BendDesk: multi-touch curved computer desk
For most people from many different disciplines a desk is the main workspace. A typical desk is composed of at least one or more vertical displays that show digital content, and a larger horizontal area containing input devices, such as mouse and keyboard, paper-based documents, and everyday objects. These two areas are clearly separated which makes it hard to move documents from one surface to the other. Furthermore, each area employs a different interaction technique. For example, we use the mouse for drawing on vertical displays but physical pens to annotate paper-based documents. BendDesk is a vision of a future workspace that allows continuous interaction between both areas. Developed by The Media Computing Group at RWTH Aachen University (Germany), BendDesk is a multi-touch desk environment that seamlessly combines a vertical and a horizontal surface with a curve into one large interactive workspace. This workspace can be used to display any digital content like documents, photos, or videos. Multi-touch technology allows the user to interact with the entire surface using direct manipulation and multi-touch gestures. The designers paid special attention to ergonomics. Users can comfortably sit at the desk and place everyday objects on it. Have a look at the video! More info
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The German company Ledato has released NanosG20, a universal Linux computer that consumes just 200 milliwatts during normal use. Its diverse interfaces allow you to connect Nanos quickly and efficiently into its environment and offer a wide variety of usage scenarios. The full-fledged Debian Linux ensures a comfortable environment and direct access to common Linux software like Samba, Apache and other powerful network applications. Nanos uses a modern Linux core with support for numerous USB devices like WLAN-USB, Bluetooth USB mass storage and much more. The low-down on Nanos: What runs under Linux on your desktop will run on your Nanos. This makes Nanos the perfect fit for energy-saving use as a log converter, data logger or similar. It can also be used as a power-saving alternative to nettops, barebones computers, and so on. NanosG20 comes with its own compiler, allowing easy program development. There is no need to install additional software on a development computer. Simply use Samba or NFS to unlock a directory on the Nanos, write scripts or programs in your favorite editor, then use SSH, Telnet or the serial console to compile and test on the Nanos. As with any other Linux system, NanosG20 offers the choice of a variety of programming and scripting languages: C, C
IBM has unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same silicon die, paving the way for computer chips that communicate with light instead of electrical signals. This yields devices that are smaller, faster and more power efficient than devices fabricated using conventional technologies. The new technology, called CMOS Integrated Silicon Nanophotonics (CISN), is the result of a decade of development activities in IBM’s global research laboratories. It is expected to change and improve the way computer chips communicate, by integrating optical devices and functions directly on silicon chips, enabling over tenfold improvement in integration density. IBM anticipates that CISN will open the door to exascale computing with supercomputers that can perform one million trillion floating-point operations (1 exaflop) per second. An exascale supercomputer would be approximately 1000 times faster than today’s fastest machines.In addition to combining electrical and optical devices on a single chip, the new technology can be implemented on the front end of a standard CMOS fabrication line and requires no new or special tooling. This allows silicon transistors to share the same silicon layer with silicon nanophotonics devices. To make this possible, IBM researchers have developed a suite of integrated ultra-compact active and passive silicon nanophotonics devices, all of which are scaled down to the diffraction limit 