lepine with the HapiFork, which buzzes when you bolt food.



(Credit:
Tim Hornyak/CNET)



LAS VEGAS--Does your mom's lasagna taste better if you savor each bite as if it were your last?


It might or might not, but if you slow down when eating, chances are you'll eat less. That's the idea behind HapiFork, shown off at 2013
CES Unveiled.


The fork vibrates if you take a bite less than 10 seconds after the last mouthful. That will teach you to slow down, enjoy each morsel, and allow your brain to rein in your appetite.


After all, it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to start sending out signals that you're full.


"Your hormones are offset when you eat too quickly," says inventor Jacques Lepine of France-based Hapilabs. "It's bad for satiation and bad for the transformation of nutrients."




Lepine, an engineer by trade, was always told he ate too quickly when he was young. He once thought he was having a heart attack and rushed to the hospital, only to be told that it was gastric reflux.


His doctor told him to slow down when eating, and over the next seven years he developed a tool to help pace himself.


The HapiFork, and its companion the HapiSpoon, have a simple timer and vibration mechanism in their removable handles. They're also Micro USB-chargeable.


They haven't proven effective at helping people lose weight yet, says Lepine, but they're only launching within the next two months. They should be priced around $99.


What's it like waiting 10 seconds between bites? It takes patience, Lepine says, but he doesn't wolf down his dinner anymore.


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Best Pictures: 2012 Nat Geo Photo Contest Winners

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